| The Waste Lands is a significant improvement on the somewhat-disappointing The Drawing of the Three. Freed at last from the need to provide backstory on the new characters, seemingly less intent on trying to impress the reader with his dexterity, King has settled down and made this book much more what it should be: A raucous ripsnorting fantasy adventure, full of action, excellent characters, portents, omens, and the like. This is a story populated by demons and ghosts from a past world that has indeed moved on. Jake Chambers in New York and Roland in Mid-World are troubled by ghosts in particular, as they are slowly driven mad by twin sets of memories, one in which Jake dies at the hands of Jack Mort, meets Roland in the desert, then dies again under the mountain ("Go, then. There are other worlds than these.") -- and one in which they never meet. Neither is able to reconcile these conflicting memories, though each searches for a way. The resolution comes at a stone circle, in battle with a pair of demons, in one of the tensest scenes King has ever written. Other ghosts occupy this landscape as well; Shardik, the giant Guardian bear, a leftover of the Great Old Ones who ruled Mid-World before the Cataclysm, menaces our heroes early on. David Quick, the Robin-Hood-like, legendary ruler of Lud, haunts the latter half of the story to some degree. Lud itself is a ghost, the cracked and shattered specter of a majestic city which has regressed to almost complete savagery. (Of course, no good Western should be without a ghost town; here King gives us an entire ghost city!)The residents of River Crossing, a sleepy, dying village where the travelers and their newly-adopted mascot, a "billy-bumbler" named Oy, take respite before their horrifying journey into the dead city of Lud, are ghosts as well -- ghosts of the Gunslinger's former life, when he and his kind were not only respected but revered as great heroes. Eddie Dean is haunted by the teasing revenant of his brother, Henry; his wife Susannah, by her own personal demon Detta Walker, and by her newly-discovered pregnancy with Eddie, of which she is most frightened, especially after her battle with the incubus-demon at the stone circle, moreso as their journey takes her through the mutant-infested, radiation diseased Waste Lands -- what kind of birth, she nervously (and rightfully) thinks, will result from all her horrifying experiences? The implications of this are horrifying indeed to contemplate -- but even more horrifying is the revelation that comes towards the story's climax, as Lud is tearing itself apart and Blaine is killing its inhabitants. I won't tell you what it is, but if you're a loyal King reader, the sheer adrenaline rush of "Oh, no! Not HIM!" that you will experience makes all that came before mere prologue. You realize, with a sinking feeling, that the stakes have just been raised immmeasurably, and that not only are Roland and his compatriots in grave danger, the road they're on has just gotten that much harder. Simply put (and that's a first for me), The Waste Lands is the second-best book in this great series, just behind Wizard and Glass. You can just feel King gearing up for something big here, and I for one can't wait. |