Reviews - The Waste Lands | The StoryGraph

2.64k reviews for:

The Waste Lands

Stephen King

4.19 AVERAGE

branwynn77's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

After hating The Drawing of the Three, this one pleasantly surprised me. Guess I'll continue.

read_with_elle's review against another edition

3.0

dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

abbyness101's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

cheval6's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

This book begins to make sense of the meaning behind "the world has moved on." It's not so much post-apocalyptic as it is just... degraded. Roland's world is a broken one, and as the Tower becomes slightly more comprehensible you can't help but wonder if it's the cause or an effect of the strange corruption of the world. We also learn that

the survival of both Roland's and our universe may very well depend on the success of the quest to the End-World

. This makes sense. Not only are there commonalities between Roland's world and our own (we know this), but we see further that

at some point, it was a world much like ours but even more advanced before the world moved on

. There's just a couple holdups I have. One negative for me is that I'm still not wholly convinced of Eddie and Susannah's relationship. To me, much of the romance felt forced. Not to say it's not or can't be there, but I don't feel that their romance is convincing. It makes sense, certainly, but since it began in the last book I've just felt it hard to believe from the writing. But that's not why I love the story anyways. Another thing is the scene where

Susannah is raped by the demon

. That in particular really was gross. I understand the similarity with the Oracle in book 1, and how it was necessary to include

a similar demon for Jake's drawing

, but it was just very uncomfortable and probably could have been handled in a way that wasn't that. Otherwise, I really liked this book and I'm already scrambling to start Wizard and Glass.

Content Warnings

janniekvds's review against another edition

5.0

Ongelofelijk weer. Had nooit kunnen bedenken dat ik zo enthousiast zou worden van een boekenserie, maar “the world has moved on since then” :)
- “My Understanding of Truth” zat zo goed in elkaar.
Stephen King blijft ook maar mooie quotes gooien;
- “You’re not afraid of the great world, Eddie, but of the small one inside yourself”
- “You put them in a room with six doors, they’ll still walk into the walls. And then have the nerve to bitch about it”
- “You have forgotten the face of your father”
- “Only a fool believes he’s dreaming before he wakes up”