The Waste Lands - Stephen King

RATING: FOUR STARS

With the help of Susannah Walker and Eddy Dean, his newly formed posse of gunslingers, Roland Deschain continues his search for the Dark Tower. His quest takes the group deep into unchartered forests and rolling hills, where they are confronted by a terror from the world before it moved on – a guardian of the Old Great Ones. Roland knows that the risk the guardian poses it great, but it protects one of the twelve beams and he knows he may have finally found a path to the Tower itself.

But things are never as easy as they seem and even if they manage to defeat the guardian, they will still have to pass through the war-torn ruins of Lud. The ancient city, once a gem of a bygone and more civilised age, is all but a wasteland itself and serves as the gristly battlefield for the centuries old war between the Greys and Pubes. Terrible drums play a dirge for their countless fallen and Roland suspects that he will need all of his wits to see his companions and himself safely to the other side – wits that he knows he doesn’t have as his mind fragments and he descends into madness as the result of changing his own timeline. He must save the boy to save himself – he must draw Jake into the desolated ruins of his world . . .

The Good
With its stunning backdrop and harrowing storyline, The Waste Lands did not disappoint me as the third instalment to The Dark Tower. Stephen King’s mind has continued to astound me as his story grows ever more complex and his famous ability to write has produced a book that is next to impossible to put down!

The Waste Lands is exciting and fast paced, containing flash fire scenes of violence that come out of nowhere (in much the same manner as HBO’s Boardwalk Empire) and cringing scenes of horror that made me want to put it down as much as it made me want to blitz ahead! And, in addition to this, King has continued his masterful development of his characters so they almost seem like real people that I really engaged with.

The Bad
I really have nothing to fault with The Waste Lands!

My Thoughts
The Waste Lands really begins to develop King’s Dark Tower multiverse and finally begins to explain some of the tragedy that has befallen Roland’s world. As I have discussed above, the book is both exciting and harrowing and is a fantastic instalment of a series that deserves all of the praise it gets. I thoroughly recommend The Dark Tower to fans of both fantasy and horror (as it’s not a fantasy in a traditional sense so you might enjoy even if you typically avoid the genre), which will undoubtedly prove to be an enjoyable and valuable use of your time!