Song of Susannah

The Dark Tower: Book VI

Finally, the players are in play and the stories are moving forward! The ka-tet is separated as they travel through the Unfound Doo, so the novel follows three separate storylines.

In the central story line, Susannah's body has been hijacked by the Mia personality, who is ready to give birth. Mia has dragged them to New York City, where she has made a deal to hand over the baby to the the Man in Black, who will then use the baby to destroy the Dark Tower once and for all.

At the same time, in a parallel universe, Roland and Eddie need to save the property where the rose is growing, but are confronted with the same mafia hunchmen they've already killed. They escape and eventually convince Calvin Tower to hand the property with the rose over to them. Not sure what to do next, they follow the path of the beam to find the alcoholic author Stephen King who has been writing their story, but stopped out of fear for his life. Roland and Eddie convince him to start again before leaving.

Father Callahan and Jake (and Oy) get the least page time in this novel. They basically follow Susannah's trail around New York City until they come across the place where Mia is having her baby surrounded by the forces of evil. The novel ends with them storming the building, guns drawn, prepared to die if necessary. (There's also a brief postscript in which the reader finds out that Stephen King has died before finishing Roland's story.)

Alright, enough plot summary for now.

This book definitely moved forward, in terms of plot, more than any of the other books. (Sure, "Wolves of the Calla" had a lot of action, but the ka-tet only inched towards their goal in the end.) The fractured narrative - jumping between the three groups - helped break up the monotony that sometimes dragged the other novels down. Before the reader could be bored with one story line, the book jumped to the next story.

As usual with Stephen King, there was a lot of description and internal monologue that could have been cut down to make the novel more efficient. At several points, Susannah thinks to herself about how awful her situation is - as if the readers couldn't already figure that out. There were also whole scenes describing things that could have been resolved in a paragraph or so. For example, I'm not sure why Calvin Tower needed to argue with Roland for fifty pages (exaggerated only slightly) about handing over the property, but eventually Roland got what he wanted and that hiccup did not effect the plot in any way.

I'm not sure where the series is going from here. This book ended on a major cliffhanger, but the next book looks so massive as to be intimidating. I'm glad this segment ended where it did, though. It stopped just before it became intolerable.

I'll be taking a deep breath before diving into the final novel. At this point, I'm hooked, and I can't wait to find out where the Path of the Beam leads Roland and his ka-tet in the end.