Customer Reviews

The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, Book 3)

5 star:		(157)
4 star:		(49)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This review is more about the Kindle edition than it is about the novel, which was good.

The Kindle edition has numerous editing errors:

1. Periods, Periods, everywhere - if there is a capital letter, there is probably a period right before it; this includes before any proper noun no matter where it appears in a sentence.

2. Typos, the deluxe edition! - real words substituted for completely different real words. Example: Loc. 4957 "Wheat was so funny" instead of "what was so funny"

If this had been a self-published ebook from a first-time novelist, it would not have been so troublesome.

Stephen King's "The Waste Lands" is the third volume in the epic Dark Tower series and every bit as good, if not better, than the two preceding novels. The plot and character development improve with every page, and the action and suspense are nonstop.

Gunslinger, Roland, and his two companions Susannah Dean, formerly the duo-personality Odetta Susannah Holmes and Detta Walker, and Eddie Dean, previously a drug addict and mule in New York City, at last begin their quest for the Dark Tower. Both Susannah and Eddie are in training and well on their way to becoming gunslingers. First, however, the threesome must defeat Mir, the gigantic, insane cyborg bear, called Shardik by the Great Old Ones. Mir guarded the Portal of the Bear, one of Twelve Portals which form the endpoints of the Beams. There are six Beams running between the Twelve Portals which mark the edges of Mid-World. The point where all Beams cross is the nexus of all worlds. The three backtrack along Mir's path and find the Beam, which should lead them to the center-point where the Dark Tower lies.

One of the most important events in this book, and in the series, is the entry of Jake, the boy, into the circle of questing companions. Jake was introduced to the reader in Book One, "The Gunslinger." There had been a great paradox surrounding Jake's existence - the paradox of shifting realities. Had the boy died or was he still alive? Had he, in fact, ever really appeared in Mid-Earth? This paradox was slowly driving both Roland, in Mid-World, and Jake, back in New York City, insane. In a scene rich in symbolism, Jake is reborn into Roland's world with Susannah as his symbolic mother, Eddie as midwife and the Gunslinger as Jake's symbolic father. The Drawing of the Three is at last complete and a fourth companion is also added. Jake adopts a talking billy-bumbler. Billy-bumblers resemble a combination of racoon, badger and dog. This one is named Oy.

This magnificent Ka-tet, (King's word for a group of people drawn together by fate), moves on the Path of the Beam toward the city of Lud, an urban wasteland, inhabited by degenerate survivors of gang wars. Jake is captured and miraculously survives his trek through the underground world of Lud, and the acquaintanceship of some of the most unsavory characters King has created yet. Now Blaine, the psychotic, suicidal monorail train enters the picture to rescue the companions-in-arms from Lud. Rather than carrying them to safety, the train takes them into further danger. Before leaving NY, Jake had picked up two volumes in a local bookstore - one a book of riddles and the other, a book called "Charlie the Choo-choo." He was able to foresee the appearance of Blaine because of the train's resemblance to Choo-Choo Charlie. Spooky!

"The Waste Lands" leave the four speeding towards their destination, Topeka, Kansas, Mid-World, at 800 miles per hour on a train that won't stop. The only chance for survival is Blaine's love of riddles. We are left with a cliffhanger. Can someone come up with a riddle original enough to halt the train and save their lives? See Book Four - "Wizard and Glass."

This third novel in the septet is rich in description of characters, cityscapes, landscapes and creatures. The changing relationships between the foursome, their growth as individuals and as a group, is really worth mentioning. King is at his best here. Adventure-packed, the book moves along at a fast clip. Characters who were introduced to the reader previously, are now fleshed out and really become three-dimensional. The level of suspense is dramatically increased. I am totally hooked on this series. At this point, I don't care how King ends his epic . I just know that he has taken me on a 1500 page ride, (approximately), so far and I have loved every minute of it. Nothing that occurs in future books can spoil what I have already read. Highest recommendations!!

JANA

Book III of the Dark Tower series continues the quest defined in the first book (The Gunslinger) with the traveling companions introduced in the second book (The Drawing of the Three).

This book is basically a group of adventure episodes: an encounter with a 70 foot high bio-mechanical bear (Shardik), relic of a past age, a strange fight with a demon, a visit to a dying suburban village, an abduction and running battle in a ghost town city, and finally a fantastic trip on a suicidal mono-rail train. Each episode provides a little more insight into Roland's fantastical world, both past and present. By the end of this book, a fairly coherent picture of this world emerges, from its obvious high technology past, to its current sadly deteriorated state, to some of the rationale behind why certain things work the way they do in this world. The book is very action oriented; there is very little reflection on grander philosophical themes here, and continuing character development of the main characters is fairly minimal.

There is a nice variant on the old time-travel paradox. In The Gunslinger, the boy Jake is sacrificed to Roland's determination to catch the 'man in black'. In this story, we find Jake alive and well and still living in (our) New York, due to an action by Roland in The Drawing of the Three that caused the previous history to never occur. But both Roland and Jake have memories of the 'other' past, and this duality is slowly driving both to the edge of insanity. The resolution of this problem requires that Jake be brought back to Roland's world, and how this is accomplished forms the major portion of one of the 'episodes'.

At various points throughout this book, King makes allusions to other famous science-fiction and fantasy authors and their creations (and some of his own), from Richard Adams (Shardik and Watership Down) to Isaac Asimov's 'positronic' brains of his robot stories, to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit with its riddling games. For those who have read these works, these allusions provide an enhanced view of this world and how it works, but I am not sure how well some of this plays with readers who haven't read these other works.

Overall, this book is a page-turner, and does a good job of holding the reader's interest in the fate of the major characters and the overall resolution of the quest. The ending of this book is a cliff-hanger, like the movie serials of old, and for this reason I don't recommend you start this book unless you have a copy of book IV, Wizard & Glass, handy, as you will definitely want to immediately find out the resolution to the end situation here.

The Wastelands-King's third installment in the Dark Tower saga-marks the true beginning of the quest in many ways. Roland finally gathers his ka-tet (group bound to him by destiny) as he draws young Jake into his world amid a demonic rainstorm. And it is here, as the group prepares to embark on a seemingly insane journey through the Waste Lands (part of Mid-World that has been utterly ravaged by war and the decay of the Tower), that we finally get a look at the true nature of Roland's world.

From the City of Lud-a post-apocalyptic industrial ruin-to the lost cyborg-bear Shardik and the dread portal he guards, it is clear from the start that Roland's world-and perhaps our world as well-contains vastly more than meets the eye. Perhaps the greatest asset to The Waste Lands is the sheer imaginative scope that binds the tale of Roland's ka-tet. Here is a world so complete in its history, so flawless in its realization, and so utterly compelling in its people, that it is far too easy to lose yourself in.

In The Waste Lands, the Dark Tower epic picks of steam and sends the reader hurtling down the dark halls of King's fantastic world.

A word of warning: Have a copy of Wizard and Glass (Book IV) on hand when you finish this; it ends with a really agonizing cliff-hanger.

"The Waste Lands" is book three in the 7 book Dark Tower series. I just started the Dark Tower eight months ago and I have been taking my time. "The Gunslinger" was a difficult book to read, but things definitely picked up in "The Drawing of the Three." The pacing picks up in "The Waste Lands" and it makes for the most satisfying chapter in the series so far.

In some ways, the story really begins in "The Waste Lands." We finally learn a little about why Roland (the last gunslinger) is obsessed with the Dark Tower. A former character is reintroduced and pulled into the fellowship and the real journey begins. The reader learns a lot more about the characters and about the world Stephen King has created. Information is still released in a piece meal fashion and it is amazing how much is still unknown about the true nature of the story after three books. "The Waste Lands" ends in a cliffhanger with no real resolution. Thankfully, for me the series is complete and I do not have to wait for the next chapter. Overall the Dark Tower just keeps getting better.

Not as deeply off the subject as Wizard and Glass, more involved than The Gunslinger, less "ordinary" than the Drawing of the Three, the Waste Lands brings hints of science fiction at the beginning while deeping the fascinating theme of coincidence which is really an amazingly complex series of convergences. We learn more about the three who have been drawn, fear for Roland's mind as he teeters on the edge of madness, understand more about how Mid-World relates to ours, fear for our lives at the hands of Blaine the Mono and are truly drawn into the story as each of the companions begins to feel the pull of the Dark Tower . . . A fascinating and engrossing read. I don't know anybody who's read the Dark Tower series who isn't pining for the next installment.

While the novel itself is quite good, the Kindle edition, which I purchased and shortly returned for a refund, is littered with typos and formatting errors. It appears that some unpaid--and maybe even hung-over--intern simply scanned the paper version of this book and ran a quick spell-check on random chapters. There are random periods strewn throughout the text, words are often misspelled, italics bleed into following paragraphs, short dashes and long dashes are often confused, ellipses are sometimes spaced, sometimes not... at one point, a closing double-quote is written as a superscripted 99! At 60% I had marked over 100 typos and formatting errors.

If I'm paying nearly the same price as a real-life book for an ephemeral digital copy (with DRM chains, no less!), I expect the same standard of formatting and typography as I would get in a real book. This Kindle edition is a lazy money-grab--do yourself a favor and download the torrent instead so you can correct the errors yourself if you want to read it.

"The Waste Lands" begins the actual quest for the Dark Tower, the first two novels in this series, "The Gunslinger" and "Drawing of the Three" being an introduction and a search for the members who would join Roland of Gilead in his quest for the Dark Tower. In the previous book we thought we would meet the three team members who would join Roland in his quest, but one of the members met his demise after Jack Mort's evil was uncovered.

In this book Susannah Dean (nee Walker), Eddie Dean, and Roland of Gilead seek the beam that will lead them to the Dark Tower. They soon encounter an enormous bear that turns out to be more than meets the eye. After their exciting encounter with the bear the trio back trails the bear to its home, and encounter a variety of support critters that are also more than meet the eye. The trio also finds the beam that will lead them to the Dark Tower.

A little down the trail they meet the true third alluded to in "The Gunslinger," none other than Jake Chambers. In a short period the four members of the ka-tet encounter a beat up bumbler that they nickname Oy. This group is the team that we follow onward to the dark tower.

The ka-tet encounters a town of elderly people who warn the group against proceeding to Lud, the nearby big city. However, the team believes they need to ride a train a good portion of the way to the Dark Tower. They soon discover that the only remaining train is named Blaine, as Jake had been prophesying, unbeknownst even to himself, for some time.

Once the ka-tet enters Lud, they discover a war that has been in progress for decades, or perhaps longer; a war so old that none even remember who the good guys and the bad guys are. Jake is quickly kidnapped by a man who is vaguely reminiscent of a character in "Treasure Island," but with a sadistic streak uncharacteristic of such a classic character. The ka-tet splits up, with Eddie and Susannah proceeding to find Blaine while Roland goes to seek Jake.

Roland eventually finds Jake, with the critical aid of Oy, after a series of adventures and a battle that will ultimately change the nature of Lud, and the pair meets with Susannah and Eddie at Blaine the Train's departure platform.

Once the group are on the train, they soon discover that not only is Blaine a Pain, but he is insane. The only way to prevent Blaine from flying off the end of the track and killing the ka-tet is to ask Blaine a riddle to which Blaine does not know the answer. The tension mounts.

Stephen King took a long time to get to the third book in this series, nearly 10 years from the first book. It took him more than 10 more years to get to the seventh and final book. However, the wait for the third book, and the fourth book, was worth it. I recommend strongly that you read the first two books in the series before reading this book. While it is not critical that you read the first book, you will understand far more about the characters by reading the first two.

This particular edition has excellent art by Ned Dameron. I have yet to see the edition with Michael Whelan's art. However, Michael Whelan is an outstanding artist, and I would think that edition would be similarly impressive. In any case, I think you would be well served to buy an edition of this novel with the artwork in it.

Stephen King has created an epic fantasy series that rivals all previous series in scope. In addition to spanning a world, his series spans worlds and even time. This third book puts the series at over one thousand pages, and the next four books are longer than the first three. Get out the munchies and block out a chunk of time. These novels are excellent.

I can't bring myself to give this wonderful entry in King's incredible Dark Tower series anything less than 5 stars, but if I were reviewing this item for its quality as an eBook completely apart from the book itself, it would get at best 1 star.

Do yourself a favor and buy it in print. The Kindle edition is utterly shot through with bizarre format and punctuation errors, and in some cases completely wrong words. This is constantly frustrating, at times maddening, and constitutes an unforgivable distraction from the substance of this outstanding novel.

As another reviewer noted, there is this odd littering of superfluous periods throughout the book. A sentence that should read "I'm reviewing this fine novel by Stephen King." Might instead read "I'm .reviwing this. fine novel. by Stephen .King." Add in the occasional wholesale substitution of entire words, and you might get "I'm .rewinding this. fink shovel. by Stephen .Kink." Try reading an entire book that way. Not fun.

I wish something could be done to correct this, but I guess we have to wait for Amazon to figure it out first.

Again, do yourself a favor and pick this up in print. It is an amazingly fun read.

This is an excellent book. After finishing the second book in the series, I couldn't wait to start this one. I bought it on my kindle the next day. I would find myself actually planning hours in my day where I could spend time with this book. I even went in to work hours early a few times, solely so I could be left alone while reading. There have been plenty of reviews as to the content of the book, so I won't go into that. I will just tell you that this book won't leave you disappointed. (except perhaps with the cliffhanger ending) This book just proves why King is a master storyteller. It is such a richly imaginative world, yet intertwined with parts of our own. It leaves you so engaged that you can't help but want more.