Review: "The Gunslinger," by Stephen King

The Gunslinger certainly does not rank highly on my list of King novels. To better understand why I didn't enjoy this book, I had to do a bit of research on the history of the first of the Dark Tower novels. This helped shed some light on why I didn't enjoy this read very much. Brief history lesson on the first Dark Tower novel, The Gunslinger: -It took Stephen King 12.5 years to write (beginning in 1970), being published first in parts, and then eventually published as a book -The novel wasn't a novel to begin with, it was published as 5 short stories in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (the first part was published in 1978 and the final part was published in 1981) -The novel was printed in limited edition originally, in 1982, and was only introduced to a wider audience after requests from fans for more information on the then out-of-print book This explains a few things for me. First, it explains why the story was so disjointed and all over the damn place. Half the time I didn't really follow, and I had a hard time figuring out which period of time Roland was in. But, I suppose this makes sense, given that the novel was published in parts. It reads like a serialisation turned novel, but it's like they forgot to go and edit the book before sending it out. There were inconsistencies and a lack of pacing that should have been ironed out. Second, the writing isn't very King-like. What I mean is that I found myself constantly asking if King really wrote this book. There were dozens of poorly used adverbs (and keep in mind, I read the revised novel, which had been edited to eliminate a lot of these adverbs), and the sentences were just not fluid and sexy like King's writing usually is. There were, at odd times, beautifully written passages, but it felt as though they'd been plunked down into the story; it was like King had written these passages ahead of time, thought they were amazing, and looked for somewhere, anywhere to put them in the book, because they were so damn well written. The cynical side of me wondered if someone else wrote the book and King slapped his name on it so it would sell. Third, I was exhausted after reading this book. It's only a couple hundred pages - short by any means, for King - and yet I struggled to slog through the pages. I think it was because I had to do a lot of work to figure out what was going on with the plot. It jumps a lot, and for seemingly no purpose at all. There are a lot of things introduced in this book without any lead up or explanation, so you find yourself doubling back and trying to figure out how you got here. King has said in interviews that he didn't do much, if any, plotting for the series, and this first novel makes that very apparent. It seems he had some cool ideas and concepts, tossed them into the first novel as a challenge, and then said, 'let's see what I can make of it!' There was, however, enough ambiguity that I'm interested to see how the story continues to unfold. That's perhaps the one good thing this book had going for it. I have heard the books get better as the tale goes on. And given that I'm in love with King's books, I'll more than likely read them at some point. Onward, to the next King adventure, but the Dark Tower series may take a back seat for the time being.