The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King


I struggle to review this book, because A) It's pretty odd and B) See below.

The main story takes place in something similar to the old wild West, but in an alternate space of time or maybe parallel universe. "The world has moved on." We hear several flashbacks throughout the main story.

From Wikipedia: The Gunslinger is a novel by American author Stephen King, and is the first volume in the Dark Tower series, which King considers to be his magnum opus. Initially a fix-up novel that strung together five short stories published between 1978 and 1981, it was first published in book form in 1982.

That last sentence there explains a lot. You see I listened to this as an audiobook and while on the road I don't pay attention to CD numbers, I just take the next in the line. Usually this works out fine as most audiobooks start out telling you which CD you're listening too (or the plot makes no sense if you skip a CD). This audiobook doesn't tell you which CD you've just popped into the player. And the plot worked just fine with all it's skipping about anyhow.

TL;DR? - I skipped CD 5 and heard CD 6 and with it, the ending of the book. I then realised what had happened and went back to listen to CD 5. Oops. After finishing CD 6 and listening to CD 5 for some 15 minutes before my journey ended for the day I cheated and went to wikipedia to read a summary of the book and try and make sense of the book in general. You see, I understand it well enough, but... it's just weird. I'll be blunt and say it's probably not for me. Stephen King is a magnificent writer, but this just never really touched me. That said though, I might still be curious enough to maybe read the next book, if nothing else just to see if where that takes the story.

The Gunslinger
The Dark Tower #1
ISBN13: 9780142800379
Audiobook, approx. 6 hours / first published in 1982

Review by Iben Jakobsen, BoB, 2014


  1. Læs den næste bog!
    Den første bog ER lidt underlig - den følelse sad jeg også selv med. Men det er jo fordi, den oprindeligt ikke helt var tænkt som starten på en serie. 2'eren er rigtig god, og der får man virkelig serie-stemningen! Det er en FANTASTISK serie, du skal bare i gang med den!

    1. Det er jeg rigtig glad for du fortæller, har virkelig spekuleret meget på om serien er værd at bruge mere tid på :)


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