#149 in Horror
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger
- 258
- Pages
- about 4.5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
The opening volume of “The Dark Tower” is short, strange and deliberately elusive. It crosses the western with fantasy and horror as Roland pursues the man in black across a desert half dream, half myth. Some readers love the desolate mood and its hero’s tragic weight, though some admit they are unsure what is happening and find it more prologue than story. Best taken as the overture to a long series.
Worth knowing Stephen King began it at nineteen, in 1970, inspired by Robert Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came; it ran as five stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction before the 1982 book. In 2003 King revised it to fit the later volumes, and most current editions print that text. It is short and strange, and many readers find that the series really opens up with The Drawing of the Three.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger is a dark-fantasy novel by American author Stephen King. It is the first volume in his Dark Tower series. The Gunslinger was first published in 1982 as a fix-up novel, joining five short stories that had been published between 1978 and 1981. King substantially revised the novel in 2003; this version has remained in print ever since, with the subtitle "RESUMPTION". The story centers on Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, who has been chasing his adversary, "the man in black," for many years. The novel fuses Western fiction with fantasy, science fiction, and horror, following Roland's trek through a vast desert and beyond in search of the man in black. Roland meets several people along his journey, including a boy named Jake, who travels with him part of the way.
Reading order · The Dark Tower
Full order & progress →- The Dark Tower: The GunslingerThis book
7.57.5 / 10 - The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the ThreeThe Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three–Not ranked yet
- The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands
8.18.1 / 10 - The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
8.38.3 / 10 - The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
8.28.2 / 10 - The Dark Tower VI: Song of SusannahThe Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah–Not ranked yet
- The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
8.48.4 / 10 - The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the KeyholeThe Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole–Not ranked yet
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.4 across 2,378 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 94% of the weight and the score stays at 7.5 — the Horror average of 7.5 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.1 | 69 | 3% |
| Hardcover | 7.4 | 2.3K | 97% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger?
It has 258 pages — shorter than 96% of the ranked books in Horror.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Horror — with scores between 7.4 and 8.4, closest to this book.
