The Gunslinger, Stephen King

I think I remember reading this book a long time ago. The title is familiar. But that's it. Maybe I read Amazon.com. This is just the first of eight in a series. So, that means to go from point a to point z courtesy of Amazon, you're looking at about $80. Mass market paperback, on the other hand, will set you back by about $0.51. It might cost the environment a few more kg in CO2, but that's not his or his publisher's nightmare, is it? I guess it was something else. Unfortunately, the only way to get this book for free or at a reasonable price is to either a) get lucky and borrow it, b) someone throws it away and you take it, c) steal it from friend, stranger, or foe, or d) buy it second hand from a second hand bookstore. Why there is a premium on an old book going through Amazon is beyond me. For $10.46 you can get your Kindle version.

I am reading not the original version, but the version that has been revised since the completion of the octology. The changes, he mentions in the introduction that he wanted to do an epic series. This is his opus magnum.

Stephen King is a master of narrative. No sane mind, and probably no insane mind, would dispute this opinion having read his books. He really owns his genre.

His similes and metaphors are frequent, and occasionally real gems. "A gunslinger knows pride, that invisible bone that keeps the neck stiff." There are several other gems that I really liked. Other times a few of the metaphors seem forced. I didn't record those instances and I'm not going to dig for them. So, my impression could be wrong and maybe I was just in 'a mood'.

The story is that the gunslinger, named Roland Deschain, is out for revenge against "The Man in Black," I think because of something the man did to his mother a decade or two earlier. His own father had been a gunslinger. He is said to be not as fast or as smart as the other gunslinger students, but his teacher, Cort, tells him that he's the best student he's had in a long time. He is described as slow and deliberate. 

From izquotes.com

Eventually he does track down the man in black. Or, perhaps it can be more accurate to say that the man in black leads him to this final destination. Along the way he runs into a small village where he is set upon by a witch and all those who are under her spell. In all there are some 70 men, women, and children, who all try to kill the gunslinger. But he kills them all. In the pages of killing, I like this line: 

She was large and fat and known to the patrons of Sheb's as Aunt Mill. The gunslinger blew her backwards and she landed in a whorish sprawl, her skirt rucked up between her thighs.

I am surprised, however, to see runon sentences in his book. The one above is not the only one I spotted. Great descriptions, but always surprised to see stuff like that considering he was an English university grad, school teacher, and has an editor to ferret out such things.

After he's done killing the congregation of the witch,

They trailed in a twisting, zigzagging path from the back door of the barber shop to where he stood.

There is even a lovely illustration of the bodies lying in zigzag formation.

Eventually he does get to the man in black. He wakes up ten years older in the mountains after his conversation with the man, or palaver as King likes to put it, and the man in black is a skeleton. How this comes to pass or why is unknown. It is here that King leaves off volume one of eight in The Dark Tower series.