I know a lot of people aren’t fans of this instalment in the Dark Tower series. I however, am definitely not part of those people. I honestly think this is my favourite book out of the whole series. Something about it just resonates with me! I think part of the reason I enjoy it so much is that it mostly focuses on Susannah and the farther we get into the series, the more I fall in love with her. She was my favourite character after my first read of this series and this remains true so many years later. There are some tiny details that bother me a bit, but nowhere near enough for it not to get 5 stars anyways. I especially love the addition of King into the story, I find it adds such an interesting dimension to the story and makes it that much greater. I could go on and on about how much I love this book and this series because it truly does get better with each read through. So many little details are popping out at me this time and it’s making me love this journey even more!

I continue to enjoy this series and can not wait to start reading the next book today!

(B+) 77% | Good
Notes: Nothing remarkable, but nothing terrible. Just a light aperitif to cleanse the palate and set the stage for the final tome.

“Their situation was becoming ever harder to deny: they were characters in someone's story.”
Stephen King, Song of Susannah

The Wolves of Calla have fallen, but so has the Ka-tet! Susannah is off with Mia,'the chap' AND Black Thirteen. Oy, Jake and Pere have gone one way and Roland and Eddie the other. With the fates of the vacant lot and The Rose therein, 'the chap', Black Thirteen, Calvin Tower and the journey to The Dark Tower itself all up for grabs, in different wheres and whens, the Kat-et have to fight, research and intuit to stay alive and progress, without the full support of each other! It's back, the trek to the Tower ratchets up a gear or two!

In a wilful and almost beautiful but demented writing binge, King provides 400+ gripping pages to cover just a a couple of days but several wheres and whens. There's some seriously good meta going on in this volume culminating with what I personally feel is one of the best chapters in the series, the last chapter of this book. The whole book has suddenly reminded everyone that time is short and to accompany that for the first time in the series there are no breathing spaces or scene setter, it's just go go go, and it works. At a point where my total admiration and love for the series was reigning, this brought it on track. I original handed this a 6 out of 12 in 2006, but now I have fuller context, this book is now an easy 9 out of 12!
Long days and pleasant nights.

Boa was war das für ein geiles Ende

**The Stephen King Goodreads Discussion Group is doing a re-read of his works from the beginning to the end. It’s been a long time since I have really immersed myself in Uncle Stevie’s world, but a rate of a book a month, I am all in. My goal is to read and review each one with as much honesty and reflection that I can give. **

Background – “The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah” is the sixth volume (and penultimate book) in his Dark Tower fantasy series. It was first published by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as a hardcover book in June 2004. My oversized paperback copy is 413 pages and my Kindle lists it as 463 pages.

Plotline – The book starts moments after the previous book “Dark Tower V: The Wolves of Calla” ends. Following their magnificent seven style shootout with the wolves and saving the town’s folk of Calla, the kat-tet has been split up when Mia, the demon taking over Susannah Dean’s body, has taken her and slipped through the magic door in Doorway cave with the help of the powerful Black Thirteen magic ball. Mia is hell bent on fulfilling her mission of giving birth to a powerful demon that will kill the gunslinger and destroy his ka-tet’s journey to find the Dark Tower.

In order to rescue Susannah and the baby, as well as complete their sacred journey, they must split up in pairs to accomplish separate, but connected tasks.

The first pair, Roland and Eddie Dean go through the magic doorway to Maine in the year 1977. Their goal is to secure the legal ownership of the vacant lot in New York where the special and powerful red rose grows in both beauty and power, serving as a link to the Tower itself. They need to purchase the lot it from its current owner, Calvin Tower, and keep the rose’s connection protected and alive. However, Tower is hiding in Maine from enemies who serve the evil Crimson King, who wants the rose and link to the Tower destroyed. To make matters worse, they have set-up an ambush to eliminate Roland and Eddie upon their arrival through the doorway…

The second pair, Jake, and Father Callahan (along with Oy) go through the doorway to New York City in 1999 where Mia has taken Susannah to deliver her soon to be born baby into the hands of the Crimson King’s servants. Once there, they race to find their multi-personality before it is too late…

Then there’s the mysterious author of a book titled “Salem’s Lot” that describes Father Callahan’s previous life, including his battle with vampires prior to his descent into Mid-World in 1983 where Walter O’Dim (The Man in Black) transports him to Calla Bryn Sturgis, where he eventually meets and joins Roland and ka-tet. How can that author, someone named Stephen King, have written their story and how is he connected to the mystery of the Dark Tower?

Thoughts and Reflections – Well, this was a fast moving, action oriented, propel the plot forward, and set-up the final ending type of book. No room for sitting around and wasting time on the scenery. Lots to do and lots to get done in setting the table for the last book. And to tell the truth, I loved it. It finally felt like the storylines were building to an end and progression was happening.

With the understanding that this book was more like episode 11 of a 12-part Saturday morning matinee sci-fi serial, it succeeded in its entertainment goal. It delivered. I enjoyed splitting the ka-tet team members into pairs and following their separate but connected missions. I absolutely appreciated the nicely timed exposition on how the Tower’s worldbuilding was all connected.

Quite simply, this was my favorite book in the series, along with “Wizard and Glass”, although that felt like more of an origin story for Roland. This one was about the culmination of everything that has gone on before coming together and setting-up a final culmination in the next book. Of all of the books in the series, these were the ones that tugged on my emotional heart strings the most.

Interestingly enough, where I was left a bit unhappy with the cliffhanger at the end of “The Waste lands”, ironically, found myself loving the three different cliffhangers at the end of this one. I want to be careful and not give away too much for those who have not read this book yet, the but I was completely drawn in to how King pulled himself into this book. As weird as it may seem, it added a beautiful depth and complexity that worked for me. The Tower is as personal to King and his life as it is to Roland and his ka-tet. It is just as much his journey as it is theirs. I loved him taking us behind the curtain in such a fictional, and yet biographical, manner. I loved it so much that it increased my enjoyment and rating of this book. It was so hard to pull off and so geniusly constructed.

Definitely, 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Other Notes – In his biography, King explained that this series was inspired by Robert Browning's poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" (1855), which he read as a sophomore at the University of Maine. King said that he played around with the idea of trying to write a long romantic-based novel which would embody the feeling of Browning’s poem.

This book was nominated in 2005 for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel of the year.

Overall – The first thing that I must admit is that each book in the series gets better, growing its worldbuilding, developing and strengthening the story, and pulling many pieces together in a large tapestry of storytelling. There is no arguing that. I am getting more and more intellectually and emotionally involved as the story goes on and gets closer to the end. I am also finding the connections from “The Stand”, “Insomnia”, and “Rose Madder” provide a stronger context and larger scope to the depth of King’s imagination. Several of his books have connections to the Dark Tower, and they are making more sense to me now about how it all fits together. As King state’s so well, “All thigs serve the Beam”.

Still, I am still not quite completely in love with the series, at least not as much as other readers seem to be. But man, am I close... I am enjoying and appreciating it for what he is attempting to do, and succeeding for the most part; however, it’s not earth-shattering love in which I cannot live without its passion. It’s more of I am happy to be here and enjoy the moment feeling. We’ll see how I feel when I finish the next and final volume in the series. I will speak more then and provide a more conclusive opinion.

Wolves of the calla introduced some elements that had me worried about the direction the overall narrative of the series would take. It started adding these "meta" elements from other books and movies like Harry Potter, Star Wars etc. the kind of worn out, cross franchise horseshit we're tired of seeing.
I had to remind myself that this book was written in the bygone days of 2003 when Ideas of that sort hadn't been completely strip-mined, in fact it probably influenced some of what we're seeing now. my main worry was that he would insert himself into the narrative instead of just characters from his books. King, being a do-bee, dooed it.
I guess we'll see how it goes. his books are always enjoyable, the characters always easy to invest in and after reading quite a few with muddled endings, I see them as a journey over destination type thing.
I've been stung by long series with lacklustre endings so I'm cautiously optimistic that King will stick the landing on this one. fingers crossed as I start the final volume.

After enjoying some short, not really peaceful, time together, the ka-tet has to be separated to accelerate the plot.

Close to everything is related to the other novels, so we have:

Susannah Mia is internally torn apart and a bit indecisive about the best prenatal class. The idea of interworld, -dimensional- whatever crossbreeding has so many potentials for thrill that just a small variety may have already been told. Just take all the average fantasy races, aliens, real animals, and mix it all up together to any result you may wish and one can imagine what storylines could be constructed that way. The characters, mentality, goals, of the different parties are as manifold and could be used for innuendos, humor, or just adding an extra layer of complexity to the already existing, biological, mental, dimensional,…uniqueness.

I´ve already mentioned this in the review of book 5, but I can´t overemphasize it enough: I´ve hardly ever seen an author integrating her/himself as a major plot point in a series, but King does it in a funny and self-critical way. I imagine it difficult to caricature oneself for the sake of a good story and it might be close to impossible to not lose the suspension of disbelief, something King amazingly never seems to have to worry about. It´s also a great allegory and metaphor for the power of imagination and fantasy, a love letter to the magic ability of literature to make real what seem translucent.

I´ve wasted much time thinking and philosophizing about what these dead trees are doing with my brain, realizing I´ve been away for years, asking myself, while remembering that we know exactly nothing about brain science, quantum physics, just everything, if I have been here or somewhere else. And if I´ve reached the unique trance state of becoming once with the story, did I live my boring meatsack life, or were I somewhere else and did this place really exist at that moment in a place we still can´t understand. But back to good old violence and gore.

All comes together at the end again, someone dies (you won´t expect who, believe me), and we are sadly coming closer to the end of something unique, as other authors may write as good as King, but nobody included so much of himself in her/his work. Writers may be better at worldbuilding, more dynamic, and very especially at avoiding info dumping and unnecessary lengths, but hardly someone wants or dares to share intimate details about her/himself with the world as King does. He loves reading, all of his kids are bookaholics and/or authors, and I can´t imagine how beautiful and ecstatic is must be to both read and write, especially as King describes it as leaving reality, letting the characters tell the story without much planning, turning on the music, and lifting of.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

Really enjoyed how King wrote himself into the story. Also enjoyed the dialogue between Mia and Susannah. My heart was in my mouth for Oy a couple of times and that scene where Jake has to leave him, the tears...oh my! Stephen King, you naughty man playing with me like that!
This volume did feel a little like filler for the final instalment but that's ok because I enjoyed the ride. Have a lot of questions that need answering before the end of this series. I'm not sure whether they'll all be answered (I suspect not!) but I'm interested to see how King brings this baby home! (Especially before the film release..)

This was the easiest one to listen to so far. I'm not exactly sure why, maybe I'm just so used to following these amazing characters that it felt so smooth and familiar. A level of comfortability where everything feels like it belongs.

Though I have to say I'm already sad the series is about to end and I haven't event started book 7 yet!

You know who I really love? Oy. He has been the best character ever created since I read the series a few years ago and he just keeps getting better with time!

Ok, this one is difficult, it took me 8 years to read this book. Why?
Well its mostly the first part, the Susanah part where she goes on long worrying dialogs with Mia are so boring that had made me abandon the book several times.

Once you are over that part the book gets back to being interesting.

Relectura 2024
Sigue siendo el libro que más me cuesta leer
Simplemente el repeat de Detta-Oddetta, ahora con Susanah-Mia me aburre, y si ya sé que es diferente, pero simplemente no.
Aparte en muchas partes siento que repite cosas, o esa sensación tengo.

se queda con sus 3 estrellas

I think this one is the most difficult to rate out the series. There were parts that I enjoyed immensely, and there were sections that I abhorred.

What part didn't I like? every section of this unassembled jig-saw puzzle of a book that involves Susannah and Mia. I know this might sound sacrilegious to some hard-core Tower fans, but Susannah has always been my least favorite character and all too often she just annoys the hell out of me. So, not only was I disappointed when I found that an entire book in the series was going to be focused on her plight, but I also felt that the whole, pregnancy-Mia alter ego thing was unnecessary.

What I did like: The shoot out in the beginning with Roland and Eddie was phenomenal, and considering what we all know happened to Mr. King while writing this series, I thought the way he inserted himself into the tale was genius. I understand the plot in this one was a jumbled mess, but I guess because this is my second time around, it didn't bother me as bad.

Thank goodness for the parts mentioned that were entertaining and not just a Susannah-Mia tale or this might have been a 2 star rating. Over-all, I consider it a 3.5. Now, on to the finale.