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A review by duffypratt
The Waste Lands by Stephen King
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
It's an odd book in what is turning into an odd series, and it's a mess. (Spoilers ahead, beware).
In the last installment, Roland gathered together his ka-tet -- the group of people who are bound with his fate in his quest for the Dark Tower. Though it turns out he didn't. So they need to draw another member, also from New York, but from a different time than either Eddie or Susannah.
Thus, the last book was incomplete. Moreover, it added a wrinkle involving that book and the first book. The last member, it turns out, is the boy Jake. Roland let him die in The Gunslinger, in the world he now inhabits. But he also saved Jake from dying at the end of Drawing of the Three. This created a time paradox (he couldn't have let him die in this world, if he had prevented his death in the New York world). Thus, both Jake and Roland are going insane from inhabiting the two separate threads of this paradox at the same time.
This book, then, divides into basically three sections. First, we have prologue, where the novitiates are learning to become gunslingers while Roland is rapidly going insane. This involves a confrontation with a cyborg bear the size of King Kong. It creates a nicely written set piece involving the confrontation. But it's one that I wasn't invested in because it was so apparent to me that all of our main characters were wearing plot armor.
Part two divides the narrative between Jake in his NY time and our characters in the world that has moved on. I liked this part the best. It had some true elements of horror, and some very nice character building and slice of life sections. Both of those things involve King's strong suits, and they work very well here. Again, it seems a foregone conclusion that the ka-tet will succeed in getting Jake to join them, but I enjoyed the ride much more.
The last part involves finding the train (named Blaine, which may or may not stay mainly in the plain) that will take them through eponymous Waste Lands. First they meet a group of survivors on the outskirts of a big city, who make them welcome. This section actually gives us some information about how society works here, or at least a part of it. And it was most welcome. Then we enter the city of LUD, where things go South quickly and the action ramps up considerably. Again, this was done quite well, except that King ended the book on a serious cliffhanger.
Readers when the books came out had to wait six years for a resolution to this cliffhanger. It's not as bad as George RR Martin, but given how fast King ordinarily writes, I can imagine this delay infuriated them. Fortunately, I'm not in that boat. I bought Wizard and Glass today and will probably get to it by the end of the year. I'm enjoying this series, and I like Roland much more now than I did in either of the books. I also like Jake quite a bit, and his pet. Eddie and Susannah are slowly growing on me. So I'm somewhat invested in this series, but I could still very much see it going either way with me, depending on how King develops it.
In the last installment, Roland gathered together his ka-tet -- the group of people who are bound with his fate in his quest for the Dark Tower. Though it turns out he didn't. So they need to draw another member, also from New York, but from a different time than either Eddie or Susannah.
Thus, the last book was incomplete. Moreover, it added a wrinkle involving that book and the first book. The last member, it turns out, is the boy Jake. Roland let him die in The Gunslinger, in the world he now inhabits. But he also saved Jake from dying at the end of Drawing of the Three. This created a time paradox (he couldn't have let him die in this world, if he had prevented his death in the New York world). Thus, both Jake and Roland are going insane from inhabiting the two separate threads of this paradox at the same time.
This book, then, divides into basically three sections. First, we have prologue, where the novitiates are learning to become gunslingers while Roland is rapidly going insane. This involves a confrontation with a cyborg bear the size of King Kong. It creates a nicely written set piece involving the confrontation. But it's one that I wasn't invested in because it was so apparent to me that all of our main characters were wearing plot armor.
Part two divides the narrative between Jake in his NY time and our characters in the world that has moved on. I liked this part the best. It had some true elements of horror, and some very nice character building and slice of life sections. Both of those things involve King's strong suits, and they work very well here. Again, it seems a foregone conclusion that the ka-tet will succeed in getting Jake to join them, but I enjoyed the ride much more.
The last part involves finding the train (named Blaine, which may or may not stay mainly in the plain) that will take them through eponymous Waste Lands. First they meet a group of survivors on the outskirts of a big city, who make them welcome. This section actually gives us some information about how society works here, or at least a part of it. And it was most welcome. Then we enter the city of LUD, where things go South quickly and the action ramps up considerably. Again, this was done quite well, except that King ended the book on a serious cliffhanger.
Readers when the books came out had to wait six years for a resolution to this cliffhanger. It's not as bad as George RR Martin, but given how fast King ordinarily writes, I can imagine this delay infuriated them. Fortunately, I'm not in that boat. I bought Wizard and Glass today and will probably get to it by the end of the year. I'm enjoying this series, and I like Roland much more now than I did in either of the books. I also like Jake quite a bit, and his pet. Eddie and Susannah are slowly growing on me. So I'm somewhat invested in this series, but I could still very much see it going either way with me, depending on how King develops it.