The Gunslinger, by Stephen King. Also book 1 in a 7 volume series. Stephen King has proclaimed this to be his Magnus Opus. But I’m not so sure. This is a mix of fantasy and western — which is something I’ve always wanted to do. The man in black. The gunslinger (though he ends up having a name, couldn’t help but think of ‘the man with no name’ in the Spaghetti Westerns).
More than anything, I found myself kind of confused at points, and the language — I couldn’t believe how many times I had to head to a dictionary. I risk showing my ignorance but these words I can’t ever remember seeing before:
Golgotha – place of burial
Caissons – water tight structure for construction (such as bridge foundations)
Atavastic – throwback to an earlier type
odiferous – shorter version of odoriferous
Anyways, I found it a somewhat interesting read, though the last hundred pages took me a while. I felt like I wasn’t going anywhere. The writing was excellent (other than the crazy amount of referencing I had to do).
And sometimes it felt like he ‘just made stuff up’. Now that comment sounds weird, I’m sure, but what I mean is that suddenly a jawbone can protect you against demons. What? There was no lead up or explanation, just he suddenly whips out a jawbone (that he had stolen earlier from a hole) and uses it. Huh.
Will I read the next six books. No. I didn’t feel attached to the characters, the storyline, or the themes. It was okay.
However, I did learn one thing. Actually, it was Paige who helped me. I was asking Kari — do I use these new words even though I didn’t know what they meant? Paige answered for me — “If people don’t know what they mean, then no one will understand you”.
True enough.