The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Hi! So you are still here! I admire your patience. Once again work has taken over my life. Our exams last term are followed by a mere two weeks of teaching this term before the next round of final exams start. In other words, I am cramming in the last of the syllabus, trying to revise complicated areas, prepare the kids for the final exams AND still set exam papers. Oh, and have I mentioned meetings. I seem to do nothing but attend meetings if I am not prepping lessons or setting papers. Life. I have it not. On the good note, because life has been so demanding, I have been reading quite a bit. So, how can you find time to read and not find time to update your blog, I hear you ask. Well, I read in bed - I don't compute in bed. When I wake up in the middle of the night (which is actually 3am for me) because my brain has decided to panic about how much I need to get through, I read to put myself to sleep. The last thing I want to do is have heavy thoughts, or at least thoughts which need to come across coherently and preferably grammatically. Apologies. If I do manage to do reviews for all that I have read in the past three months, I should have made up some of your waiting up to you. But look at me here, wasting time again with excuses and apologies.

I have heard about 'The Dark Tower' series for years. I think the first person who mentioned it was my brother's ex-girlfriend, and considering he and his wife have been together for 10 years now, I can honestly say it has been a while. Since then my brother's wife has read the series, my writing friend has read the series, and a colleague has read the series. So I was quite confident that this would be a series I would enjoy. As result, I had no reservation buying books 2 and 4 when I found them on a 50% closing down sale. Which meant I had to buy book 1 at full price. Hmmm. and hmmm. You will see why.

The last Gunslinger is following the man in black across what appears to be a wild west setting. From the wake of the man in black's heels, there seems little doubt that the man is evil and capable of powerful 'magic'.

I really don't know what to make of this.  I can't say that my initial reaction is enthusiastic. I also can't say that I can pinpoint exactly what didn't really work for me. I understood the story, I got all the allusions. But something was missing. Maybe it was that I didn't care at all for the Gunslinger. Perhaps it was that through this (fortunately slim novel) very little happened.

I gave this 3 stars. I really hope this series picks up. I will be continuing, even though I would have happily abandoned the series at this point had I not already been in possession of more (AHHHH! And it means I should probably buy book 3 too! AHHHHH! At full price! Double AHHHHHHH!!!). But I am taking a break before I pick it up.