Stephen King, The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands
ATTENTION: Contains spoilers if you haven’t read The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three (summary of The Drawing in the first paragraph).
The third volume of Stephen King’s epic, The Dark Tower, takes up some months after Roland’s drawing is complete. Roland, according to the man in black’s predictions, has drawn two, or rather three, persons who will help him in his quest for the dark tower. He has entered their minds by three different doors that stood in the desert, doors to New York at different times, through which he has brought them back to his world. The first person, Eddie Dean, was a heroin-addict in the eighties. In a world where heroin does not exist, he has finally managed to overcome his addiction and his desire to take his frustration on Roland. Roland also brought back antibiotics to cure his threatening fever, consequence of an attack of lobster-like creatures. The second person drawn by Roland is a black woman from the sixties, or rather two women. The first, Odetta Holmes, is an activist for black people’s rights, a civilized and educated person. The second, the one who was hidden in Odetta’s mind and sometimes took control, is Detta Walker, a dangerous soul full of hate and cunning. Fortunately, when Roland killed Jack Mort, a murderer whose specialty was to push people, and who crossed Odetta’s life twice with terrible consequences for her life, Detta and Odetta were driven to acknowledge each other. The reunion of Odetta and Detta results in the birth of a third person: Susannah, whose surname is Dean, since she and Eddie love each other and have linked their fates.
When The Waste Lands begins, Susannah is learning how to shoot and how to become a real gunslinger, while Eddie starts to carve objects in the wood, feeling that this skill could come in handy. Roland, who has gotten rid of his fever, is struck by a disease as serious as a lethal fever: he is losing his mind bits by bits… The cause? Jake, the boy he let die when he had to chose between talking to the man in black and therefore getting closer to the tower or saving Jake and therefore losing the man in black and renouncing the tower. Jake had been pushed under a car in our world (or a world similar to ours!) and sent to Roland by the man in black to distract him from his quest (See The Gunslinger). But Jake is dead, or rather he should be… When Roland entered the mind of Jack Mort and subsequently killed him, he prevented him to kill Jake, and therefore, Jake could never have met Roland. In Roland’s mind, two sets of memories fight, one with Jake and one without Jake, driving him insane. As if that were not enough struggle, a giant bear is about to attack the small fellowship…
The Waste Lands is made of two main parts. The first, Jake, tells the fight against the bear, the finding of an important beam and how Roland will get his sanity back… The second part, Lud, tells about the desolate town of Lud and the search for an unusual train, which might or might not take the companions through the Waste Lands, a little closer to the Dark Tower…
The first part, Jake, is a real rollercoaster ride, full of suspense, space-and-time travel, and even a haunted house. Up to this point, the book is hard to put down, and the first part alone would have earned it a five stars in my opinion. Unfortunately, the second part is another step entirely in the search for the dark tower, and after the thrills of the first part, the books drags on a little. Towards the end, the pace picks up again, and the novel ends in such a way that the reader wants to pick up the next volume…
With The Waste Lands, King becomes more and more comfortable with Roland’s world, and we, readers, gather more and more of its background. With the next volume, Wizard and Glass, which apparently deals with Roland’s past, the picture should be more or less complete. With King’s evident ease comes the fun, and the numerous crossovers between our world and Roland’s, which will culminate with volume V, where King has announced that he himself appears as a character!
King’s sources of inspiration for The Dark Tower, namely The Lord of the Rings, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, The Wizard of Oz and Browning’s Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, are alluded to and quoted, either by the author who inserts bits of poetry in his writing, or by the characters who remember them in connection with their experiences.
This third volume confirms that The Dark Tower is really a winner, a masterpiece of Fantasy, and every person who has the slightest attraction to this genre should read it…
Rating: 4,5/5
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