Roland, Eddie, and Odetta, now known as Susannah, find themselves in the ravaged city of Lud but before continuing on their journey upon the maniacal train that will lead them beyond the Waste Lands, they must have one more from Roland’s past to be drawn to their ka-tet.

From The Flap: The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands follows The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three as the third volume in this remarkable series, which well may be the most extraordinary and most imaginative cycle of tales in the English language. Inspired in part by Robert Browning's narrative poem, Stephen King has written once again of his twenty-year affair with The Dark Tower and its strange world that is both so familiar and unfamiliar to us. Writing of his masterwork, King reveals that he is ". . .still able to find Roland's world when I set my wits to it, and it still holds me in thrall. . .more, in many ways, than any of the other worlds I have wandered in my imagination." The first volume in the cycle, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, tells of the haunting, mysterious character of Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger, in a world that has "moved on." A second volume, The Drawing of the Three, picks up Roland's quest upon a deserted beach of the Western Sea. In The Waste Lands, we are joined with old acquaintances: the boy Jake who has been introduced in The Gunslinger, along with Eddie Dean and Susannah, who are so prominently featured in The Drawing of the Three. Roland's strange odyssey continues. There are new evils. . .new dangers to threaten Roland's little band in the devastated city of Lud and the surrounding waste lands, as well as horrific confrontations with Blaine the Mono, the piratical Gasher, and the frightening Tick-Tock Man. The Dark Tower cycle continues to set its author on a plane apart. What lands, what peoples has Stephen King visited that are so unreachable to us except in the pages of his unique writings?

Synopsis: Part III of an epic saga. Roland and his companions, Eddie and Susannah Dean, find the Path of the Beam that will lead them to the Dark Tower. Along the way, Roland adds two new members to his ka-tet (a group united for a specific purpose). In the decaying city of Lud, they encounter new dangers, including a sentient train that has gone insane.

At the age of 19 Stephen decided he would like to write an epic similar to The Lord of the Rings. The “spaghetti Westerns” of that time and a poem written by Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” became the inspiration for his magnum opus. The series written and published separately over a period of 22 years consists of seven books and the short story, “The Little Sisters of Eluria” published in his short story collection, Everything’s Eventual.

From Author's official site, www.stephenking.com