Free The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy by Bev Vincent Page A

River Crossing; Porla; the Church of the Blood Everlasting; the Big Empty; Elizabeth, New Jersey; Send Bridge; Fifth Avenue (Lud); Street of the Turtle; Cradle of Lud; the Plaza of the Cradle; Kashmin; Send Basin Nuclear Plant; West River Barony; Candleton; Rilea; the Falls of the Hounds; Dasherville; End-World; the Hall of the Grandfathers.
    Things: Old Star (Apon), Old Mother (Lydia), Great Book, docker’s clutch, gunslinger’s catechism, Mir, Shardik, Guardians of the Beam, slow mutants, North Central Positronics, portals, Watch Me, Speaking Demon, the Drawers,
ka-tet
,
tet
, Beams,
Charlie the Choo-Choo
,
Riddle-De-Dum!
, Sombra Real Estate, the rose, Mid-World RailwayCompany, Charlie (train), lobstrosities,
khef
, billy-bumblers, gunslinger burritos, the Oracle, David, Keflex, wheel, the White,
graf
, dockey, Sellian,
Watership Down
,
khef-mate
, char, younkers, Fair-Day Riddling, Winter, Wide Earth, Sowing, Mid-Summer, Full Earth, Reaping, Year’s End, wenberry, Old War, Great Fire, Cataclysm, Great Poisoning, LaMerk Foundry, mandrus, grenado, cradle,
sigul
, dipolar circuits, unipolar circuits, firedim tubes, transitive circuits, the Imperium, slo-trans engines, way-gog.
    Continuity Errors and Mistakes: Susannah’s mother’s name is Sarah in this book, whereas it was Alice before. Eddie’s sister was Selena in
The Drawing of the Three
, but now it’s Gloria. Co-Op City is really in the Bronx, not in Brooklyn. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is on the east side of Central Park, not near Times Square.
    Crossovers to Other Works:
Rose Madder
, the book published immediately after
The Waste Lands
, refers to the bodies hanging from poles in Lud. Richard Fannin is another aspect of Randall Flagg from
The Stand
. He forces the Tick-Tock Man to adulate him in the words of Trashcan Man: My life for you.
    Foreshadowing and Spoilers: The fact that the knees Jake scraped in his dream were scraped when he awoke is a sign that he went todash. Susannah’s sexual encounter with the demon in the Speaking Circle will have far-reaching implications for the future of the
ka-tet
. Jake’s key has the same hypnotic power as a certain turtle figurine that will appear later in the series. Aunt Talitha’s cross will play a part in the story, too, and might even end up where she intended. The array of colored lights inside the Tick-Tock Man’s lair is reminiscent of the oriel window atop the Dark Tower. “The wheel which turns our lives is remorseless; always it comes around to the same place again” is as close to a thematic statement as there is in the series. When Eddie asks Roland to tell them how he learned about the Dark Tower in the first place, Roland responds that it’s a very long story that he will tell only once. This sets the stage for
Wizard and Glass
. Calvin Tower and Aaron Deepneau will become important secondary characters in the series starting with
Wolves of the Calla
.

W IZARD AND G LASS
: R EGARD

    T hough King promised in the afterword to
The Waste Lands
that the fourth volume in the series would appear in the not-too-distant future, years passed with no sign that he had returned to the series. Many of his other novels had Dark Tower tie-ins, though, so the series was clearly on his mind. As early as 1994, he expressed a plan to write the final four books back-to-back to finish the series.
    The fans grew increasingly demanding. Every week, his assistants put on his desk all the angry letters he received demanding the next book in the series. One of the more creative pleas had a Polaroid of a teddy bear in chains, threatening to execute the bear unless King released the next Dark Tower book. At once. In 1996, he promised fans they would have to wait only another year or so. He simply had to summon his courage to start. Plus he had to review the first three novels, armed with a highlighter and sticky notes.
    He started writing in motel rooms while driving from