Climbing the Dark Tower: The Waste Lands

SPOILERS BELOW

Our gunslinger has drawn his companions and is on the Path of the Beam toward the Dark Tower. If only the path was less hazardous...


I'm just going to jump into my first criticism of the book and the series as a whole. The pacing has been abysmal. We are now three books in and it only now feels like the quest has actually started. King seems to be aware of this though and spends the first section of this book finally laying the stakes of the series conflict down. He finally tells us why Roland is making this trek to the Tower, why it's important, and how exactly he and his companions are going to get there. For the record, It's because the Dark Tower is the lynchpin of not just Roland's reality but all of realities in the multiverse. Something's infected the Tower, perverting its purpose, and that sickness is what's causing Roland's world to "move on" as he puts it. And if not stopped, the sickness will spread to other realities as well. Including ours. But even once this is laid out, the plot detours to resolve a story thread from the previous books. The speed picks up in the second half as the quest gets back on track, and doesn't seem to be slowing down, but hopefully now that things are in motion they'll stay that way.

At least the slow beginning has given King an opportunity to focus on the characters. The ka-tet (King's term for a group of questing gunslingers) have all grown since the last time we met them, honing their marksmanship and other skills, but the most interesting character dynamic is the one between Roland and his new companions from our world. It was in this book that I had a revelation about our gunslinger, dear readers. See, I've been assuming Roland is meant to play the hero role in this quest. He's the main character and the only character we've followed across all three books, so it seemed logical. But reading The Waste Lands I realized Roland isn't the Luke Skywalker of this story, he's the Obi-Wan. He plays the mentor to the other gunslingers, he has all the wisdom of this strange world (which he helpfully explains to both his ka-tet and to us, the readers), and his character arc throughout this book involves his relationship to his students. Indeed, that thread from the previous books of whether he will choose his students or the Tower in the end returns, made all the more prominent here because Jake comes back to life in this book. And last time when it came down to Jake or the Tower, Roland chose the Tower. He chooses Jake this time, and promises not to choose the Tower over him again, but the question still remains in Roland's mind. And ours.

Other positives for this outing include a great villain for the story. Not the man in black, though he does put in an appearance promising later mischief, but Blaine the Mono. Leave it to Stephen King to make a monorail terrifying. But his characterization of Blaine, a psychopathic computer mind embodied by a sinister train, really allows King to flex his well-honed horror muscles. He hints at Blaine throughout the book, building a sense of dread about this character before he even puts in an appearance. Characters mention feeling uneasy about Blaine, about how his smile has no warmth, and about how they'll have to rely on this frightening figure to reach the Tower. And again, this is before we meet Blaine and learn he electrocutes people who won't ask him riddles and plays a ZZ Top song to incite people to violence. As they say throughout, Blaine is a pain. But he's a horribly effective pain and the scariest character yet introduced in the series. A laughing mad, suicidal personification of how far Roland's world has degraded since the Tower was infected.

The biggest negative for The Waste Lands however, is the fact that it ends on a fucking cliffhanger. Goddamn it King, you finally get things moving, put us on the path to the Tower, and introduce a dangerous antagonist only to end the book before you resolve anything? So yeah, I guess I'm just going to have to accept that disappointing rushed endings are a feature at this point, not a bug. Though King has that problem in all his books not just the Dark Tower. The Waste Lands continues the series upward climb in quality, despite the again rushed ending and the fucking cliffhanger. We are firmly on the Path of the Beam, on our way to the Tower. And with our ka-tet still in Blaine's clutches & the man in black's return, the journey isn't going to get any easier.