We're grateful to Book Expo America 2008 for sponsoring Unshelved this week, as well as giving our readers a chance to win some great prizes when they register through our Unshelved@BEA page. We've got two more drawings - one this Wednesday for six winners, one next week for the grand prize winner who will receive all six prizes - so register now! Prices start at only $55. Walk-ins, know that registering online before 5/23 will save you big bucks.

P.S. We had been announcing the winners' names, but one of them indicated they didn't like that. So the winners will heretofore remain secret winners

I read The Gunslinger originally in late 1980s, when it on the library’s shelves next to Christine and The Stand. I enjoyed the series, but I always felt like I'd missed something early in the series. Reading them was like having a compelling dream, but I couldn't remember how it had started. Then I read a review of one of the books that called the series "allegorical," and I decided I needed to start again at the beginning, to catch what I'd missed, but that I'd wait until after King finished writing the series. (He's done.). Now the graphic novel prequels have me reading the series again (though I'll probably wait for the Marvel books to finish before I start reading the nongraphic novels again).

The writing is great, but the coloring makes me believe in guns and magic. Richard Isanove's colors roar. His startling palette wouldn't work in most books, but I was hooked when I saw the vultures in the second panel of page 1– their eyes, their skin, the meat they're tearing at. The two page spread, two pages later, where Roland stands on a cliff with a weird sky behind him full of purples and oranges and yellows and all, that brought the other Dark Tower books back to to my mind, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to put the graphic novel down until I'd finished it. I wasn't disappointed.