Roland of Galead is the last of the Gunslingers. The Gunslinger is a master of pistol shooting and learns the art from a
young age. Roland and his mate Cuthbert are under the tutelage of Cort a barbarous thug who teaches these boys through punishment and harassment. Roland reflects on his days as a student and how he had to challenge his mentor for the right to graduate and earn his guns.
Roland now
pursues The Man in Black. He travels through a land that is alien to him and meets people that have been twisted by the power of his quarry. Roland pursues the Man in Black to find the answer to the quintessential question: Where is the Dark Tower?
Over his journey he meets a lady then kills her, he meets and
young boy called Jake from another world; he kills him too (or in fact lets him die, but hey what’s the difference?) Roland is selfish and although he tugs on our love of strong heroic characters he is also a mean, self-centred brute.
The Gunslinger is a tight and well-written short novel of just over 200 pages. Unfortunately it is the only book in the Dark Tower series that can really claim that. The second instalment, The Drawing of the Three, is full of rhetoric, sermonizing and philosophising by one that is becoming a tired writer. Often the reader will think that the world moves on, but Stephen King refuses to.