Book Review: The Gunslinger

For one of my book clubs this week we chose The Gunslinger, by Stephen King. Friends of mine from Junior High (when I went through my first Stephen King mania) will remember me going on and on about how cool this book was, even though it was sort of a western. Friends from five years ago (when I read The Dark Tower series as well as all connected books over the course of a year) will recall me going on and on about the mythic feel of the book and the impressive structure of the story - for instance the fact that the first part of the first story in The Gunslinger is actually told backwards; While chasing the man in black across the desert, Roland recalls his last meeting with another person, and while there he discussed his actions in his last town, etc.

But today I'm just going to talk about how much I love this book.

First of all - until I saw Firefly years later, this was the first time I can remember a cross-genre book wherein one of the genres was a western.

Secondly, the mythic and dream-like qualities of the book are pretty amazing, the world inhabited by the gunslinger has modern day (well, 1981) references, high tech machinery (and robots if you read the 2003 revision), as well as a connection to King Arthur and Merlin.

Finally, This bizarre fantasy/Horror/SF/Western series is so good I got my SF loving BFF Mike to read it and he really liked it!