“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
I have never read any of Stephen King’s non-horror works, like the Dark Tower series. I’m not sure what made me pick up the first book of the series, The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger, but I did enjoy it, as confused as I was half the time.
The book follows Roland, also known as the Gunslinger. The story starts in media res, without any context or background, just the present moment. The Gunslinger is chasing the mysterious, otherworldly man in black. The man in black has supernatural powers, a mocking, dangerous character who is a minion of a figure who rules the ominous Dark Tower. Roland’s quest involves reaching the Dark Tower, but the nature of what will greet him there is unknown and never fully explained.
The Gunslinger is a strange sort of character. On one hand, there is a sense that he is heroic in some way. But he is also death incarnate like the man in black, as he makes his way across the land, murdering and sacrificing people along the way. He has a flat affect, but is occasionally moved by love. He privately considers himself a romantic, hearkening from a land where he was trained as a young boy to be a gunslinger like his father. He is stoic yet driven.
The place and time is mysterious as well. It seems to be a quasi-apocalyptic world set in the future (possible future America), but there is also time-traveling. The books feels like mythic fantasy, but much darker and more obscure. King makes reference to many characters and memories in The Gunslinger, but does not explain everything by the end of book (obviously setting up the series).
The Gunslinger is a book about a pilgrimage to a god-like force, something that seemingly needs to be vanquished, but whose meaning and presence is mostly unexplained. At the end of the book, Roland catches up to the Man in Black, who converses with him about the nature of the universe, the power of the Dark Tower, and the gunslinger’s own fate.
While this work was very different from other works I’ve read of King’s, I did like it. It certainly sets up enough mystery and awe to want to continue the series.