After what seems like forever, I have finally finished The Gunslinger. Kevin put me onto the book shortly after I finished The Fall of Reach. Wow, almost three full months to finish a 231-page book. That’s just sad, considering the big print and large margins of each page.
This is my first novel by Steven King, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I intend on completing this series, so my next purchase will be The Drawing of the Three. I chose not to continue with the Halo series because I’ve been told that the second novel is very weak.
While reading this book, I found myself gripped by every story the gunslinger told about his past, but was bored to tears with the details of his quest for the man in black. I eagerly awaited the next story he would tell to whomever would listen, be it a lonely farmer in a corn field or a boy stranded in the middle of the desert. Every story he told recollecting his past built up the character of the gunslinger and endeared me to him. However, if he spoke about the devil grass that grew in the desert one more time, I would have tossed the book out of the window of the bus that I take to work and back.
I didn’t harass Nadia with one single detail of the story.
I didn’t even know he was interested in SK books. I knew he liked some of the movies, but I guess when you have as much time on the bus as he does, you should be able to read a couple.
I’ll wait for the movie…
(I just learned of a horrible but with this site when filling out comments. I have to fix it this weekend.)
Whoever writes is screenplays does a terrible job of writing the ending. Pretty much all of his movies start well and are strong throughout, only to fall apart at the end. Three that don’t exbhibit this problem are Stand By Me, Storm Of The Century and Thinner. Look at Langoliers if you want to see a poorly-written slapped-together ending.
Dude…if you liked his backstory, you are going to LOVE the living f**k out of Book 4, “Wizard and Glass.” If you want to geek out hard-core about the Gunslinger some time, just let me know. The graphic novel is coming out this fall, I think. Book 2 is much faster-paced, and Book 3 is even faster. 5 slows down quite a bit, 6 picks back up at nearly break-neck speed, and 7 is just….wow. I cried (out loud) *twice* while reading 7, for what that’s worth.
I think King comes up with much better characters and stories than his writing abilities allow him to fully realize. For me, his writing embodies the “one’s reach must exceed one’s grasp” ethos. Yeah, I’m a dork.
Oh, one more thing – the endings isn’t entirely the fault of the screenwriters. While the Dark Tower series is almost nothing like King’s other work, it (sadly) suffers from the same problem that all of his work (IMHO) has: namely, you’ll find yourself about 50 pages away from the end of a book, thinking “wow, there’s no way he could possibly wrap this all up in any satisfactory manner in the remaining pages….” – and he doesn’t. Many people think that his answer to that problem as a writer was to use an entire book to close out the series.