Rereading Stephen King week 13: The Gunslinger

The first book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series is strange, scary and utterly gripping – the perfect start to an unforgettable journey

Warning: spoiler alert

Hindsight is everything. I first picked up book one of the Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger, when I was in the deepest throes of my teenage King addiction. I had read a lot of his books by this point (around 1995) and was ploughing through them. I came to The Eyes of the Dragon, a book that looked different from the others on the shelf, read it … and hated it. Hated it with every part of my horror-loving self. I knew what I wanted from Stephen King. I wanted the horror. I wanted the science fiction. I wanted the weird darkness in the hearts of normal people. The Gunslinger was, I knew, part of a longer-running story; it was also a fantasy novel, as The Eyes of the Dragon was. It was, I decided, after 20 pages of weird-speak and dusty places and a man called Roland, not for me. That's fine, I thought, not every book has to be for me. But I wasn't alone. It seemed they weren't King's most popular books. I moved on.

In 2003, I realised that I was an idiot. A friend, a huge King fan, noticed the gap in my collection. He told me I was insane. I hadn't read The Dark Tower? King's magnum opus? We were heading towards the end of the series, with Book V (Wolves of the Calla) about to be published, and I was behind. I was going on holiday for a week to sunnier climes, and decided to take the first four books with me.

Day one of the holiday, I put my back out. Seriously. I'm not an old man, just a criminally unfit one. I jumped into a freezing cold swimming pool and pulled a muscle – or rather, the muscle, the one that helps you, you know, move. I spent three days on a sofa, and began reading The Gunslinger on day one. I finished book four, Wizard and Glass, three days later. I was totally embroiled. It was like nothing I'd ever read. It was funny and dark and scary and nasty and really, really strange. Somewhere between high and (so-called) low art; literary metafiction meets SF/fantasy/western pulp. But most importantly, how had I lived without it? The first line – "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed" – is so perfect. How had I not wanted to read the whole thing? What did the teenage me get so wrong?

Now I understand. The Gunslinger is a quiet, meditative novel; as inauspicious a way to start a sprawling epic fantasy series as I've ever encountered. In Roland Deschain, the titular Gunslinger, there's a superb, violent, powerful and thoughtful protagonist – Clint Eastwood's guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds