Books without Stephen King are like pencils without lead - pointless. 
 But it is a fact that when it comes to choosing between his horror and fantasy books, scary beats magic hands down. 
 The gunslinger is the first book of The Dark Tower series and I understand perfectly well if people are drooling and swooning over it, but for me Stephen King will always be the boogeyman. To be frank, I couldn't really 'get into' this whole new world that the master is trying to setup. His writing is fantastic as usual and his uncanny ability to make weird seem normal is on display in its full glory. Maybe it's just me but I didn't care much about what was happening and was constantly itching to read IT again(I know what I did there!) 
 All in all, you may like it or you may not; there's no middle ground here folks. I will be sticking to his (ir)regular books and keep looking under the bed just to be sure...