Name: The Waste Lands
ISBN: 9780452284715

Stephen King

The Dark Tower, Book 3

The Waste Lands 

Stephanie 

Pain was a tool, after all. Sometimes it was the best tool.

Old habits, it seemed, sometimes died hard. Beating heroin was child’s play compared to beating your childhood.

For every thing I do know, there are a hundred things I don’t.‘

People asking what you dreamed last night and when you tell them you killed 30 mutants with a crossbow in a post-apocalyptic zombie scenario they are like '👁👄👁 what’s wrong with you?' 🥲

Anyway, the thought there might be truth in dreams scares me. 

‘Sometimes there’s truth in dreams, Eddie. What was yours?’

I think everyone growing up with German „fairy tales“ can confirm that - less fairies, more gruesome torture and violence for 

It was easy to hurt little kids, easy to make them cry, and this seemed to bring out a strangely sadistic streak in many story-tellers . . . including, it seemed, Beryl Evans.

One of the smells I’d like to bottle up 🥺

The mild, spicy smell of old books hit him, and the smell was somehow like coming home.

Eddie was struck again by his gratitude for her – it was scary to have someone to love, but it was also very fine.

"You’re not afraid of the great world, Eddie, but of the small one inside yourself."

He dabbled blood from his freshly split lip and looked at it thoughtfully, wondering at how quickly the desire to do murder could invade and conquer the human heart.

The third volume in the #1 nationally bestselling Dark Tower Series. 

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 who—in Roland’s world—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 III

The Waste Lands

Prashanth Srivatsa

3 out of 7. Another step closer to the Dark Tower. Swashbuckling gunslingers dumped in a rotten world of sentient trains, decadent technology and childhood riddles. The absurdity galore smacks of King high on needles, but it's just so much fun.

Victoria Saxon

In the third novel in Stephen King's epic fantasy masterpiece, Roland, the Last Gunslinger, is moving ever closer to the Dark Tower. 

Roland has altered ka by saving the life of Jake Chambers in New York. Now they exist in different worlds, paradoxically sharing memories. Roland, Susannah and Eddie must try to draw Jake into Mid-World then follow the Path of the Beam through an urban waste land to the Dark Tower.

Pursued by the Ageless Stranger, Roland and his friends cross a desert of damnation in this macabre new world as revelations begin to unfold about who - and what - is driving him forward.

The Dark Tower III 

'I am well aware that some readers of The Waste Lands will be displeased that it has ended as it has, with so much unresolved.'

I‘m pretty conflicted how to rate and review this one. Was it intriguing and fascinating? 

. It’s still an epic worldbuilding, it’s gruesome and dark and I adored the unique characters. But - and here’s the big BUT - I’ve read nearly 1.400 pages now and still have no idea about the most important installment of the story; the dark tower itself. We get tons of details and pages describing the universe itself (some even more confusing than enlightening) but what the dark tower actually is? WHY it’s so important and why we need to reach it at all costs? What we expect to achieve on this quest? Even the characters themselves are confused and demand answers to these questions but are smothered with a simple „now’s not the time to tell that“. Nevermind.

Am I demanding too much or am too impatient? I don’t know. Maybe this will make more sense in the hindsight and I‘m just not able to appreciate it for what it is yet.

'I am well aware that some readers of The Waste Lands will be displeased that it has ended as it has, with so much unresolved.'

Damn right Mr. King, damn right.

I‘m pretty conflicted how to rate and review this one. Was it intriguing and fascinating? Yes. It’s still an epic worldbuilding, it’s gruesome and dark and I adored the unique characters. But - and here’s the big BUT - I’ve read nearly 1.400 pages now and still have no idea about the most important installment of the story; the dark tower itself. We get tons of details and pages describing the universe itself (some even more confusing than enlightening) but what the dark tower actually is? WHY it’s so important and why we need to reach it at all costs? What we expect to achieve on this quest? Even the characters themselves are confused and demand answers to these questions but are smothered with a simple „now’s not the time to tell that“. Nevermind.

Am I demanding too much or am too impatient? I don’t know. Maybe this will make more sense in the hindsight and I‘m just not able to appreciate it for what it is yet.

Roland, the Last Gunslinger, and his companions--Eddie Dean and Susannah--cross the desert of damnation, drawing ever closer to the Dark Tower, a legion of fiendish foes, and revelations that could alter the world. 30,000 first printing.

The Wastelands

Ben Nathan

Really wonderful. A great continuation of the series. I'm told that this is one of the high points, so I'm expecting the rest to be not as great, but I'm loving the characters and the world building. The flow of story is nearly perfect. I'm super thrilled with it all around.

Mahasin S Ameen

An oldie but a goodie. Blaine is a Pain, but he doesn't get the last refrain.

Toph Clark

Sam Sherwood

Joshua Line

For use in schools and libraries only. The third installment in King's Dark Tower saga, featuring Roland, the last gunfighter and his epic quest.

Emily Salazar

Angus Bretherick

Roland continues his quest for the Dark Tower, but he is no longer alone. He has trained Eddie and Susannah-who entered Mid-World from their separate whens in New York City in The Drawing of the Three-in the old ways of the gunslingers. But their ka-tet is not yet complete. Another must be drawn from New York into Mid-World, someone who has been there before, a boy who has died not once but twice, and yet still lives. The ka-tet, four who are bound together by fate, must travel far in this novel encountering not only the poisonous waste lands and the ravaged city of Lud that lies beyond, but also the rage of a train that might be their only means of escape.

The Waste Lands The Dark Tower, Book 3