Hello everyone, I'm Rocky Norman, and this is Zero Fanasis, the podcast for fans of everything. Welcome. Today I'm joined by Matt Hamm to talk about The Wastelands, the third book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. We talk about King's decision to bring Jake back into the story, the world building that brings Midworld to life, and how we feel about the cliffhanger that ends the book.
Matt and I are almost halfway through this epic, and we are still enjoying the books. It was great to talk to him about it again. On to the discussion. Hello everyone, I'm here again with Matt Hamm to talk about our journey to the Dark Tower.
Matt, how are you? I'm fantastic. This is two books, essentially. One, a harrowing tale to bring a boy from one universe to another.
And the second one is trying to survive a bunch of hillbillies that live in a crazy supercomputer city. And loves riddles! Don't forget that it loves riddles. Well, we haven't gotten to riddles yet, technically.
They've gone back and forth a couple of times with riddles. I guess that's fair. It is, they're like test riddles, but in the, we get. That's kind of like feeling each other out, I think, Blaine, basically.
Stephen King was like, I don't feel like actually coming up with any good riddles for this book. Next book we'll have a good riddle. Have you started the next one yet, Matt? I haven't.
Okay then, we'll see. You'll see about that. Yeah, we are, we are discussing The Dark Tower 3, The Wastelands, the third book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, in which, like Matt said, it is kind of split into two, where the first half is basically getting Jake into Midworld. And then the second half is kind of getting the ka-tet closer to the Dark Tower along the beams.
Through the second part, it's really more of an exploration of Midworld and what the current state of it is. And yeah, the dead city of Lud, or I think it's Lud. Lud is, I like Lud more. Yeah, same.
I like this. I don't remember if they specify how it, how it actually is pronounced. But this, the, the, The Wasteland comes out in 1991, four years after the end of Dark Tower 2. It starts just a few weeks after the end of the second book, where we have Roland, Susanna, Eddie, uh kind of trying to find their way to the Dark Tower, but we find that Roland is losing his mind.
He's very heavily losing his mind before he even gives his guns away. Yeah, which that, and that is the moment where you're like, you are, you're, uh, you start to realize, Oh, this is serious. This is not for Roland to give up his revolvers. I mean, he gives up one.
Uh, I think he gives up one earlier because his one hand is just not fast enough anymore because he's lost the fingers, but then he gives up his other gun and you're like, Oh, he is leaving himself unarmed. And that, that's, that's, uh oh, Roland sees the writing on the wall. He is, he thinks he might be dangerous. So he is willing to do this because he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to, uh give up, you know, he doesn't want to hurt the other, you know, people, the other members of his, of his team, basically.
Um, what do you think of it, Matt? I really enjoyed it. I thought it was too long. Uh, I really think that they could have split this book into two books and just, uh, you know, I spent a little more time with each one and it would have been a little more enjoyable because then you would have had a couple of books that are probably about 250 pages, uh, maybe 300 and you could spend a little more time.
I think the adventure to bring Jake over was an appropriate amount of the time. I feel like them exploring, uh, Lud and the little village outside of it and getting to know Blaine and basically what happened. They could have spent a little more time with that and we could have learned a little bit more about, you know, Midworld. Uh, and that would have been a little more enjoyable than trying to cram it all into one really long book.
I want you to keep, keep taking note, Matt, of what you just said. I enjoyed it, but it was too long. I know that the next one's get even longer. I'm well aware of that, Markly.
Yeah. Yeah, that's, and that's where you're, that's where it kind of, yeah, that is my memory, basically, of what I feel of the entirety of the Dark Tower series is. I like it a lot. It's too long.
And I think, I don't know if I think that necessarily about this book. Um, I, I think it is long. There, there's no doubt about that. Stephen King at this point mostly writes long books.
Yeah. I, I think I actually would have liked less time with Jake, frankly, and the, the... Right, okay. When I say, as I said, the first part of the book feels like it is the appropriate length and maybe a little less.
I would have liked more time with Susanna and Eddie getting to know Roland and less time with Jake and his world because it seems to be the same stuff over and over with them. Yeah, and I think, I think, I mean, I think that's, that's kind of, like, I, I like getting to know Jake in Jake in his, because, you know, the Jake we meet in the first book is kind of a confused mess. Because he comes over and he doesn't know what's going on, and he just, he just left his life, left, left his life behind. And he doesn't know why he's there.
All he knows is he is being shepherded around by this gunslinger. And ultimately gets sacrificed by the gunslinger. And this Jake is more, more full-formed, uh, more, more of the actual character. We see him in his real life, in, in, in our world, and how he is a, you know, rich kid and how he wants, he doesn't, you know, he's kind of a loner and et cetera, et cetera.
And how he is starting to go crazy, mirroring, mirroring Roland's descent into madness, Jake himself is also feeling like he's losing his mind because he is split in two as well. They both are suffering through this weird paradox. Where, I actually thought it was a really interesting way to go on King's part that it's not possible for, you know, Jake to have come to Midworld and met Roland and then Roland to have abandoned Jake, uh, to get to Man in Black. And then, of course, Roland goes back in time, essentially, and saves Jake.
And it was really interesting the way he, uh, posited that, oh, that would cause some kind of weird confusion because it's obvious that the Dark Tower is the center of all universes and there are lots of different universes. But it seems that, at least as far as we can tell at this point, Jake, Susanna, and Eddie are all from our world and Roland is from Midworld and those are the only two we really get to experience so far. So the fact that, you know, that had changed through the time travel of the doors, makes it, obviously it's something that should have happened to them to, to, you know, fix this. And I thought it was really interesting how they went about fixing it, essentially.
Like, they had to bring Jake over so that they could, I don't know how they fixed it, but it did and it was very interesting and I felt satisfied by it. I mean, I think it's, I think it's, it could be, I mean, and this is, and this is, I think, it is a, it's a really strange gambit on King's part that could feel artificial. And artificial in a lot of different ways. And it could threaten to kind of isolate your readers, to kind of make them feel, uh, like this was just, I don't know, of artificial.
I'm trying to think of a good word. I keep going back to railroading, like we're playing D&D. But it feels like, it feels kind of like where he's forcing this narrative into this way and it doesn't feel natural because of, uh, I don't, I, it could easily be, oh, Roland feels guilty about sacrificing Jake in under, in the underground to the, to the moodies. And, well, we need to leave Roland's conscience, so Jake comes back.
Essentially, yeah. Like, it could have been, he could have gone another way. He could have said, oh, Jake's not part of this. We'll meet somebody else that basically takes Jake's place.
Uh, and Roland will have to get over the guilt that he felt. That would have probably been a more interesting way of going about it. But honestly, this book, our other book series already has magic doors that lead to different parts of the past. And, uh, you know, Roland was sitting there for 10 years, uh, after his talk with the Man in Black.
I'm not gonna, you know, cheat them out of, you know, the weird crap that's already going on. No, I mean, and I think that bringing Jake back in and having it be one way for us to, to explore Jake's life as a character, which is the part I actually like. Um, I like the, I don't necessarily like all the, But then Jake again would have never died in the first place. And I think that's an interesting, leaving that question open in the reader's mind.
But then also, I think we get Eddie having to be the hero, sort of, in sometimes the time. Well, that's one of the things about Eddie's character is that he does not have to play the hero very often in this particular group of people, at least until Jake shows up, because both Susanna and Roland are tougher people than Eddie. I mean, we've seen that over and over again. You know, Eddie's a junkie.
Eddie had to beat that, essentially. And, you know, he's got some steel in him, but it's not something we see a lot until this book. And in book two, you know, you saw him struggling, and Roland was the steel, and Eddie was the pliable one. And in this book, Eddie gets a couple chances to shine, but he also gets to be not quite the heart of the team, because that's obviously Jake's spot.
But he gets to be the more creative one, the one that can relate to people a little better than Susanna and Roland. And I think for the first time, we see him have to find that steel without his brother and to rely on himself, and completely on himself. Not on Roland, not on his brother, not even on Susanna. He has to make this key, and he has to do it off of his own intuition and his own skill.
Yeah, I thought one of the great things about the first half of this book is Eddie overcoming that little voice inside of him that was basically a mix of him and his brother telling him that he couldn't do something and having to realize that, no, I can do something. And he was able to overcome it and craft that key the way it was supposed to be. I think that was a watershed moment in his character. And, like, we don't get a lot of Eddie and Susanna in this.
They're there, and they certainly are useful, but it is a lot of Jake, for the most part, and world building. And there is, there's still that, there is still that schism between the two of, like, Eddie and Susanna love each other. They are technically married, you know, Roland marries them, or whatever. Yeah, exactly.
So they're married, and they love each other, clearly, but there is still a schism, and like you said, Matt, there's a seal that's within Susanna that is not in Eddie. And there is a kind of determination in Susanna that is not in Eddie. There is more of Roland in Susanna than there is in Eddie. Well, I would actually say that they together basically make one Roland, because Susanna has the gumption, the toughness, the steel that is in Roland.
I think Eddie has the creativity that Roland often surprises us with. Towards the end of the book, when Roland gets up to, you know, confront Blaine the monorail, you see that he's tough, he's calm, he's cool, he's collected. But what he says seems to be more something that Eddie would come up with than Susanna would. Like, Susanna is good at being tough and doing what's necessary, but she's not good at creativity, and I think that's why her and Eddie make a great pair, because they complement each other, and together they can be a gunslinger in a way that, you know, each of them apart could not be.
And I think Eddie is still facing, I think Eddie is still confronting the fact that he is not going to go home. And that… Right. And I think he, among everyone, hates the idea of Ka. He hates the idea that something is telling him he should be doing this, because it reminds him of his brother.
And Roland is 100% on board with his fate. He understands, I need to go to the Dark Tower, and I need to do whatever is necessary to do it. He doesn't question it. And for the most part, Eddie and Susanna are on board until the section on Jake.
But I think Eddie is the one who's questioned it the most. Right. And, like, there's a moment, I like this, I really liked it, and this is after this is fairly early, this is where they are fighting the, uh, after they kill the giant bear, robot bear, cyborg bear, I guess. Giant, giant, well, yeah, I think it's, it's more a robot, because I don't think there's anything really organic about it.
It just happened to bleed something like blood. I mean, it had a solid spike on the back of its head. I thought it was, like, mixed, like, uh, like a… Well, I would think that tube would live for thousands of years. Organic tissue just doesn't survive that long.
The, the, the, the robot parts may keep the organic stuff going. I mean, I guess if you figure that out, that's the key to cybernetics right there, so maybe you're right. Yeah, and you see, like, there's maggots in there. What are the maggots eating?
That's true. Maggots would be eating, you know, the organic tissue, which is rotting, so I say that's, I think eventually, I think it is the combination of the two degrading together that makes the bear go crazy, which is, and the bear is a guardian, uh, which we'll discover, you know, with the guardians. We discover what the guardians are. It's another little piece of world building in here.
And I was like, well, they were fighting the bear. They killed the bear, and then there's the little robot helpers, the little other robots that try and attack them. And Eddie struggles, man. This is before he is able to create that, create the key and save, help save Jake.
And he, he says, what if I told you, you know, they struggle. Eventually they, they kill the robots, and everyone's fine, for the most part. And Eddie's kind of rankled at the idea that Roland put him on the spot to try and save their lives. You know, he, he basically, you know, the robot little robots are charging, and Roland basically made Eddie either, you know, engage Eddie's fight or flight and didn't give him warning about it.
He just made him do it. And Susanna totally accepts this. She's like, it's part of your training. It's part of becoming a gunslinger.
You know, gunslingers have to be ready at any moment. They can't hesitate, ever. And Eddie's like, what if I don't wanna be a gunslinger? And Roland's like, well, I'd say that what you want doesn't much matter.
Which is one of the things that Eddie is not quite 100% prepared to accept, but he's getting closer to there, because that's one of the things that we learn in this book is his journey towards accepting, you know, what is going to happen to him and what is it going to require of him. Right. And I think, yeah, we're, we're getting more there, but I, that's not going to go away. There's never, I don't think Eddie is always gonna be the more questioning, you know, of everyone in the group.
He is gonna be the guy who's skeptical, who is, who questions his place in this, who questions his role as a gunslinger, even though that's what all of these people are, even poor little Oi, you know. They're all poor little Oi. I love Oi. Oi's good.
Uh, Billy Bumbler. Gotta love the Billy Bumblers. Um, and if it wasn't for Oi, Jake would have been dead. Exactly.
He's important. There's, like, like, I mean, Roland saw it. He's like, well, there's, you know, everything happens for a reason, Ka-tet, all that stuff. You know, if, if, if there, if for some reason this strange Billy Bumbler loves you and wants to follow you along, there's probably a reason for it.
Well, let him, let him tag along. He doesn't take up that much food. He seems pretty smart. Um, but we get Jake finally back into Midworld with the Ka-tet.
And, yeah, we, and I, we already mentioned, Eddie is the one who carves the key to open the door between the worlds in the weird haunted house that comes alive. Yeah, I thought that was one of the weirdest things. Like, oh, so, in the real world, there's magic and weird creatures now? Okay.
I mean, I think it's, it's the kind of thing that, uh, where it's bleeding over, and it's in any place where the, between the worlds are, there's, and it's not like our world doesn't have magic. It's just that we haven't tapped into it. I mean, do we, do we really see that much magic? I feel like it's barely there in, uh, what we've seen so far.
Oh, there's, I mean, there's not much. And I think that's, that's on purpose. I mean, I think it's always, and I think that that, the idea of magic in any of Stephen King's books, it's always on the peripheral. It's always on the outside edges of things, you know?
And most people only glimpse it once or twice in their entire lives. And most of the times they don't even realize it. And usually it's something weird. Yeah, they think it's just some odd, you know, déjà vu.
It's, you know, it's just some nothing they didn't think about for more than a, you know, a minute. They go, oh, well, they dismiss it because it would break their worldview if they suddenly realized that whatever they just Well, I see King where he likes to add in the sexual overtones because of because one, it is kind of integral to the human experience, and two, it does make it feel weirder. It makes you, you know, expand your kind of like kind of feelings a lot. And I and I appreciate that, you know, and it's I think my tastes have, you know, gone towards he uses it a little too much at times, but I think it feels appropriate to me in this in this instance, and one, and they win.
Odetta wins, Susanna wins, they bring Jake over. This is a victory, you know, it's not for nothing, basically. No one besides the Incubus is really harmed by it. Exactly, and as Susanna later on does, uses her, you know, smarts and stuff, or at least knowledge of prime numbers.
Yeah. Later on. She doesn't, she gets, Susanna is way, there gets more and more Susanna as we go. There's even the song of Susanna, one of the books, it's called The Song of Susanna, could give you a hint about what that book is focused on.
But it is, you know, that is the segue into that second part, the part you talked about earlier, you mentioned earlier, where we learn a little bit more about Midworld and what happened there, and what was in the world before, because they go to the little town, which I, I really like the little town. I literally like the little town. I really like all the weird old old people there. Oh, totally agreed.
I thought that was a great way to learn more about what the gunslingers meant to this culture and to, you know, how people have seemed to have continued to exist and that there's everyone seems old. There's like no young people anywhere in this world, which means that not only is Midworld on its way out, but it's it's gotten there within the last, you know, 60 years. Yeah, it's been dying for a very long time, and it's just this is literally the last gasp. This is the end.
And like that is why Jake is targeted, is because what a young, a child, still? How? It's a miracle, sort of. He's so precious, a resource.
But in that town, we get, I, I really, I really, I like the old people. They're definitely a kind of a deference to the gunslinger. He is like a travel. He's like a priest.
He's like a he's like a holy symbol to them. He is a knight and a relic of the old world. Basically, yeah, he's a wandering knight errant, essentially, or a samurai. He comes up and he, you know, dispenses a little justice.
He, you know, blesses your town and then moves on. And it's something that apparently used to be fairly common in the world and now isn't, so that people revere him even more than they did. And they're they they call him the white. And it, I mean, it's incredibly clear reference to Lord of the Rings with Gandalf, right?
And, like, and Stephen King is old and like, as I said, like, it's in the very the the the foreword to the very first book, he's like, I read Lord of the Rings and I I wanted to write that, but with but with the the good, the bad, the ugly. I wanted to mix and I wanted to mix those two things and make something new out of it. And it's very clear, like, oh yeah, this is that this is what kind of the Force Roland is. He is this Gandalf.
He is this knowledgeable, powerful figure that is driven by, and, and not by, in Gandalf's case, he's driven by wanting to eradicate Sauron. But in Roland's case, it is it feels a little bit more sinister with Roland. Well, yeah, because Roland is a single-minded person whose only goal is to find the Dark Tower. So in all the interactions with him, you have to remember that.
Like you gotta remember that he has basically forced this quest on Eddie and Susanna and Jake. And we get a little bit more insight into the technology that used to exist and the weird, you know, and there are kind of reports from what what's in Lud and the two, the two monorails going in and out the out of different directions. Uh, you know, and they don't really know computers that seem to last forever. Yes.
Oh, that was very interesting. Oh, they're slow trans or whatever they call their technology. Like, oh, really good computers will last for thousands of years. Can we have some?
I mean, again, this is, it's not like it's perfect. There are. It's not perfect, no, but things seem to last a lot longer from the civilization that built a lot of these things. And I know we're not there yet, but hopefully someday we will.
Yeah, I mean, they don't remember how, I mean, to them, it is magic. You know, that to them, the computers and the monorails and all that stuff, it's just that it's just kind of magic weakening. That's how they explain all of this stuff. They're just like, Oh yeah, it used to be really powerful magic and now it's dying.
Just like everything else. You know, it's not weird to the people of this little town and or even to the people of Lud. They are beyond, they're past the point of questioning or even understanding any any of their own history. Roland is the exception to all this.
Roland is the guy who's like, no, it's the world is moving on. Things are falling apart, but he doesn't ascribe, like the supernatural to it. It is simply another thing to be conquered, basically. Right.
And I, Stephen King doesn't, he does not King does not try and like, want you to think too much about like, Oh yeah, the computers are old. They shouldn't work at all. He's just like, Oh, the computers are old, so they're starting to act a little funky and then causing the AI that run this a whole system to go insane because that's how computers work in this world. Well, I mean, I think it's my here's, this is how I resolve all this.
The AI, and they talk about this, they kind of mentioned how like the AI was has been alone for a long time. And what are they what are the AI killed themselves by crashing into the river? And, you know, at a certain point, these, if they are true AI, they are a bit alone. They have no one to talk to.
And that solitary confinement for a thousand years will absolutely make you go crazy. And I would say that they have systems that allow them to, you know, rebuild themselves and to refresh their computer chips and their all the parts and keep them from falling apart and replace all the whatever. They probably have restores and little robots. You see the robots, you know, that are helping the and take care of the bear.
Those are all like little maintenance spots, I'm assuming. Yeah, one thing I really appreciated about the technology as the, you know, the old ones created it was that they got their technology to the point where not only was it so incredibly reliable that would last for thousands of years, but they could shape it into whatever shapes that seemed whimsical to them. Like, Oh, you have, you know, robots shaped like bats and bears and whatever. And they did that without thinking about how it would affect it because they give their technology was strong enough to last and to could take any form they really wanted.
Because, you know, if you look at a lot of technology we have today, a lot of it is designed to look pretty or designed to function well, but usually one of those comes at the expense of the other. Like the technology is hampered in some way by the design. So obviously these great old ones or whoever made all this technology had even gotten to the point where the function works so well that the form could be molded heavily. I think that speaks to how good they were at it.
Yeah. And I mean, I think that's, I think that's kind of implied by the I think there is an air of the fact that not, it's not just Roland or not just, it's like the world, everyone in Midworld that we were that the inhabitants of this place were overproud and, and, and suffered because of it and that they didn't do enough to forestall this this end. Especially the whole technology thing, because, you know, obviously they had this wonderful magic technology and somehow the knowledge of everything about it was lost. And I think that's one of the things King worries about in any novel he has where he worries about the future is that humanity will forget how all these things work.
And it's actually, it's probably an issue that we should probably, you know, think about in our world because very few people know how almost any really advanced technology works. It takes, you know, dozens, hundreds, thousands of people to get one tiny little piece of technology to work the way we expect it to. And I think that's one of the things that he was worried about when writing this. Yeah.
I mean, it's a kind of a, it is the entropic nature of life about how everything will degrade if you do not keep it keep, keep fighting for it. You know, and I think that ultimately that is what Roland is fighting against. That's why Roland goes to the dark tower. He doesn't know necessarily what's there, but he knows that if he gets there, he can reverse, reverse this.
He can fix this somehow. He has just, he has this, you know, like you said, the drive, unyielding drive to fix it. And he knows if he gets Like a giant bear robot. You know, why would they do that?
Why would they have a giant turtle? Why would they have, you know, and all the different guardians, which are basically what? They make guardians that are all these giant robots that form different animals on all these sides of the beams that the world lays upon, basically. And it's, you know, I don't think we're supposed to think that it's so, these are so big of ideas and they're so obscure.
I think it is largely to give us the same feeling as, maybe not Roland, but certainly Eddie and Susanna and Jake, when they get there, they're just like, why would they do this? Like, what is happening? What world am I in where these weird bears are, there's a bear and why? And a monorail that has a name and an AI in it.
And why is it going crazy and kills everyone? And there's a feeling of like, again, the pride of like, oh well, maybe they did, they just did it to do it. I mean, given the quality of the Bereni class cab that they're in, I can kind of believe that. Although I don't know, I kind of wish that it would come out that, oh, you know, Blaine is some kind of ghost that had taken over the AI and merged with it or something weird like that.
That to me seems more believable than AI that just slowly goes insane. But you know, like you said, King is not a science fiction author at heart. He's a horror writer. Right.
I think it's very much like, well, if you took a person and you trapped them in a box for a thousand years with no one to talk to, they lose their mind. Right, but people aren't AIs. AIs aren't people. Again, this is not, this is not, this is not our AI.
This is, this is an AI from midworld. God knows what kind of technology they have. What capabilities. Weird temporal anomalies have affected them.
Well, that's certainly true. That is, that is that is everywhere. But we see them kind of do a first round of a battle with Blaine, Charlie the Choo Choo, as well. We meet, we have gasher, Kidnap Jake, and the quest to get, Roland's quest to get Jake back from the TikTok man.
And we get return of maybe the man in black. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. He basically picks up the TikTok man, a.k.a. Andrew Quick, and makes him into his henchman.
Which is, have you read The Stand? I forget. I have not, no. Okay, that is a parallel.
A parallel thing happens in The Stand where the man in black flag recruits a semi-insane person with a weird nickname. The same thing happens. I mean, the man in black definitely has that. I mean, between his, the weird pusher and, you know, the TikTok man, he really likes to pick up a henchman like that.
Yes, and then I think there is a, you know, there's a The persistence of the man in black is another trope, another, I don't want to trope it. It is a, uh, he is the, the character is persistent, and so is the role of the man in black. He is persistent throughout Stephen King's books. He's, he's true.
I was gonna say real quick, I, I wanted to point out the, the reversal that Stephen King does, because in most cases where you have a man in black who's very persistent, he is the one following you and you have to run forever and to keep up with him. And in, it seems to be at least in this case for Stephen King, uh, you are following the man in black trying to keep up with him. Like it's your persistence that's, you know, keeping him going. He's a constant.
And that is the, I think what makes him feel and feel weird, but also makes him feel like Roland. He persists, even as this world dies around him, the man in black persists. Doesn't matter what happens and how many times he dies, he keeps coming back and Roland persists. His world is dying.
His kingdom is gone forever. Everyone he's known is dead, disappeared. He's killed some of them. He's had to, but he persists.
He continues. So does the man in black. And that parallel between them colors both of them. You know, it colors the man in black as it makes it clear that he is some weird supernatural force, but because who has some weird ties to the dark tower and wants to keep Roland from it.
But Roland, because he also persists and because he's able to outpace the man in black largely, it makes him feel like this weird supernatural force, even though by all accounts, he is just a man. Roland is just a man, at least largely. And so, but sometimes he doesn't. He feels like a force of nature, much like the man in black does.
I don't know, that's kind of the charm of Roland, largely, is that he feels like more than a person. Well, yeah, he feels like, as we said before, a knight errant, one of, you know, King Arthur's knights, essentially. And I think the parallel with the man in black saying he's been called Merlin upon once upon a time, you know, he wasn't actually Merlin, is a good parallel to that, because we look at these people as the heroes of our world who went around righting wrongs. And it's interesting that Roland is not exactly that, because he's not righting wrongs necessarily.
Sometimes he does, but most of the time he's just on his path, trying his best to, you know, his quest for the Holy Grail, essentially. That's essentially what he is, is one of the Grail knights. And it's really interesting that he is a man, but because of his dedication and his training, he is more. And I think that's one of the preeminent heroes of human myth, is because of something like that, is the idea that, oh, all I have to do is be constant, persistent, and, you know, have a little bit of training, and I can be a superhero, because essentially what he is.
He's a superhero? Essentially, yeah. I mean, his abilities with a gun are basically superhuman, as we have seen. So, you want to see bullseye?
Oh, you had to go there. You just had to go there, didn't you? Yes, he's basically bullseye. He's not insane.
Bullseye's a sociopath. Roland is not a sociopath, even though sometimes it seems like he might. A little bit. Maybe a little bit.
That's one of the interesting things about this, is you see the environment which Roland grew up, and you see that he fits in well with that world. But to us, he would essentially be a sociopath. But in the world he grew up in, that was just normal. I mean, he is a member of the nobility.
He is a member of a very select class that is, he's an X-Man, actually. You know, he gets educated. Yeah, really, that's true. He's basically shipped away to, you know, live with a teacher who would, you know, work with him and show him what's going on.
Right. And we see the novel end with a cliffhanger, like an actual cliffhanger. Not like, you know, the past couple novels had ended, and they, but it feels like they've ended on, like, very satisfactory, like, boom. They've succeeded, and Roland has succeeded in finding the man in black.
Roland has succeeded in bringing Susanna and Eddie into his world. In this book, it ends, literally, they're on the train, and they're soaring hundreds of feet above a vast, toxic, terrible wasteland full of monsters and mutations that is beyond what an atomic war would create. It's not nuclear war that created this wasteland. It's kind of specified that.
It's something worse, which we don't. And I think what he's trying to get across is some kind of biological and chemical agent that caused this, because the thing about nuclear weapons is that it just destroys everything and leaves it in uninhabitable almost anything, whereas biological and chemical weapons, some life will survive. And that is kind of below them. And then they are basically, Blaine is challenging them and kind of taunting them.
And finally, you know, Roland puts his foot down. He's like, well, let's, let's do this. You know, it's a fun, I think it's a fun thing that Roland, he's like, well, I can't shoot this train man, this train AI or whatever. He doesn't necessarily know what it is.
But I can't have a real gun battle with it, but we can still do. But that's how it ends, Matt. How does that make you feel? I don't know.
I, I was glad to see it end because I thought, you know, this, there have been several good stopping points that we've just blown right past and it's pretty good book. I feel like this book has, it should have ended a while ago, so I was glad to see the ending, but it was really abrupt because I kept reading more and I was worried because, uh, you know, as we're recording this, I was actually reading this book up until a few hours ago because I thought, okay, something big is coming there in the middle of a big scene, something big is coming, and then it just stops when it gets kind of the riddles. I'm like, are they really gonna start the next book on riddles? That's a little strange.
Now I want you to imagine this, that you are, uh, you're your current age, but it's 199 It's so long. It's so long, and people love it. I don't understand. It's so long.
Um, I don't have anything else to add either. I still like the Dark Tower. I think it is like a lot of fantasy series where if you read them and you like them and you, you have you like Harry Potter or sort of Shannara or whatever, the Ringworld, as you read more of them, they're very long and you're you kind of get this love-hate relationship with them where you're like, well, I want it to end, but I need, but I still want to read more, but I need, I want it to end, and like you have this weird relationship, and I think that's, it's very fascinating with, you know, these long series of books. And this is also doubly interesting because Stephen King doesn't really do this aside from his, the series.
He writes almost exclusively standalone stuff, even if there are connections between the main connections and even if they really should be two books in the case of this end. This end should just be a shorter book, I think, but well, whatever. Um, but we'll, we'll be reading Dark Tower 4 and talk about it at some point. Um, not only his life is football games right now, so we don't, we can't do anything about that.
That's true, but they make good opportunities to read, so at least I can get started. There you go. Um, so if you guys want to, you can read along with us to get a head start on Dark Tower 4. You probably got a month or two before we're gonna record another episode about it.
Uh, you'll probably need all that time to read Dark Tower 4 because it's long. It's longer than 3. And it's not, luckily, they kind of, they kind of even out after that point. They're not, they're long until you get to the last book.
The last book is the longest. Um, but the rest of the books are, they don't get like exponentially incredibly longer and longer and longer. Well, that's good. Yes, that is good.
Um, but that'll do it for us. Matt, is there anything you'd like to plug? Uh, no, I can't really think of anything. This is really all I do.
What about the kitten Instagram? Oh, that's true. I suppose I could say, if you really enjoy cute kittens, you can check out kitten interns on Instagram, K-I-T-T-E-N-T-E-R-N-S, where you will see adorable kittens that are already available for adoption. Our newest little one is named Seven.
We found her in mile 6 of our run and had to bring her home. Therefore, she is seven because we couldn't actually get to seven miles. And she is adorable and needs a home. So follow that Instagram account.
Um, by the time this gets posted, Matt, that kitten will probably already be adopted, but you can hopefully, hopefully, but you should still follow Kitten Turns because there's a lot of cute kitten pictures on there. And who doesn't like cute kitten pictures. I mean, weirdos. Weirdos, precisely.
Uh, that'll do it for us. Matt, thank you for joining me. Thank you. Thanks again to Matt for joining me.
You can find me on Twitter at Robbie Norman. My website is Robinorman.com. You can find links there for my other podcasts and links to purchase my horror novels, including my newest novel Underneath. Underneath is my horror novel of frozen terror filled with suspense, paranoia, and body horror.
It's great for fans of The Thing or The Terror. The show's website is theopenassistance.com. You can follow our Facebook page at Facebook.com slash The Open Assist. If you like the show, please give a five-star review on Apple podcasts.
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