The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands characters

Appears from the start

The last gunslinger of Gilead, leading his new companions inland on the quest for the Dark Tower. Hard, patient, and deadly, he has begun teaching Eddie and Susannah the gunslinger's craft. As this book opens he is troubled by a growing madness: two contradictory memories of the boy Jake war in his mind, threatening to tear his sanity apart.

Appears from the start

A young man from late-twentieth-century New York whom Roland drew into his world through a magic door. A recovering heroin addict, quick-witted and sharp-tongued, he has become a gunslinger-in-training in Roland's ka-tet and is in love with Susannah. He is discovering a talent for carving and for the deeper workings of the quest.

Also known as Odetta Holmes, Detta Walker

Appears from the start

A woman from 1960s New York, drawn into Roland's world through a door and made whole out of a once-divided self. She uses a wheelchair, having lost her legs before she came, and is fierce, clever, and devoted to Eddie. She is learning the gunslinger's way and carries the strength of the hard past that shaped her.

Appears from the start

A boy from a version of New York who once traveled with Roland and died in the mountains beneath the man in black's chase. His fate and Roland's memory of him have become tangled and painful. In his own world, a boy who feels he does not belong there is likewise being pulled toward Mid-World, and reuniting the two threads is one of this book's central aims.

First appears in chapter 2

A billy-bumbler, a small, clever animal of Mid-World that resembles a cross between a raccoon, a dog, and a badger, and can echo human speech. Gentle and loyal, he attaches himself to Jake and becomes a beloved member of the traveling company.

First appears in chapter 4

A sentient monorail train, the last of its kind, that runs across the poisoned waste lands from the ruined city of Lud. Vastly intelligent and dangerously unstable, it takes a cruel delight in riddles and offers passage only on terms that put the travelers' lives at stake.