Name: The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, Book 1)
ISBN: 9780142800379

Stephen King

George Guidall

The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, Book 1)

Laura Ladwig

The Drawing of the Three

M. Sosotris

This is such an odd book, but MAN if it isn’t a cracking read. Revisiting this one was an interesting experience because I remembered everything that took place on the beach, but nearly everything that happened inside each of the three doors had faded from my mind, so re-reading this book was a mixture of nostalgia and surprise as the twists and turns of each of the three adventures grabbed me by the shirt collar and refused to let go.

Stephen King had always blended genres, even in his pure horror novels, but this series gives him the freedom to do whatever he wants, and so this book is part crime thriller, part serial killer horror, part psychological thriller, part sci-fi/fantasy adventure. It’s bonkers. 

The human stories are all so grounded, despite the reality-bending fantasy elements, and that’s always what makes King’s books connect with readers.

I had a great time with this one, and can’t wait to continue this re-read.

Roland, Susannah, and Eddie continue through Out-World on their quest to find the Dark Tower. However, after an attack by the giant bear, the gunslingers discover one of the six beams that hold the world together and soon discover a path to Mid-World.

The Waste Lands

Audiobook re-read.

This was a fantastic experience. Even moreso because I read and became obsessed with TS Eliot’s The Waste Land a few years AFTER my first read through of the Waste Land, so the references hit so much harder this go around. 

The pacing of this is a bit less breakneck than the second one, but it works. We get time to get to know the group as is (and we get Oy added to the group!!) and the book is bookended with two massive confrontations.

I ADORE how King uses the repeated mention of Charlie the Choo Choo throughout to build him up as a sort of mythical figure, and when we finally see what he really is later, it’s just a spectacular reveal. The villains in this one are suitably horrifying and threatening, and I love how we get hints that there’s someone worse lurking in the shadows throughout.

This is a great read, and I am so glad I’m revisiting it.!

Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, Book 5)

A much better-paced story than I remember.

The first time I read this, I found it rather glacially paced, but re-reading it now, it really worked for me. The plot being a remix of Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven went over my head as a college kid, but knowing how that story has a built-in ticking clock to the final countdown makes the pace work.

Add on to that that we get a sequel-of-sorts to ‘Salem’s Lot, and some great character moments, this one genuinely worked for me this time. 

The plot moved at a great pace. There’s a good mix of character moments and lore moments that deepen the overall story being told, all building up to a genuinely satisfying conclusion. Plus, this is where Stephen King himself enters the picture as an in-universe character, and that’s always fun!

Onward to Song of Susannah!

The next-to-last novel in Stephen King's seven-volume magnum opus, Song of Susannah is a fascinating key to the unfolding mystery of the Dark Tower.

To give birth to her "chap," demon-mother Mia has usurped the body of Susannah Dean and used the power of Black Thirteen to transport to New York City in the summer of 1999. The city is strange to Susannah...and terrifying to the "daughter of none" who shares her body and mind.

Saving the Tower depends not only on rescuing Susannah but also on securing the vacant lot Calvin Tower owns before he loses it to the Sombra Corporation. Enlisting the aid of Manni senders, the remaining ka-tet climbs to the Doorway Cave...and discovers that magic has its own mind. It falls to the boy, the billy bumbler, and the fallen priest to find Susannah-Mia, who in a struggle to cope -- with each other and with an alien environment -- "go todash" to Castle Discordia on the border of End-World. In that forsaken place, Mia reveals her origins, her purpose, and her fierce desire to mother whatever creature the two of them have carried to term.

Eddie and Roland, meanwhile, tumble into western Maine in the summer of 1977, a world that should be idyllic but isn't. For one thing, it is real, and the bullets are flying. For another, it is inhabited by the author of a novel called Salem's Lot, a writer who turns out to be as shocked by them as they are by him.
Source: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Dark-Tower-VI/Stephen-King/The-Dark-Tower/9780743561709

Song of Susannah

This one is probably my least favourite of the series. And it's not that it's bad. It's just that there's so much set up and obvious treading water in between the good parts. I enjoyed this one about as equally as I did the first time I read it.

And when it's good, it's excellent, but a big part of the plot is one character who has to draw things out as long as possible for the others to catch up, and so the plot is almost designed to be frustrating, especially since it ends on a pretty big cliffhanger.

In the previous book, the slow build up to the final confrontation made sense, and the character work throughout moved the plot along well. In this one, instead of character work, we get explorations of the bigger picture. And the lore elements are great, but this is very much a book of connective tissue between 5 and 7.

Because of that, I'm not going to give it a low score. This book makes sense in the grand scheme of the story, but aside from a few spectacular moments of brilliance, it feels like more of a slog. Thankfully it's a short book.

Roland, the world's last gunslinger, tracks an enigmatic Man in Black toward a forbidding dark tower, fighting forces both mortal and other-worldly on his quest, in a revised and expanded edition of the classic fantasy novel. 60,000 first printing.

The Gunslinger

Renee Dick

The first time I read this book, I was sacked into a story that wouldn't let me leave, and has been my favourite ever since. Perhaps it's where I was in my life at the time, but it has always been a cherished favourite, and I come back to it again and again.<br /><br />king has created a world that is much line ours, yet so very different; and characters that are deep and feel very real. it is always a book I recommend to others.

Creating George Stark was easy. Getting rid of him won't be... The sparrows are flying again. The idea - unbidden, inexplicable - haunts the edge of Thad Beaumont's mind. Thad should be happy. For years now it is his secret persona 'George Stark', author of super-violent pulp thrillers, who has paid the family bills. But now, Thad is writing seriously again under his own name, and his menacing pseudonym has been buried forever. And yet... the sparrows are flying again, and something is terribly wrong in Thad Beaumont's world.

The Dark Half

wild, as expected since the beginning. read it so fast, so incredible consuming and fascinating. stephen king has an amazing mind, one of a kind. 

Larissa Campos

"The dark half"

Stark

5 von 10 Punkten

Stark an sich, war ein interessanter Charakter, genau wie Alan. Aus Stark hat man aber so gut wie nicht gemacht. Gerne hätte ich gelesen, wie Thad darüber denkt, dass dieser Mann ein Teil von ihm sein soll. Für Stephen King hat dieses Buch große Bedeutung, da er hier Richard Bachmann beerdigt, dennoch hätte ich mir für ihn eine bessere Geschichte gewünscht, in der mich der Hauptcharakter mehr interessiert.

Justin Staack

Robin Furth

Peter David

Der Revolvermann

Der dunkle Turm

6 Punkte
Die Zusammenfassung von Glas fand ich zu kurz. Die zusätzlichen Geschichten um Arthur Eld sind gut gelungen und passen in die Welt von Roland.

Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, Book 6)

5 Punkte
Für mich wurde Susannah charakterlich zerstört. Es gibt keinen wirklichen Grund sich nicht gegen Mia aufzulehnen. Zu beginn weiß man schon, wie es endet. King versucht hier eine billige Ausrede nach der anderen zu benutzen. Ich bin schwer enttäuscht davon, zumal ich Susannah sehr mochte (zum Glück rehabilitiert sie sich größtenteils im letzten Band wieder, trotz ihrer letzten Szene).

Roman

Wolfsmond

Nach dem Tod des Mannes in Schwarz zieht Roland, der Revolvermann, auf der Suche nach dem dunklen Turm weiter durch die nachapokalyptische Welt, in der er blutige Spuren hinterlässt. Seine Zukunft ist ungewiss. Doch wie aus den Tarotkarten des Mannes in Schwarz zu ersehen war, werden ein Mann mit Namen äDer Gefangeneä, eine Frau namens äHerrin der Schattenä und eine dunkle Gestalt, die schlicht der Tod Rolands ist, eine Rolle darin spielen. - 2. Teil der Saga vom ädunklen Turmä und Fortsetzung von äSchwarzä.

Drei / aus dem Amerikan. von Joachim Körber

Gemeinsam mit seinen neuen Gefährten Eddie und Susannah setzt der Revolvermann Roland seine Suche nach dem mysteriösen Turm fort.

Tot / aus dem Amerikan. von Joachim Körber

Der Dunkle Turm

Schwarz

The next-to-last novel in Stephen King's seven-volume magnum opus, Song of Susannah is at once a book of revelation, a fascinating key to the unfolding mystery of the Dark Tower, and a fast-paced story of double-barreled suspense.

To give birth to her "chap," demon-mother Mia has usurped the body of Susannah Dean and used the power of Black Thirteen to transport to New York City in the summer of 1999. The city is strange to Susannah . . . and terrifying to the "daughter of none" who shares her body and mind.

Saving the Tower depends not only on rescuing Susannah but also on securing the vacant lot Calvin Tower owns before he loses it to the Sombra Corporation.

Enlisting the aid of Manni senders, the remaining ka-tet climbs to the Doorway Cave . . . and discovers that magic has its own mind. It falls to the boy, the billy bumbler, and the fallen priest to find Susannah-Mia, who in a struggle to cope -- with each other and with an alien environment -- "go todash" to Castle Discordia on the border of End-World. In that forsaken place, Mia reveals her origins, her purpose, and her fierce desire to mother whatever creature the two of them have carried to term.

Eddie and Roland, meanwhile, tumble into western Maine in the summer of 1977, a world that should be idyllic but isn't. For one thing, it is real, and the bullets are flying. For another, it is inhabited by the author of a novel called 'Salem's Lot, a writer who turns out to be as shocked by them as they are by him.

These are the simple vectors of a story rich in complexity and conflict. Its dual climaxes, one at the entrance to a deadly dining establishment and the other appended to the pages of a writer's journal, will leave readers gasping for the saga's final volume (which, Dear Reader, follows soon, say thankya). 
(from the flap)

Patrick Book

This book has the thickest pages I’ve ever seen in a mass market novel. It’s like they printed it on a collection of card stock or book of carpet samples. Just holding this book up for the amount of time it took to read 400 pages gave me carpal tunnel syndrome. I read for too long one night and the goddamn thing dislocated my thumb.

The final installment in the epic series completes the quest of Roland Deschain, who works to outmaneuver the increasingly desperate acts of his adversaries and confronts losses within his circle of companions.

The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower VII

It’s been such a long time coming it wasn’t likely to ever please anyone, but the last third felt extremely rushed a d the Red King section is dreadfully anticlimactic. But my sense of accomplishment is enormous!

From the Flap:

Roland Deschain and his ka-tet are bearing southeast through the forests of Mid-World, the almost timeless landscape that seems to stretch from the wreckage of civility that defined Roland's youth to the crimson chaos that seems the future's only promise. Readers of Stephen King's epic series know Roland well, or as well as this enigmatic hero can be known. They also know the companions who have been drawn to his quest for the DarkTower: Eddie Dean and his wife, Susannah; Jake Chambers, the boy who has come twice through the doorway of death into Roland's world; and Oy, the Billy-Bumbler.

In this long-awaited fifth novel in the saga, their path takes them to the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis, a tranquil valley community of farmers and ranchers on Mid-World's borderlands. Beyond the town, the rocky ground rises toward the hulking darkness of Thunderclap, the source of a terrible affliction that is slowly stealing the community's soul. One of the town's residents is Pere Callahan, a ruined priest who, like Susannah, Eddie, and Jake, passed through one of the portals that lead both into and out of Roland's world.

As Father Callahan tells the ka-tet the astonishing story of what happened following his shamed departure from Maine in 1977, his connection to the Dark Tower becomes clear, as does the danger facing a single red rose in a vacant lot off Second Avenue in midtown Manhattan. For Calla Bryn Sturgis, danger gathers in the east like a storm cloud. The Wolves of Thunderclap and their unspeakable depredation are coming. To resist them is to risk all, but these are odds the gunslingers are used to, and they can give the Calla-folken both courage and cunning. Their guns, however, will not be enough.

Wolves of the Calla

Maybe the most western one since the first one, in a fun way. But also backs into some potentially sketchy territory in the epilogue. But that’s a problem for another book!

Wizard and Glass

It’s so long and it’s kind of silly in small ways but it’s also surprisingly impactful and provides an extremely well-drawn story inside a story. The best of the series, I think.

With The Waste Lands, the third masterful novel in Stephen King's epic saga, The Dark Tower, we again enter the realm of the mightiest imagination of our time. King's hero, Roland, the Last Gunslinger, moves ever closer to the Dark Tower of his dreams and nightmares--as he crosses a desert of damnation in a macabre world that is a twisted mirror image of our own. With him are those he has drawn to this world, street-smart Eddie Dean and courageous wheelchair-bound Susannah. Ahead of him are mind-rending revelations about who he is and what is driving him. Against him is arrayed a swelling legion of fiendish foes both more and less than human. And as the pace of action and adventure, discovery and danger pulse-poundingly quickens, the reader is inescapably drawn into a breathtaking drama that is both hauntingly dreamlike...and eerily familiar. The Waste Lands is a triumph of storytelling sorcery--and further testament to Stephen King's novelistic mastery.
(back cover)

3.5 ⭐️. Despite its absurd length this series works so well as a continuous story, flowing so well from chapter to chapter while maintaining mood and tone. This one covers a lot of ground and maintains the tension and excitement of the previous chapter, but like it suffers from unnecessary repetition; if you’ve made it this far you’re in for the whole ride, we don’t need excessive reminders of what’s come before.

Since the publication of THE GUNSLINGER in an exclusive limited edition, this extraordinary novel has gained near-legendary renown. Now finally, this Plume edition, complete with the Michael Whelan illustrations, brings the work to the author's millions of fans.

This heroic fantasy is set in a world of ominous landscape and macabre menace that is a dark mirror of our own. A spellbinding tale of good versus evil, it features one of Stephen King’s most powerful creations—The Gunslinger, a haunting figure who embodies the qualities of the lone hero through the ages, from ancient myth to frontier western legend. His pursuit of The Man in Black, his liaison with the sexually ravenous Alice, his friendship with the kid from Earth called Jake, are part of a drama that is both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, an alchemy of storytelling sorcery.

Complete in itself, THE GUNSLINGER is the first novel in an epic series, THE DARK TOWER, that promises to be Stephen King's crowning achievement.
(back cover)

When I was around 10-12 years old I tried reading a few King books; my dad had literally all of them I think, and my sister seemed to like them. The big ones never really hit for me; I gravitated to the Bachman collection and this. It’s short, for one thing, which he too often isn’t, but it also offers enough story, background, and action to keep you hooked while also laying an incredible amount of mystery and groundwork for the endless goes to come in this series.

Matt Eaves

Horror illustrator Glenn Chadbourne offers an illustrated version of the poem Stephen King first wrote about the Dark Man in college after he envisioned a faceless man in cowboy boots, jeans, and a denim jacket, forever walking the roads.

The Dark Man

tori 👻

Randall Flagg is a really memorable character

Tobias V. Langhoff

Oh, Discordia. I finally got back to The Dark Tower after almost a year off, and I didn't care much for this entry. It's OK, I liked parts of it, I gave it three stars, but all the criticism from the previous book is doubly valid here.

The book is, as usual, needlessly verbose. There are entire plot points that are unnecessary. For example, why did Roland and Callahan need to go back to Cal Tower to get the deed? Why couldn't that have been taken care of the last time they saw him? It added nothing but bulk to the story.

The main plot of this book was not as engaging as the ones in the previous books, but that's not surprising. All the previous books have had one self-contained main plot in addition to the overarching journey towards the tower, and I'm one of those who liked them (even the extended flashback in book four), but I understand that in the penultimate book, the main plot needs to be a bit more of a cliffhanger that ties into the overarching plot. It just didn't grab me as much.

There are lots of great parts of this book too, though. Although King is very wordy and pulpy sometimes, he can also be poetic and literate, and this book had that sprinkled inbetween every chater. I also very much liked the short flashback to Odetta's past, and the small hints of lore from Discordia.

I didn't hate the controversial part where King himself appears in the book. I think it was handled just fine, perhaps even more tactfully than I had anticipated.

I've enjoyed this series, but not loved it, I think. This book was probably the weakest yet. I'm looking forward to the next and last one, and maybe looking forward to being done with the series, just a little.

Stephen King is so verbose. This book, and several of the others in the series (especially the second one), could probably be half the length if King for a change tried to show, not tell; to make things implicit instead of explicit; and to skip re-telling the readers what we already know just because some other character doesn’t yet. It’s just his writing style, I suppose, and I do like his style even though I often feel that he’s treating me like a roont.

Like the previous book in the series, this one also feels like a side story, although the main plot progresses a little more this time around. Our heroes depart from their journey to help a small village with a wolf problem, and there’s a new game of figurative Castles (Mid-World’s equivalent to chess); this time we see an adult Roland lay plans and execute them, and although now he’s decades (or centuries?) older and with a new ka-tet, this book is structured very similarly to the last one.

Also like in the previous book, although not to the same extent, a bulk of this book consists of a flashback. This time not to Roland’s past (although there is a short one from there too, where we finally learn more about Jericho Hill), but to Father Callahan’s life after the events of 'Salem's Lot, which (apart from being a good book) is pretty much required reading before you read this one, I’d say; it’s basically a prequel to a whole subplot here.

We get some more lore and glimpses of the ancient world that came before Roland’s Mid-World, which is the favorite part of the universe King is weaving here. Well, universes, obviously. We trot along on some interdimensional highways through different whens and wheres here as well, and get to visit good old New York again. Although it can sometimes be maddening how slowly the main plot of this series progresses, it does in a way make the malevolent forces more powerful when they’re revealed to slowly. We still don’t know who the Crimson King is, but his tendrils infiltrate our Wall Street too.

I also wish I’d read a few other books before this one (I thought I’d did my homework), although they’re not as required, as far as I can gather. The Low Men are mentioned pretty extensively in Callahan’s flashback, and they appear in several other stories that I think I have to pick up now before I read the next volume (along with a couple of other ones). I recently did some research on what Stephen King books to read in connection with The Dark Tower, wrote up this list, and am currently working through it. I’m especially glad I decided to do it this way, since near the end of this book, we start to delve into meta-fictional territories. It’ll be interesting to see how that works out.

Although I was anxious to see how George Guidall would fare as narrator (this is chronologically the first audiobook in the series not to be narrated by the great Frank Muller, who gets a heartfelt mention in the book’s afterword), I was pleasantly surprised. He does a great job and I needn’t have worried.

THE WASTE LANDS is the third volume in Stephen King's epic Dark Tower series. The Dark Tower is now a major motion picture starring Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba. In the third novel in Stephen King's epic fantasy masterpiece, Roland, the Last Gunslinger, is moving ever closer to the Dark Tower. Roland has altered ka by saving the life of Jake Chambers in New York. Now they exist in different worlds, paradoxically sharing memories. Roland, Susannah and Eddie must try to draw Jake into Mid-World then follow the Path of the Beam through an urban waste land to the Dark Tower. Pursued by the Ageless Stranger, Roland and his friends cross a desert of damnation in this macabre new world as revelations begin to unfold about who - and what - is driving him forward. JOIN THE QUEST FOR THE DARK TOWER... THE DARK TOWER SERIES: THE DARK TOWER I: THE GUNSLINGER THE DARK TOWER II: THE DRAWING OF THE THREE THE DARK TOWER III: THE WASTE LANDS THE DARK TOWER IV: WIZARD AND GLASS THE DARK TOWER V: WOLVES OF THE CALLA THE DARK TOWER VI: SONG OF SUSANNAH THE DARK TOWER VII: THE DARK TOWER THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE: A DARK TOWER NOVEL

(Volume 3)

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands

Now we’re talking. After the first book The Gunslinger (which is an un-King-like mythical and surreal western) set the stage for the series, and the second book The Drawing of the Three (which was far too long and meandering for my taste) introduced the main characters of the series, this third book finally advances the plot, which was timely.

I often feel that King’s books feel like they live their own life. They seldom seem completely planned from the beginning; plots unfold in a natural and sometimes surprising way, to both reader and, I assume, the author. (I haven’t read ON WRITING yet, so I don’t know if that’s true.) This is usually not problematic, but with certain books in the Dark Tower series it feels weird. The series is supposed to have evolved in King’s mind for decades, and the plot itself is presented as a prophetic and deterministic turning of the wheel of Ka. It doesn’t always feel that way. It’s hard to explain, but I can at least say that I think King had some issues with the pacing of these books.

The first book is impeccably paced, in my opinion (even if it has some other issues). The second book was way too long, and in many places boring. King has never been one for writing succintly; parts of the book, like in the previous one, feel too drawn out, but it’s better. Some pacing choices felt very odd to me, such as how Jake goes out on more than one wandering of the street to find his door, but later parts of the book insist that this is extremely important (the vacant lot he found on one trip), so I will trust King on this one. This book has more action scenes and is more exciting overall, at any rate. It even ends on a cliffhanger. This book heavily reminded of The Stand, in many ways: The plot, the pacing, the framing, Lud, and just the general feeling of the story.

We finally return in force to the post-apocalyptic science fiction undertones we gleamed somewhat in the underground passages of the first book. Learning more about the lost history of the world is the main thing that makes me want to read on. More lore is hinted at concerning the Tower as well, of course, but it’s still kept firmly in the mythical backdrop.

I partly listened to this book as an audiobook (The Waste Lands), like I did with the previous one. When reading the last book I didn’t immediately love all of Frank Muller's delivery, but since then I've listened to his fantastic rendition of Moby Dick, and now he’s my favorite audiobook narrator. (An interesting piece of trivia: In this book, a class mate of Jake who's only mentioned once in passing is called Nathaniel Hawthorne, which is also the name of an author from Salem whom Moby Dick was dedicated to! Ka. King has read Moby Dick; he talks about it in the preface to 'Salem's Lot.)

I don’t know what I’ll do after I’ve read the next book, Wizard and Glass, which was his last Dark Tower audiobook before he sustained a tragic head injury. (I recently discovered that he actually did a recording of the original version of The Gunslinger, before it was revised after his accident. I plan to acquire it and read it at some point.)

At any rate, Muller gets a lot more to work with in this book. He’s really hit his stride with the voices of Roland, Eddie and Oy especially, and Susannah and Jake are fine too. He voices the numerous old people appearing in this book very well, and King’s written dialects come over nicely. My favorite voice of his here, though, is Blaine. The staccato, milky smooth delivery is perfectly unsettling.

All in all the strongest entry in the series so far. Probably a 4.5. I’ll start on the next (and final one with Muller) right away.

As I read this book I also stumbled upon The Dark Tower Music Project. First of all, as a young babby who never listened to ZZ Top, 
  Lud: The God Drums
 was useful for me. Secondly, the track 
  Blaine
 is simply fantastic progressive rock inspired by my favorite character in this book.

The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, Book 1)

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