“An impressive work of mythic magnitude that may turn out to be Stephen King’s greatest literary achievement” ( The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ), The Gunslinger is the first volume in the epic Dark Tower Series.

A #1 national bestseller, The Gunslinger introduces readers to one of Stephen King’s most powerful creations, Roland of Gilead: The Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which mirrors our own in frightening ways, Roland tracks The Man in Black, encounters an enticing woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the boy from New York named Jake.

Inspired in part by the Robert Browning narrative poem, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” The Gunslinger is “a compelling whirlpool of a story that draws one irretrievable to its center” ( Milwaukee Sentinel ). It is “brilliant and fresh…and will leave you panting for more” ( Booklist ).

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

Written by Stephen King in 1970, five years before the publication of his first novel, that sentence opens up a world still unknown to many of his readers. It begins a spectacular seven-volume epic fantasy -- The Dark Tower -- that is sure to become an American classic.

Now, preparing the way for the publication of the saga's concluding volumes, King offers a revised and expanded edition of The Gunslinger, the mesmerizing first book of the series. This hardcover edition, for which King has written a special introduction and foreword, contains all of the full-color paintings and pen-and-ink drawings created by Michael Whelan for the original limited edition published by Donald M. Grant, Publisher in 1982.

Eerie, dreamlike, set in a world that is weirdly related to our own, The Gunslinger introduces Roland Deschain of Gilead, of In-World that was, as he pursues his enigmatic antagonist to the mountains that separate the desert from the Western Sea. Roland is a solitary figure, perhaps accursed, who with a a strange single-mindedness traverses an exhausted, almost timeless landscape. The people he encounters are left behind, or worse -- left dead. At a way station, however, he meets Jake, a boy from a particular time (1977) and a particular place (New York City), and soon the two are joined -- khef, ka, and ka-tet. The mountains lie before them. So does the man in black and, somewhere far beyond...the Dark Tower.
(front flap)