The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger

In The Gunslinger, Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger.  He is a haunting figure, a loner, on a spellbinding journey into good and evil, in a desolate world which frighteningly echoes our own.
  In hi first step towards the powerful and mysterious Dark Tower, Roland encounters an alluring woman named Alice, begins a friendship with Jake, a kid from New York, and faces an agonising choice between damnation and salvation as he pursues the Man in Black.


I had heard great things about The Dark Tower series, and I have liked previous books from Stephen King (even if I didn't realise it until 20 chapters in) so I thought, why not?  I had been meaning to order the first book of the series, The Gunslinger, for a while and about four Saturdays back it just happened to be waiting for me on the Science Fiction shelf in the library.

  Now, I don't know if this was because I'd been having a funny week and couldn't concentrate but I could not latch on to this book mentally.  I enjoyed the introduction and foreword by King, I think he has such a clear voice when he is talking about his work, but then when I got to the actual story I had no clue what was going on.  This usually happens with me and new books, so I was expecting to start retaining some information about a third of the way in but this never happened.  I finished the last few pages last night and I don't think I could tell you what happened apart from that Roland had a conversation with the Man in Black.

I'm not giving up on my attempt to read this series, but, I'm not in a rush to order or read the next instalment.  However, if like this one, it magically appears on the library shelf in the new year, then I'm most probably going to check it out and see if it was a first book fluke or if I really do have a problem with rambling fantasies.