This might be the first Stephen King book that I finished (disregarding some short stories and his On Writing) and didn't abandon midway, but to be fair before this I had picked up IT and The Shinning and I have been around the stephen king fan discussions long enough to get almost every major event spoiled one way or another so i had little incentive to finish those.
The Gunslinger, on the other hand, haply wasn't spoiled for me, I had little idea getting into this one. It was a pleasant surprise how sober this book was as a King work. I finished it over a span of three months or so. I was reading it really slow.
The book has a good sense of being in a larger world. What i mean is, at no point are we given explanations for a lot of things that would be very common to the gunslinger and thus the narrative wouldn't have a reason to explain it to us. Ka, the mystics of the world, spirits, and whatnot, everything is being built piece by piece. And this putting pieces of the puzzle might have been the reason i never got bored reading them camp so many times. And god the gunslinger camped a lot, not that that's a problem, the journey was long and it was natural, though i was surprised how many times the camping took place. A lot of literature don't dwell on the regular rests so much, so it was just something that stuck out to me, not in a bad way. But then, the narrative was its best while camping too.
The Tull event was cool too and tragic, but when is tragedy not following Roland. I was also really intrigued by the man Roland comes across in the desert.
(Spoiler)
For most of the book I had in mind Roland's image as: he struggles as thinking himself as the righteous man but surely he's the kind of guy who would still choose the right thing when time comes, no? No, haha. The moment at the end of the tunnel where he lets Jake fall is when i realized that despite the number three already being hinted at, i had been hoping against it. It was sad he went that way, though it makes for a really interesting character study hereafter.
I have started the second book in The Dark Tower series too, let's see if i stick to the end.
All in all, I liked the book very much, especially its western setting, and it seems like the kind of book i would reread once i am old and on a vacation.
