The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, Book 3)

by Stephen King

Paperback, 1993

Status

Available

Call number

F Kin

Call number

F Kin

Barcode

7261

Publication

Signet (1993), Edition: First Edition

Description

Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. Thriller. HTML:The third volume in the #1 nationally bestselling Dark Tower Series, involving the enigmatic Roland (the last gunfighter) and his ongoing quest for the Dark Tower, is "Stephen King at his best" (School Library Journal). Several months have passed since The Drawing of the Three, and in The Waste Lands, Roland's two new tet-mates have become trained gunslingers. Eddie Dean has given up heroin, and Odetta's two selves have joined, becoming the stronger and more balanced personality of Susannah Dean. But Roland altered ka by saving the life of Jake Chambers, a boy whoâ??in Roland's worldâ??has already died. Now Roland and Jake exist in different worlds, but they are joined by the same madness: the paradox of double memories. Roland, Susannah, and Eddie must draw Jake into Mid-World and then follow the Path of the Beam all the way to the Dark Tower. There are new evils...new dangers to threaten Roland's little band in the devastated city of Lud and the surrounding wastelands, as well as horrific confrontations with Blaine the Mono, the piratical Gasher, and the frightening Tick-Tock Man. The Dark Tower Series continues to show Stephen King as a master of his craft. What lands, what peoples has he visited that are so unreachable to us except in the pages of his incredible books? Now Roland's strange odyssey continues. The Waste Lands follows The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three as the third volume in what may be the most extraordinary and imaginative cycle of tales in the English lan… (more)

Original publication date

1991-08

User reviews

LibraryThing member hjjugovic
So far this is my favorite in the series. The characterizations are strange but fascinating, and I loved the riddle plots and seeing more of the world that is passing away. Onward...
LibraryThing member danconsiglio
I love the world that king creates in this series. It's a wonderful mishmash of literary concepts with bits and pieces of folktales and children's books tossed in. Very enjoyable.
LibraryThing member edgeworth
I'm largely reading the Dark Tower series because of Lost. Well, I've been meaning to read it for a while, but I've been told that the writers of Lost draw a lot of direct influence from the Dark Tower series, especially for the upcoming final season. So I'm trying to push through all seven books
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before the next premiere in February.

I'm already seeing these influences, the most obvious of which is time travel. In the first book, The Gunslinger, Roland comes across a boy named Jake who died in our world and awoke in Roland's. Roland later lets him die again, sacrificing him to pursue his own quest. In the second book, The Drawing of the Three, Roland finds himself travelling into our world in the minds of three separate New Yorkers in various different time periods. The third of these is Jake's murderer, and Roland kills him - before the murder takes place.

The first half of the novel deals with the results of the subsequent time paradox, as both Jake and Roland begin to go insane with two separate memories of their past/future/whatever duking it out in their brains. This problem is eventually solved with the drawing of Jake into Roland's world, and the fortified party continues its quest for the Dark Tower.

The best part of The Wastelands is that it shows us more of Roland's fascinating world, a unique and original creation that is part fantasy, part science fiction, part Western and part post-apocalyptic, and - because this is Stephen King - tinged with an American vibe that somehow manages to feel appropriate. While an excellent book, The Drawing of the Three was lacking in that regard because the scenes in Roland's world took place entirely along the same stretch of dull, desolate beach. The Wastelands blows that effort right out of the water, as within the first fifty pages the party enters a pine forest and is attacked by a huge and ancient bear, which then turns out to be a nuclear-powered cyborg, one of many relics left behind by the long-forgotten Great Old Ones. That sounds silly, but it's actually brilliant, and a thousand times better than Tolkien-riffed fantasy about elves and orcs.

Unfortunately, a very large chunk of the book is devoted to resolving the Jake-Roland time paradox, which means we are rudely thrust back into New York for 150 pages. This was a very unwelcome interruption, especially when I thought we were finally done with our own world and were about to go exploring in Roland's. It also contains a pretty sloppy mistake for a series that so heavily involves time travel: this segment involves Henry Dean, Eddie's older brother, and takes place when he is eighteen, shortly before he "shipped out to Vietnam." It also takes places in 1977. Spot the error.

A second comparison I'm going to draw to Lost is the regular themes of fate and destiny, and an unwillingness to dole out answers. Lost was quite unwilling to hand out answers to anything in its early seasons, but I watched regardless, because it was a fascinating show and I had faith things would be explained eventually. The most frustrating thing was not the writers' unwillingness to explain - despite complaints from unimaginative people who give up on the show, I'm smart enough to realise that if everything was dumped straight up in the first episode it would defeat the entire purpose - but rather in the characters' unwillingness to ask questions. This is exactly the same situation that exists in the Dark Tower series. Eddie and Susannah are swept up in Roland's quest and agree to seek out the Dark Tower without understanding what it is or why he seeks it. Jake's adventures in New York are doubly frustrating, partly because we have to read about them at all, and partly because they're all about fate and destiny and visions and things he just "knows." It's tedious to read, it bogged down the pace and I got mighty sick of it. (Yes, I was quite disappointed when Lost's fifth season finale suddenly took a sharp turn back towards the DESTINY theme. Jacob in particular pissed me off, it felt like fan-fiction.)

But then - hallelujah! - Jake is drawn into the gunslinger's world and we resume our quest. Not only that, but we finally get answers, as Roland divulges the reason he seeks out the Dark Tower - and a damn good one. It was established in the first two books that Roland's is euphemistically described as having "moved on;" not only has it suffered two separate apocalypse-level events, one a thousand years ago and one within living memory, but it seems to be coming apart at the seams. Time flows strangely, the sun rises and sets in odd directions, and the land itself seems to be expanding. The Dark Tower is a kind of lynchpin for reality itself. Roland intends to find it, make sense of it, and use it to repair his broken world. (Blaine, a diabolical entity encountered at the conclusion of the book, implies in passing that each "level" of the Dark Tower contains an entire world, including our own world; so perhaps the Tower both exists inside the universe, and also contains it).

And is if that wasn't good enough, the second half of the book is simply excellent storytelling. The travellers enter the ruined city of Lud, and their experiences there are on par with Eddie's drawing in The Drawing of the Three, both on the plane and in Balazar's nightclub, for the best writing of the series so far - and the best writing King has ever done. Jake's drawing drags The Wastelands down quite a bit, but the rest of the book is brilliant, and probably better than its predecessor.

My previous complaints about the Dark Tower series largely rested on the fact that it took too long to build up momentum. The Gunslinger introduced the quest and the hero, and the Drawing of the Three introduced his companions. The Wastelands, at long last, fires up the engine and comes screaming out of the garage. This series may have taken its sweet time to get started, but now I'm glad I put the effort in.

I sure feel bad for all the original readers who had to wait nine years for this book, though.
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LibraryThing member Prop2gether
You need the earlier books to follow the character development, but I really enjoyed this entry in the Dark Tower series. Really.
LibraryThing member MrStead
Blaine was a bit of a pain for me in this novel: Thomas the Tank engine on steroids
LibraryThing member pingobarg
great series, i recommend it to anyone who ever had even a nodding acquantance with walt whitman
LibraryThing member badgenome
After a jarring transition between books one and two, The Waste Lands picks up the series fairly seamlessly. And thankfully, after the Being John Malkovitch-ishness of The Drawing of the Three, things settle down a bit; over the course of the book, Roland's new ka-tet becomes more firmly
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established and the overarching story begins to take definite shape. King excels at describing Roland's sparsely populated, disorienting world, and the settings visited here are just fascinating- particularly the ruined city of Lud. Things do end on a whale of a cliffhanger, but overall this is one of the better books of the series.
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LibraryThing member smitkevi
Classic King! In my opinion, this is the second best of the series (behind wizard and glass). The action is wildly vivid and exciting, yet each of the main characters is developed to human-like complexity while the engaging plot continues to unfold.
LibraryThing member Blazingice0608
This is a fan favorate of the series, however i found it to be a little boring to be honest, and it leaves you with a huge cliffhanger. However, this is also where the characters get ALOT of developing and their bonds with one another really grows. Alot happens in this book, and it is really good,
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i just found it to be a little boring.
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LibraryThing member ALLLGooD
After the buildups of the first two in the series, this third installment picks up the pace. Thank goodness that I wasn't reading this as they were getting released. I heard that there was a long wait between 3 and 4.

The way the book finishes is reason enough to start it.
LibraryThing member bardsfingertips
Finally: the novel happens. The landscape of the world in which the Gunslinger lives and treks changes and becomes more real to the reader. Two more characters permanently (one is a boy from New York City and the other a small animal called a billy-bumbler that mimics back human words with a sense
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of intelligence) join up with the Gunslinger's group.

Some post-apocalyptic machinery takes place which takes the story from a DalĂ­-esque desert to a sci-fi analogue of a city (much like New York) in ruin that is governed by violent acts between two gangs of self-destructive marauders.

I enjoyed this volume very much…I just feel it was titled incorrectly. The actual land o' waste doesn't actually happen until the last 50 pages or so…and I felt it was far too under-described—but this is understandable considering the circumstances of Blain the Train… Still, I was expecting a Waste Land, and not just mere glimpses. Maybe this gets explored a bit in the next book(s)? We shall see!
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LibraryThing member Djupstrom
I never knew there could be so much walking in a book! For me it seemed this was a cross between The Wizard of Oz, Ghostbusters, and some weird fairy tale kid's book. I just didn't get it.
LibraryThing member skinglist
My second favorite of the Dark Tower series. Really started to pull things together. Blaine Blaine.
LibraryThing member JohnMunsch
Not bad at all. King obviously feels comfortable with his characters and none of the books feels cranked out or a simple retread of what we've already read.
LibraryThing member lovelyliquid
The Dark Tower series was nothing I would have expected from Stephen King. I have read many of his books and never have they had such a long running graphically intense story. This series is really good and keeps you reading till the very end; the end on the other hand left the story on a less
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desirable note. Overall I would recommend this book to many individuals and not just the fans of Stephen King! I would like to see more along this type of writing from Stephen King!
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LibraryThing member Assassin13
This was an amazing book, easily the favorite of the Dark Tower books I have read so far, which are the first three books.

To my delight, this book spent the better majority in Roland's mysterious world instead of spending half of the book in a New York setting. The only part that was really spent
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in NYC was when it was telling of how Jake was finding all the clues about the Dark Tower like the key and rose.

This was an amazing journey of a book, and I find it hard to believe that it is only the third book in one epic saga, because this could have been a great novel even without the other books.

And as for the ending, well, let's just say when you finish this book, you basically have no choice but to drift right on to the fourth in the saga.....
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LibraryThing member Anagarika
"Blaine is a pain." What else can I say?
LibraryThing member phaga
I could have done without this book. Not that it was horrible or anything, I still had fun reading it, but it just feels like the weakest link in the series.
LibraryThing member bookwormie8katie
This book was amazing, i loved it. Very suspenseful and I couldn't put it down. I read it in a short time..
LibraryThing member pauliharman
Not all it's hyped up to be. But at least it's not as bad as the first in the series.
LibraryThing member mama_kanga
I am now fully enthralled with "The Dark Tower." "The Wastelands" cemented the katet and developed the rest of the characters into the mystic beings that they are. Although we have histories behind Susannah, Eddie & Jake, we still don't really know how they have come so far in such a short time.
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Their intuition and gunslinger skills are mysterious. And Jake's knowledge is fascinating. I can't wait to find out more of Roland's history, as well as the Man in Black. What has called these people together? And how would Roland have ever made it this far without them? I feel very lucky that I didn't read this when it was written. I'm pretty sure an eight year wait on this cliff hanger would have been unbearable.
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LibraryThing member jtho
Another amazing addition to the Dark Tower series. Readers will be happy to see the return of Jake. In the first half of this novel, both Jake and Roland are struggling, in their own worlds, to deal with the consequences of time travel. Because Roland killed the Pusher at the end of Book 2, Jake
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couldn't have died, which means he was never in Mid World (in book 1) - but yet, we know he was. Roland starts to loose his grip on sanity as his mind struggles to unify the two truths (Jake died/Jake didn't die), and Jake's own mind is confused as he recognizes that he should have died. Eventually, Jake finds a new entrance to Mid World, with a little help from a teen-aged Eddie in New York, and Susannah and Eddie in Mid World.

In the second half of this novel, the four of them (Roland, Jake, Eddie and Susannah) continue on their quest for the tower, traveling through the awful wastelands where some people still live, but have moved on.

As with The Drawing of the Three, the story is fast-paced and full of suspense, and we become even more connected to Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Roland. We also learn a bit more about Roland's past, and the different skills that each character brings to the ka-tet. If you've read through book 2, you'll love this one, and you'll probably be committed to finishing all 7 novels now.
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LibraryThing member draigwen
It took me a while to get into this, because it took a while for the fourth character of their fellowship to join them. But once he did, and once he got to Tull, well, that was fun. Oh, and Shardik. You've got to love Shardik.
LibraryThing member SonicQuack
The first third of The Waste Lands is certainly creative. As the small band continue to develop their relationship King is intent on weaving new threads to ensure their journey remains fraught, turbulent and unpredictable. With nightmarish scenarios, including some very dark scenes, The Waste Land
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feels very Clive Barker, a twisted and warped melancholy is threaded throughout. Plenty of interesting characters fill out the story, however at times it feels too fleshed out, too much verbiage as King frequently falls in to eloquence rather than keeping a tight narrative. Unsettling and quirky, this entry remains entertaining enough, yet feels too much like a middle chapter and fails to deliver any real conclusion.
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LibraryThing member mainrun
Same reaction to this book as I had to the first two in the series. Okay, but nothing special. I have no urge to start the next book. I will eventually. Here are series I think are better: Hyperion Cantos, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Jack Ryan, Joe Kurtz, John Corey (need to read the
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Lion), Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter.
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Rating

(3456 ratings; 4.1)
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