Close to finishing. Pausing again to capture a few thoughts. Roland is imminently about to rescue Jake from the Tick-Tock Man and Eddie and Susannah are in the cradle of Blaine the Mono.

1. Blaine is an interesting archetype in the age of LLMs and emerging AI technologies. It is an extrapolation of technology gone insane, how it becomes essentially the Demon of Lud, an intelligence that has surpassed its programming and descended into addiction. It continues the theme of duality resolved in the arcs of Susannah, Roland, and Jake. Here the presence of Little Blaine, the remnant docility of the original program.

2. I didn’t see it before, but it seems another theme is how each member of the New York ka-tet seems to be finding their purpose beyond the expectations set by their environments. Each characters drawing into Roland’s alien world represents the struggle of starting anew and seductive comfort of familiarity. Eddie is the best illustration of this as his former heroin addiction and fear pull him backwards into old thought patterns, but ultimately allow him to see those patterns where other members of the ka-tet can’t. In other words, his liability becomes an asset.

3. Roland, in contrast, is set in his purpose and guiding the others to suit it. The backstory to his motive is coming up in the next book, but I can already see how his experience in Mejis and the death of Susan Delgado informs his perception that the nexus of existence, the Dark Tower, is sick and crumbling.