Spoiler-free book guide
The Gunslinger
Book 1 of 7 in The Dark Tower · by Stephen King
How it opens
The gunslinger has followed the man in black across a vast desert for two months, finding only the cold remains of his campfires. At a hut on the desert's edge, he tells a young dweller named Brown the story of Tull, a town that turned on him after the man in black passed through, and how he shot every one of its people. Out of water, he collapses at an abandoned way station, where a boy named Jake Chambers, who cannot say how he came there, gives him water. The gunslinger takes Jake with him toward the mountains, and from the foothills they see the man in black far above them, climbing toward the snowcap.
Who you meet early
- Roland DeschainRoland Deschain is a gunslinger who came long ago out of In-World, following the man in black over the desert of a world that has moved on, with his father's guns at his hips.
- Jake ChambersJake Chambers is a boy Roland finds at a desert way station: polite, self-possessed, and carrying only hazy memories of another life in a city of tall towers.
- NortNort was Tull's local devil-grass addict.
- Sylvia PittstonSylvia Pittston is the huge preacher of the desert town of Tull, who lives alone and comes out on Sundays to deliver hellfire sermons that hold the townsfolk in thrall.
- Jubal KennerlyJubal Kennerly was the owner of the livery in the town of Tull.
- Cuthbert AllgoodCuthbert Allgood is Roland's oldest friend, a quick-tongued apprentice gunslinger of Gilead who rides beside Roland in his youth.
- HaxHax was the cook of Gilead, a man of considerable girth and mixed heritage from the South Islands, known for his kind spirit toward children and his willingness to slip food to apprentice gunslingers left hungry as punishment.
Where it sits
The Gunslinger is the first of 7 books in The Dark Tower. Start here.
Next · Book 2
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