I had a hard time with Stephen King’s Dark Tower II book, The Drawing of the Three. His depiction of one of the Black characters really bothered me. The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands continued to have a little of the same problem, when the reintegrated character’s “dark side” occasionally emerges, speaking like a character out of Gone with the Wind. But that was kept to a minimum, so that alone made me like this book better.
The Waste Lands is a continuation of the pilgrimage of the gunslinger, Roland, and his three companions: Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, a young boy. Susannah is disabled due to a train accident and she and Eddie are in love. Each of them bringa something different to the quest of reaching the Dark Tower, a mysterious entity/force that is somehow connected to the apocalyptic state of the world they travel in.
Roland’s companions are becoming gunslingers of their own over the course of the journey. In the book, they face many obstacles, including bringing Jake from his world in New York to the world of the Dark Tower. There is vast machinery that is personified throughout the book, from a giant bear that’s a type of robot, to the train that can take them across the waste lands towards the Dark Tower. The monorail, called Blaine, is a disenchanted computer–a sort of mechanical ghost–that underlies the decrepit city of Lud, populated by warring people. The gunslingers make their way to Lud to coax Blaine to take them to the end of the line, on the way towards the Dark Tower. They face down their challenges, from Jake being kidnapped by a diseased resident of Lud to the fall of Lud and the death of the people to a malevolent figure called Tick Tock.
The Waste Lands is fairly convoluted and feels like it drags in places. King’s imagery is interesting, but also feels a bit untethered, or maybe like he’s building the world just ahead of the reader, like laying down train tracks as the train barrels toward you. In the prologue, which was written before the later books, he confessed he didn’t know how the Dark Tower series would end, that he didn’t have a plan. The book makes that clear in some ways, though the story still remains interesting.
I am not sure I’m going to continue with the series, it’s awfully long, but at least this book was better than the last one.