THE DARK TOWER by STEPHEN KING

BOOK ONE - THE GUNSLINGER

The Dark Tower is Stephen King's self proclaimed Magnum Opus. It was originally slated to be a 7 book series but king added a shorted (but no less excellent prequel to the story last year with the 8th novel - The Wind through a Keyhole. The eight books total an awe inspiring 4.250 pages! There is much history and many years that led to the completion of this masterwork which started in 1982 with the publishing of book one, The Gunslinger; a small but powerful 224 page novel that was to serve as a beginning of an epic so huge it would not be completed until 2004. 
the books came out as follows:

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982) – 224 pages                                                                              The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987) – 400 pages                                                            The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (1991) – 512 pages                                                                       The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (1997) – 787 pages; 1998                                                           The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (2003) – 714 pages; 2004      
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (2004) – 432 pages; 2005                         
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2004) – 845 pages; 2005                                                          The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012) – 336 pages

The novel was inspired by the poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came". The Gunslinger was met with some confusion when it first came out by King's loyal readers as it was much different than the blood curdling horror that King was producing . The Gunslinger was a fantasy novel.and a short one at that; but the Gunslinger admirably sets the stage for the books that follow by introducing us to one of the greatest characters in the history of fiction, Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger. Roland Deschain comes from Gilead and is the last remaining Gunslinger, which is a knight or a peacekeeper in Roland's world.. King's first memorable sentence in the book sets the stage for what is to come:
"the man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
The man in black is a man of pure evil, also known as Flagg (see the Stand), and Walter O dim.
Roland, the protagonist of the whole series, is a bad ass warrior with lightning quick gun skills.
King fades back in time and shows us a piece of Roland's childhood, and how he became a Gunslinger. His hard, cruel teacher Cort, and his childhood friends  Alain Johns and Cuthbert Allgood, which we learn more about in later books.In this novel we also are introduced to Jake Chambers, a young man who will be Roland's companion all the way to The Dark Tower.