Year of Epic Fantasy 2017: Day 22 (The Gunslinger)

Title: The Gunslinger
Author: Stephen King
Themes: The Pursuit of Knowledge
Quotes: "The trap had a ghastly perfection. If someone told you you’d go to hell if you thought about seeing your mother naked (once when the gunslinger was very young he had been told this very thing), you’d eventually do it. And why? Because you did not want to [...] Because, if given a knife and a hand in which to hold it, the mind would eventually eat itself. Not because it wanted to; because it did not want to.”

Reading/Listening Time: August 20th to Sept. 2nd.

Review:

I only finished this book so fast because my train broke down and my cell phone was running out of battery. Really I found the writing style quite dry, which is a shame because I think it introduces some really interesting ideas.

It's about this guy named Roland and how devoted he is to his search for truth behind the mysteries of the multiverse.

I was reading it as a fantasy, but really I think it has more in common with H.P Lovecraft's stories. It never quite achieves Lovecraft's sense of cosmic horror (Although it does have some disturbing moments) but it does play off a lot of the same themes: namely that truth is something big, and scary, and not meant for people to understand.

One of the interesting aspects of this story to me is how Mr King infuses everything with a sense of ambivalence:

SPOILER ALERT The main character in this book performs an abortion on a woman impregnated with demon spawn as casually as if he'd been asked to do an oil change. The graphic description of a little boy's violent death, foreshadowing another violent end, the little boy's corporal ghost knowing he's going to be "killed" yet again, and the nonchalant slaughter of an entire village.  Mr King doesn't really seem to be trying to convince us that any of this actually matters.

END SPOILER

I kinda feel like this was intentional. Roland's brutal and ruthless: willing to go to such lengths to get what he wants and yet as a reader you can't help but wonder if his search (like any of his other actions) has any real significance at all.

Really I think that that is a concept Mr Lovecraft would have enjoyed, but it didn't do a whole lot for me. 

Rating: 2/5 Stars. (It introduces  some interesting ideas, but none that are worth exploring the rest of the series for.)