Daniel (@dungeondive) reaches the book he calls “the big one” in The Ran(King) of King — 1982’s The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger — confessing up front that he’s a “tower junkie” and that Dark Tower titles will dominate the top of his list. Roland, the last gunslinger, pursues the man in black across a desert: we learn of the ill-fated town of Tull, his hawk-sacrifice coming-of-age, the boy Jake he lets fall for his quest, and a closing fireside conversation about the size of the universe.
He acknowledges it’s the series’ least-read, most divergent entry — written by a very young King still finding his voice, reading more like a Bachman book: mystical, cold, distant, dreamlike. He defends the later revisions as additions that connect it to the saga’s end without George-Lucas-ing the original. His reading of the whole series is that it’s about story itself — the ritual bond between teller and listener (Roland can’t tell Brown his tale until asked), and humanity’s need for narrative, a theme central to the channel. Not exciting, deliberately meandering, but for him immensely rewarding.
It goes straight to number one on the board.
Did The Gunslinger hook you or nearly lose you — and would you start a newcomer here or with book two?