Book Review: The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I by Stephen King

Title: The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I
Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Signet
ISBN: 978-0451210845
Genre: Fantasy Fiction
Pages: 336
Source: Personal Copy
Rating: 5/5

I had heard a lot of The Dark Tower series when I first start reading them a couple of years ago. I don’t know what made me get back to it after finishing the sixth installment in the series. It is the book I guess that chooses the reader – the first time and again, that is a belief I can live with. I reread the book for a reason – at some level I wanted to search myself, to seek answers and though I didn’t end up finding any, the reread was fantastic.

Stephen King is a master of what he chooses to write, horror being his forte. He can also write just about anything –be it the emotional churn in “The Green Mile” or short stories of a different kind in “Everything’s Eventual”, he does it with ease and exactness and maybe that’s why we love him for what he does.

“The Gunslinger” has been one of my favourite novels of all time. It was inspired by a poem, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” by Robert Browning. The five parts of the novel were published in parts in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I am surprised that no one lapped it initially.

The book tells the story of the Gunslinger, Roland of Gilead and his quest to catch the man in the black – first of his many quests to get to The Dark Tower. It is about his journey into the Old World, almost like a parallel universe, similar to the Old West. Roland exists in a place where time has moved on and he is continuing his journey to meet the man in black. Along the way, as he travels across the desert and then the snow-capped mountains he meets a variety of characters – Jake Chambers, the boy who died in his own universe (similar to ours) and sets out with him on the journey, Brown the farmer and Zoltan his crow, the oracle who tells him about the future to come and of course ultimately the man in black, who shares some more secrets of the universe.

The book is confusing in most places; however those get taken care of when you read more of the series, which you have to for the answers to unravel themselves. King has written a cracker of a series beginning with The Gunslinger, which he took twelve years to write. The Gunslinger is a must read for all fantasy lovers. He blends philosophy and the bigger questions of life with great ease into this one. A great read.

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Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Is the King of the Crypt toying with us with the title FULL DARK, NO STARS? There is no denying that each of these four short, chilling stories plumbs the depths of darkness of the human condition, but each also shines in its own macabre radiance as four mere humans struggle with events that forever alter the course of their lives. This is not a book to lull you to sleep, unless you enjoy double-checking the locks and looking under the bed before you turn in.

In “1922″ Wisconsin farmer Wilfred James takes matters into his own hands when his wife decides to sell off the portion of their land left to her by her father. She plans to accept the generous offer for the 100-acre parcel from a hog processing plant and move to town, with or without Wilfred. He loves farming and foresees the hog business bringing with it putrid odors, noise and ruination of his property value. Leave she does, but not without a chilling assist from her husband, who entices their teenage son to help in her murder and the cover-up of the crime. The longest and most gruesome of the four stories, “1922″ describes the real and imagined horrors that visit the murderous husband as his life and that of his son gradually unravel. The story of Wilf’s journey into madness finds Stephen King at the height of his writing prowess.

“Big Driver” introduces us to Tess, a writer of cozy mysteries popular with women’s book clubs. Her readers aren’t fond of the “ooky” parts of mysteries, but when she narrowly escapes death at the hands of a serial rapist and murderer on a lonely stretch of road, she is faced with plotting and carrying out her own form of criminal justice. The real-life solution she creates out of her fertile writer’s imagination is deliciously satisfying as the self-sufficient young woman grapples with how to make sure he doesn’t kill again.

At a mere 34 pages, “Fair Extension” is perhaps the darkest and most thought-provoking tale of this extraordinary literary quartet. Dave Streeter, a successful, middle-aged family man, finds himself suddenly confronted by his own mortality by a virulent cancer. Feeling ill, he pulls off the road for a moment and notices a modest roadside vendor’s booth. Curious, he strikes up a conversation with the odd little man who says he gives people what they want through a fair exchange. The man learns of Streeter’s plight and offers restoration of his health with a 30-day, money-back guarantee if he’s not satisfied. The fair exchange that is required is that Streeter must consciously select a person he dislikes who will be on the receiving end of the trade. “Fair Exchange” is a classic tale of good versus evil, a subject that has been thoroughly explored in some of King’s most famous novels. The brevity with which he treats the subject snaps today’s world into sharp focus. Just how far-reaching and pervasive are the consequences of greed in the pursuit of personal gain?

The last entry is “A Good Marriage.” Darcy Anderson discovers that sometimes it doesn’t pay to be too tidy or too curious. Her entirely happy, if somewhat humdrum, world comes crashing down when she stubs her toe on something beneath her husband’s workbench. In a modern-day tale of Pandora’s Box, Darcy will find herself visited with knowledge best left unknown. Her solution, like that of Tess the mystery writer, is startling and darkly satisfying.

King steers clear of the supernatural this time out, depending on how the reader sees the little man in “Fair Exchange.” He offers the idea that there is the potential in each of us to kill, not only in immediate self-defense, but with diabolical cunning, if the situation warrants. He writes in his self-revealing afterword that each of the disturbing tales was constructed from real-life scenarios. Too often, he feels that the “whys” — the reasons people do the things they do that appear in the headlines — are not explored by the law or in the media. In FULL DARK, NO STARS, he explores these reasons through the eyes of otherwise ordinary people.

Here they are, through a glass darkly.

Here is also a great book trailer from Hodder and Stoughton:

Full Dark, No Stars; King, Stephen; Hodder and Stoughton; Hachette India; Rs. 850