Hello everyone and welcome to the Stephen King cast, one man's musings on the works of Stephen King.

Each week I will review one entry in the bibliography of Stephen King and the chronological order of publication.

And with this week, I boarded a train that took me back to midworld to rejoin the rest of my content in Stephen King's third entry in the long-running Dark Tower series, The Wastelands.

When it comes to the Dark Tower entries, when you ask a tower junkie what their favorite is,

I think most people will respond with The Wastelands.

As I type this, I might have to agree.

The Wizarding Glass might edge it out, but still, I can see why this is everyone's

favorite.

This is King writing at Peak King.

At this point, he's battled his inner demons and has begun his stretch of sobriety, which

opens up new doors of creativity previously unseen.

More importantly, with the gunslinger functioning as the origin story for Roland

and Jake and the drawing of the three functioning as an origin story for Eddie and Susanna,

King doesn't have to spend time establishing his characters. He can simply let his previously

established characters go wild. With this one, he's able to take the brakes off and let this cart go careening down the tracks.

Furthermore, this is the novel where the promise of what these stories could be come true.

The world building is on point, and it's here where King introduces us to the central concepts

that have come to define the series,

such as the beams, the guardians, the rose, and the image of the tower standing in a field of roses.

This entry pulls the edges of this world, revealing that it's crazier and more lived in than we had previously thought.

Whereas with the Gunslinger, King had focused on the Western tropes.

Now here he goes crazy sci-fi.

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