King also manages to take a well-known children’s story and turn it into something scary and nasty. But there they must go to continue their journey towards the tower. Unfortunately this path leads them to the city of Lud, a city torn apart by war. Everything is draw to the tower so the path is easy to follow when it has been found. …/ The thing is … /…/ I associate it with rabbits.’ Later in the book he does come out and names Adams as well as Watership Down but I loved the sly humor in this scene. As soon as I read the name Shardik, I knew it was a nod to Richard Adams and King plays it very cool, letting Eddie say: ‘I know that name, but I can’t place it. It is definitely a force to be reckoned with, as the trio finds out. We get the pleasure of meeting the giant bear Shardik. The tower has guardians: huge, creepy half animal half robot creatures. It has changed, grown bigger and is at the same time slowly dying. In this novel, we get more glimpses and hints about what has happened to Roland’s world. And in the corner of his eye, there’s a boy there. Eddie starts having weird dreams, dreams about a haunted house he remembers from his childhood. These two strands of memories are pulling Roland apart in such a devastating way that he freely hands over his gun and knife, knowing that he might hurt Eddie and Susannah if he looses it completely – and still caries weapons.īut a ka-tet is nothing if not bound together by destiny and the members may be linked in more ways than they first thought. Did Jake exist or not, did he die or not.

This creates a paradox and now Roland has two sets of memories.

Roland saved Jake from being killed in our world, thus preventing Jake from going to Roland’s world and dying there. His mind is constantly arguing with itself about the boy Jake who travelled with Roland in The Gunslinger and was killed. Roland teaches them the ways of the gunslinger to prepare them for whatever lies ahead – but also because he is slowly going mad. After the gathering of Susannah and Eddie in The Gathering of the Three, Roland’s ka-tet is to all appearances finished and the three set off for the Dark Tower.

The waste lands king