The Waste Lands – Description
The Waste Lands is the third book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series, featuring Roland the gunslinger. The story picks up months after the previous book, The Drawing of the Three ended. We’re in a wooded, hilly area, reminiscent to me of how I imagine the Pacific Northwest. Eddie is clean and sober, and Odetta and Detta have merged into Susannah and both are trained gunfighters.
The problem? Roland is slowly going crazy. Why? Because in one stream of existence, the child Jake came to his world and died by Roland’s choice (see The Gunslinger). In the other stream, Roland saved his life before he ever journied to Roland’s world.
The Waste Lands – My Thoughts
In my mind, The Waste Lands has two parts (I read it two months ago so can’t remember if it actually did). Oh hey, I looked back at the table of contents and it is divided into two books! They have actual names in the story, Jake: Fear in a Handful of Dust and Lud: A Heap of Broken Images. To me though, they are pre-Jake and Post Jake parts of the story and that’s fine.
Either way, I found this book to be my favorite of the three Dark Tower books I’ve read. It was fast-paced and gripping. I literally read it over the course of two days. It’s also the first new book I read in the series as I read the first two decades ago when they were published. Then I reread them recentlly as I’m trying to do the entire series.
I can definitely say I won’t let 11 months go between this book and the next as I did between The Drawing of the Three and this one. Especially because this book ends on a major cliff hanger. The only reason I haven’t plowed into the fourth book, Wizard and Glass, is because I have other committments such as Book Club books and library books I must finish first.
The Waste Lands – My Review
As I’ve said it’s m favorite book so far in the series. On the GoodReads scale, I’ll give it 4 stars – I really liked it. Though I may revisit at some point to 5.