Pixi Reads

In the first book of this brilliant series, Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, The Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which frighteningly mirrors our own, Roland pursues The Man in Black, encounters an alluring woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the Kid from Earth called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, The Gunslinger leaves readers eagerly awaiting the next chapter.

Well, I don’t know about leaving me eagerly awaiting the next chapter. I guess Stephen King has been this hyped author, I was expecting more. I was surprised I made it through the book since I usually end up putting down Stephen King due to the amount of description of some of his scenes and I end up getting sick since I don’t do well with blood. Slowly, I’ve been building up a tolerance to this (thank you hubby who loves to drag me kicking and screaming to horror movies). I literally finished the book and went, huh, wasn’t bad, but I also wasn’t going how I needed more soon.

The story was a bit hard to follow at times, and I felt some of the goings on almost not needed. Did they add to the story? Not really in the way they were presented. The time I specifically remember in the story where I was like, why, was posed as just a this happened, then this, then this happened which led to this. It was about that quick too. This deals with a prophesy of sorts coming true, so I don’t want to go in to detail, but it was all of maybe 30 seconds of the audiobook.

I did find the history of the gunslinger interesting. How this particular gunslinger came to be anyway. I can’t speak for some of the others. So, apparently, there is only one teacher for boys to become gunslingers. If they fail to become a gunslinger, they are dead, and the family line of gunslingers ends. Obviously, this will eventually lead to one last gunslinger, and this book is taking place during that time.

The gunslinger seems to be a nice enough guy. Except his mission to reach the tower is almost all consuming. He’s not even sure why he needs to reach the tower. This only helped add to my confusion as a reader.

Will I continue the Dark Tower series? Probably, I’m just not going to rush into the next book. I had a friend I still talk to from time to time from University and recommended this series to me. I didn’t read it at the time because I still had issues with the graphic nature of Stephen King’s writing and this friend agreed I probably wanted to skip if I was having issues with graphic scenes. Part of my wanting to continue I think is wanting to see how much I can handle of The King’s descriptions.