The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King

In The Gunslinger (originally published in 1982), King introduces his most enigmatic hero, Roland Deschain of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting, solitary figure at first, on a mysterious quest through a desolate world that eerily mirrors our own. Pursuing the man in black, an evil being who can bring the dead back to life, Roland is a good man who seems to leave nothing but death in his wake.
This new edition of The Gunslinger has been revised and expanded throughout by King, with new story material, in addition to a new introduction and foreword.

I struggle to review this book, because A) It's pretty odd and B) See below.

The main story takes place in something similar to the old wild West, but in an alternate space of time or maybe parallel universe. "The world has moved on." We hear several flashbacks throughout the main story.

From Wikipedia: The Gunslinger is a novel by American author Stephen King, and is the first volume in the Dark Tower series, which King considers to be his magnum opus. Initially a fix-up novel that strung together five short stories published between 1978 and 1981, it was first published in book form in 1982.

That last sentence there explains a lot. You see I listened to this as an audiobook and while on the road I don't pay attention to CD numbers, I just take the next in the line. Usually this works out fine as most audiobooks start out telling you which CD you're listening too (or the plot makes no sense if you skip a CD). This audiobook doesn't tell you which CD you've just popped into the player. And the plot worked just fine with all it's skipping about anyhow.

TL;DR? - I skipped CD 5 and heard CD 6 and with it, the ending of the book. I then realised what had happened and went back to listen to CD 5. Oops. After finishing CD 6 and listening to CD 5 for some 15 minutes before my journey ended for the day I cheated and went to wikipedia to read a summary of the book and try and make sense of the book in general. You see, I understand it well enough, but... it's just weird. I'll be blunt and say it's probably not for me. Stephen King is a magnificent writer, but this just never really touched me. That said though, I might still be curious enough to maybe read the next book, if nothing else just to see if where that takes the story.

	The Gunslinger The Dark Tower #1 ISBN13: 9780142800379 Audiobook, approx. 6 hours / first published in 1982
	Review by Iben Jakobsen, BoB, 2014