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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)
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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.
The way the book finishes is reason enough to start it.
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!
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
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.....
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.