Climbing the Dark Tower: The Gunslinger

SPOILERS BELOW

Much like the titular gunslinger himself, we begin our long journey to the Dark Tower with the first book in the series. It was a strange introduction to a strange world but it promises to be an interesting journey. More in depth thoughts after the jump...


Honestly, the world building in this first book is spectacular. King's prose effectively portrays the bleak desert landscape and offers enough hints and teases of strangeness to create a familiar but fantastic world. Combined with the flashback sequences to the gunslinger's childhood which show how this world has degraded, the novel really presents a sense of place. The reader gets the impression that a lot has happened here, even besides the constant mentions of "the world has moved on", and that more is going on beyond the events we're seeing.

The two lead characters, the gunslinger and the man in black he's following, are likewise excellent. The gunslinger Roland is a deeper figure than his roots in the Clint Eastwood cowboy archetype would suggest. It probably helps that the novel is from his perspective because it allows the reader to get into his head and learn how he sees things. We see how bound he is to revenge, how he allows some measure of humanity back in, and the flashbacks to his youth show us how he became the man he is. And the man in black, despite his limited screentime (so to speak), is just as interesting a character. The two's confrontation at the end was not what I expected. Instead of some epic showdown, they sit around the fire and have a calm, civil and philosophical conversation that takes up the book's last chapter. It's clear from earlier passages that there's more to the man in black than he lets on, but he isn't the cackling villain others make him out to be.

If I really have a problem with the book, it's with the plot. It's a pretty simple setup, the man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed, but the payoff doesn't really come in. Roland sets out on the quest for revenge and while I liked how their confrontation came out, I couldn't help but feel that it deflated the ending somewhat. The character of Jake is much the same. When he's introduced in Chapter 2, Roland sees some of his younger self in the kid and it's almost immediately set up that Roland will have to choose between either keeping the kid alive or chasing after the man in black. It's a good conflict but again the payoff was crap. Instead of killing the kid or having to sacrifice him to something, he ends up dying because of an accident that barely had anything to do with Roland. The whole thing just feels very anti-climatic.

The whole novel is kind of a tease in that way. There's a lot of great setup, interesting world with intriguing characters, but by the time you finish it not much has actually been accomplished. Roland only really sets out on his quest by the end of the book. Now it is the first book in a seven book series, so some of that is to be expected. But The Gunslinger feels more like the prologue to an epic story than the first chapter of one. Still, it hooked me into the world and characters and I'm interested to see where Roland's quest takes me as a reader. Not excited yet, but interested. Let's just hope we both get a little closer to this damn tower next time.