Read: The Waste Lands–the rest of “Bear and Bone”

Looks like King finally figured out what his series was about, as this section of Book Three concludes with a wholly unabashed infodump about the decaying nature of space-time in Roland’s world. Not to put too fine a point on it, but just like telling us Roland’s going crazy in the introduction and then having Roland himself spell out “I’m going crazy” rather than showing us, this is some weak storytelling. I guess it’s supposed to have a “Council of Elrond” feel, but instead it feels like what it probably was–King suddenly realizing why Roland needed to get to the Dark Tower after years of writing about the journey. Here we see the big problem with the “make it up as you go along” school of epic fantasy writing.

I did like the robots, though, and the abandoned machinery. It kind of reminded me of how creepy the air raid siren was in the old Rod Taylor The Time Machine–a machine that has outlived its purpose (and its makers) by so long that it loses, for lack of a better word, context can be very disconcerting, sad, frightening. Even this section, though, seemed overwritten, intent on telegraphing just how disconcerted and saddened and frightened the characters were rather than allowing these emotions to unfold before us.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 10:20 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.