The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands - Stephen King

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (King, 1991)

Though everything that has happened before has been necessary to the story, The Waste Lands feels like the true beginning. We get some concrete information about what the Dark Tower might be and how to get there. Some of the history and mythology of Roland's world starts to take definite shape, and our characters are given a direction. Best of all, the action keeps us driving onward.

As the characters travel through an area known as Mid-World, we start to get a sense of how the world has "moved on".  All around there are remnants of fantastic machines, artificial intelligences created by an organization called North Central Positronics. These remnants of technology are all gradually breaking and winding down, while primitive people wage war in the cluttered streets of a ruined city, with cars, TVs, appliances, and computers stacked as so much rusting trash barricading the streets. Roland and his companions are hailed by some as true gunslingers, defenders of "The White", while others seek to destroy them and prevent their quest.

The Waste Lands is a classic fantasy/science-fiction adventure, with portals between worlds, dream visions, warps in time, lost civilizations, and telepathic connections. Derelicts from our culture surface in mysterious ways - a Nazi plane, a book of riddles, the drum track to a  ZZ Top song. There are also a lot of well-placed literary references: T.S. Eliot, Shirley Jackson, William Golding, and Richard Adams are all appreciated one way or another.

What truly makes this a good book, though, is the way it explores the crannies of human nature. The people of the city of Lud (excellent reappropriation of the term "Luddite", by the way) embody the absolute moral low to which man can sink, yet even in their depravity we see glimpses of half-obscured humanity. On the other side of the coin, the family formed by Roland, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake reveal goodness and self-sacrifice, but nuanced with the imperfections of all human love.

Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 glimpses of half-obscured humanity