The Gunslinger/ Stephen King

The Gunslinger By Stephen King. Post-apocalyptic, adventure, western, cryptic, horror 231 pages.

This was the first Stephen King book I have ever read. From what I had heard about him, I thought he only wrote scary books that would eventually become scary movies and the horror genre never appealed to me too much. Then, I read Patton Oswalt's "Zombie, Spaceship, Wasteland", and although Oswalt ended up being a horrible writer with nothing too important to say himself, he did repeatedly provide evidence that we had similar taste in books, so when he wrote that Stephen King's Dark Tower series, of which the Gunslinger is the first volume, was one of the best series he's ever read, I had to give it a try.

Initially it seemed right up my alley. Post-apocalyptic wasteland America filled with desperate survivors, vicious and disgusting mutants, and terrifying supernatural occurrences? Sign me up!!! I was even intrigued by the frequent peppering of religious references that King threw into the story for good measure. One would assume that I would have nothing to say but good things about the book.

Unfortunately, I do have to tear the narrative to shreds for one particular reason-- King tries WAAAAAAAAAAY too hard to be cryptic and mysterious. I understand that if you give the reader everything they need to know right from the start, you will lose their interest. Cliffhangers are necessary, and for the most part enjoyable, because they spur discussion between readers. I do think, however, that some regulations need to made on presenting unanswered questions for the reader. I have always believed that in a cryptic narrative such as this, the writer needs to give the reader one answer for every three questions they pose. This still allows the author to keep the reader guessing, but at the same time provides incremental incentive to keep reading instead of just giving up and saying "that's it, I am officially more confused than Sarah Palin and George W. Bush during an episode of Lost". King's question-to-answer ratio is somewhere around 10:1 which gets EXTREMELY annoying about halfway through the book because curiosity turns into aggravation.

That being said, I am certainly going to try to read the second volume in the series, but if this trend of unnecessary mysteriousness continues, then I can't promise that i'll keep going after that one.