Remember my promise a year ago to do one of these per week? No? Well, maybe I didn't make it back then (or I did and just let it slide for so long that everyone, including me, has forgotten about it by now), but I'm making it now: every week, there will be one Writing Tip and one Penny Review posted here for your reading pleasure (or displeasure - I don't want to assume the best, after all; I'm an optimist, but a realistic one).
So anyway, on with the show!
Image courtesy of http://www.thebookdorks.com/?p=2669
An enigmatic stranger relentlessly pursuing his enemy across the desert, and beyond. A wasteland of horrors, and an innocent doomed boy caught up in the crossfire. The start of what, by all accounts and feedback, is going to be an epic quest to define epic quests. So begins "The Dark Tower" series by Stephen King.
This series is one that I've heard about since before I even knew the name Stephen King and before I was reading anything more intense than The Goosebumps books. One thing I never heard about however was just how tough it would be to genuinely enjoy it at the start. How does this first book stack up against all of the rave reviews of the series as a whole? Let's do this thing, and find out.
Who's the Hero: Rolland, a.k.a. the last gunslinger - a man of indeterminate age and questionable moral fibre who is out for revenge against the so-called "man in black" and to find the place known only as The Dark Tower.
What's the Story: From the novel's outset, Rolland is pursuing the man in black across a land apparently left crumbling in the wake of the downfall of a civilization (which we only really come to know through various lengthy flashbacks). He is barely surviving as he goes, but Rolland is blindly determined to catch and kill his foe for reasons of revenge (which are gradually revealed to the reader through those steady helpings of flashbacks). Eventually, Rolland comes across Jake, a young boy who has seemingly been leap-frogged to Rolland's world from a different dimension by the man in black, for reasons that are at first unclear. As the gunslinger and the boy travel together, the gunslinger's desire to protect him grows, leaving him eventually vulnerable to the man in black using Jake against him, with dire consequences. Because when all is said and done, The Dark Tower is the only thing that truly matters to the Last Gunslinger; everything else can be forfeit.
How's the Aftertaste: I'll admit that I am a latecomer to Stephen King, and as of yet have only read a small portion of his impressive body of work. In this, I've mostly read things from his mid-career onward. This being said... reading The Gunslinger left me, by and large, torn as to whether I loved it or I wanted to charbroil the thing and wash my hands of Rolland et all. Don't get me wrong, the writing and story hold all the hallmark talent of Stephen King, just... very clearly at a much earlier stage of that talent. There were parts where I couldn't stop reading, where I just had to know what would happen next; King has apparently always had that incredible knack in him. Other parts though... *gah*... the book was so bogged down by bloated, unnecessarily and excessively literary description and metaphor that it took me weeks of ignoring the book before I could bring myself to get back to it and slog on through to get to the other side. And by the end, there was a roughly five page existential rant that I ended up just skimming over, almost from start to finish. And I NEVER skim; it was just that painful, and I was just done. But at the root of it all... I still feel the need to know more, to see what comes of Rolland and the warnings of the man in black, and to find out, like Rolland, what The Dark Tower truly is...
...Damnit, Stephen King is good at what he does.
It also helps that in the revised and expanded edition, which I read (and which is pictured above), King wrote in a new introduction where he actually apologizes for the pompous and convoluted bits, explains he did his best to polish it up to be less painful, and begs a bit of our indulgence to hang on through this first book, since the rest of the series improves on this first outing on a steep curve.
So The Verdict Is...
~I'll hang on with you there, Mr. King. I'm trusting you!~
I know, I know - just three pennies for a Stephen King novel? Shame on me. But I'm holding firm to it; that book was great at its best, but its worst was no friggin' picnic.
Anyway, cheers to our second official review! And more to come next week :) stay tuned.
~\\//~
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