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The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982)

Before reading: Well well well, here we are at the beginning of the Dark Tower series. I have not been looking forward to this day. I enjoy reading Stephen King because he is the king of horror. I've always seen the DT books as being glorified Westerns. In all honestly that does not sound appealing to me in the least bit. I am, however, going into this with an open mind. Stephen King has proven to me before that just because I don't think I'm going to like a book of his doesn't necessarily mean that is what will happen. While I might not be too excited about the genre, I love King's writing style. He is, at his core, a really great author. So I am hopeful that I will end up enjoying this book as well as the many sequels that come after it. Rather, I better enjoy this book because there are many sequels that come after. I also know that this is a very well-loved series. It must be for a reason. Okay, less talking and more reading. Here we go. Yee-haw? Is it even a Western or did I just make that up?

Sidenote: Ala The Stand, Stephen King went back and revised and added to the original Gunslinger and that is the version I am reading. 

After reading: I just finished and I'm processing. I had no idea it was ending, there were still a lot of pages left but it ended up just being a preview for a different book. Thank God it's a series cause I am at a loss over how it just...ended. Of course I ended up really enjoying this book. King's writing is just so good. We've already gotten a few different genres from him so far and I know he dabbles in a few more along the way, as well. I've never read any books like this before but I imagine it being similar to Game of Thrones. I never envisioned myself liking that genre of books but now I might just have to read more of them in thirty years after I finish reading all of King's books. The book was really short and my notes were more just comments that I was making so I think I'm just going to try and process what I just read and let my thoughts flow. 

I spent most of the story just frustrated that it wasn't clear what universe/realm this was set in and when it was or where it was. This is obviously a huge part of the story but it was driving me crazy not knowing. I definitely want to hop on reddit and just read all the information I can about the Dark Tower universe but since there are so many sequels I'll probably have to wait to do that to avoid any spoilers. I am DYING to delve deep into its lore and look forward to doing that. One thing that is a little irritating to me is the knowledge I have about the movie version that came out in 2017. While I haven't seen it, I know that a lot of people didn't like it but I also know that Matthew McConaughey plays Randall Flagg. Now, Randall Flagg is from The Stand. Not once in this book did it say that The Man in Black was Randall Flagg. See where I'm going here? I spent the entire book trying to piece it together with The Stand and figure all of that out. I'm not sure if that is something that we learn later and the movie combined some of the books together or if they just took a giant creative liberty and mashed two characters together. Not sure what happened there but I wish I hadn't known that about the movie. 

Reading this in 2022 and being a MCU fan was really fun. The MCU is currently playing with multiverses and TDT definitely gives off those vibes. We don't exactly know what is going on yet but we know enough and it was interesting to compare that with what we have going on in pop culture at the moment. The Man in Black gave me strong Dr. Strange vibes and I'm hopeful that one day there will be a Stephen King/Marvel crossover and we can see the two of them battle it out. Some other similarities that I noted were between this and The Running Man. It is possible that King had just come off of writing TRM and was still in that mindset but there were a lot of similarities in the language between the two. Specifically calling people "maggot" way too many times. Another similarity was with Under the Dome. When we find out what's happening at the end it is almost the exact same scenario that we find out at the end of Under the Dome. That being said, when we finally kind of learn what the heck is going on...mind=blown. 

So, yeah, I know this is gonna be a huge shock but....I really enjoyed the book and recommend reading it. Actually...I'm going to hold off on recommending you read it. This is a series with 8 books so I'll wait to recommend it until I've finished them all. There's no way you can read this one without continuing on to the next (total cliffhanger!) and I wouldn't want to put you through 8 books if it wasn't worth it. I have nine more books to read before getting to the next in the series and I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS so hopefully I am able to read it sometime in the near future. 

Up next is several stories in one...Different Seasons!



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