Book 660: Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6) – Stephen King

This series might be getting a little too meta for me.

Don’t worry, I’m going to finish it. I mean I’m thousands of pages in and only one book and two novellas left, but seriously this book definitely messed with the idea of reality in a way that pushed multiple fictional worlds into what I’m assuming is supposed to be our world because Stephen King exists in it, but he might exist in all the worlds because he’s the storyslinger. So. Many. Confusing. Thoughts.

Let’s start with the biggest negative of this book which is kind of obvious from the title, so much of the book is spent with Susannah and Mia. It’s not a negative in that the story was boring, but in that the bulk of the story takes place inside Susannah’s head and is heavily dialogue driven with the bulk of the action points taking place away from her. At one point Jake, Oy, and Pere Callahan disappear for 2/3 of the book and pop back in right at the end but the resolution of their story line doesn’t happen in this novel.

We know Susannah’s pregnant, we just don’t know who is the father or what will come out of her. Either way, King clearly has somet thoughts on pregnancy and young children,

“Susannah understood the deal and still had trouble swallowing it. This creature had given up immortality for morning sickness, swollen and achy breasts, and, in the last six weeks of her carry, the need to pee approximately every fifteen minutes. And wait, folks, there’s more! Two and a half years of changing diapers soaked with piss and loaded with shit! Of getting up in the night as the kid howls with the pain of cutting his first tooth (and cheer up, Mom, only thirty-one to go). That first magic spit-up! That first heartwarming spray of urine across the bridge of your nose when the kid lets go as you’re changing his clout!” (Loc. 3,558)

That passage definitely made me laugh.

The most interesting part of this novel was the Stephen King meta narrative.

“When you came right down to it, how did anyone know they weren’t a character in some writer’s story, or a transient thought in some bus-riding schmoe’s head, or a momentary mote in God’s eye? Thinking about such stuff was crazy, and enough such thinking could drive you crazy.” (Loc. 2,398)

“‘Aye, I do. Is he immortal, do you think? Because I’ve seen much in my years, and heard rumors of much more, but never of a man or woman who lived forever.’ ‘I don’t think he needs to be immortal. I think all he needs to do is write the right story. Because some stories do live forever.'” (Loc. 3,820)

“They just assume that if there’s a book anywhere in the world they want, then they have a perfect right to that book. This would be news indeed to those folks in the Middle Ages who might have heard rumors of books but never actually saw one; paper was valuable (which would be a good thing to put in the next “Gunslinger/Dark Tower” novel, if I ever get around to it) and books were treasures you protected with your life. I love being able to make my living writing stories, but anyone who sez there’s no dark side to it is full of shit. Someday I’m going to do a novel about a psychotic rare book dealer! (Joke)” (Loc. 5,554)

The last quote comes from the afterward which is a “journal” of the Stephen King character during their time of writing the novel. I had to google to make sure the author King was still alive because he’s killed off the character author Stephen King and I was VERY confused for a few minutes. I liked that whichever King is supposed to have written this referenced King’s oeuvre including ‘Salem’s Lot (which I really want to read now this book has talked about it so much), Pet Sematary and It explicitly. I think they reference a lot of others via character names, including Rose Madder and Misery, but I’m not 100% on those. He also name drops other epic fantasy series including the Lord of the Rings and Gormenghast.

I’m not sure where the story is going, but with one book left (the novellas take place earlier in the series), I can’t imagine it ending in the best of places with a big ol’ foreshadowing line like this in middle of this book,

“Eddie got in. Roland paused for a moment to tap his throat three times. Eddie had seen him perform this ritual before when about to cross open water, and reminded himself to ask about it. He never got the chance; before the question occurred to him again, death had slipped between them.” (Loc. 2,111)

It could just hint at the action packed sequences that I’m sure to come as the series builds to the crescendo on which it will end, but I have an inkling that this might not end in a cacophony so much as a fizzle. I’m really hoping not as so many people really really love this series, but we’ll see.

Recommendation: If you’ve made it this far in the series, clearly you need to keep going. I didn’t find this book to be as engaging as The Wolves of the Calla but more-so than the super slow Wizard and Glass. That being said King’s writing is definitely engaging and I’m glad he told the whole story even if the metafiction is starting to mess with my idea of what is and isn’t real.

Other Books in The Dark Tower Cycle

• The Little Sisters of Eluria (#0.5)
• The Gunslinger (#1)
• The Drawing of the Three (#2)
• The Waste Lands (#3)
• Wizard and Glass (#4)
• The Wind Through the Keyhole (#4.5)
• Wolves of the Calla (#5)
• The Dark Tower (#7)

Opening Line: “How long will the magic stay?”

Closing Line: “And on the wings of that song, Mordred Deschain, son of Roland (and one other, O can you say Discordia), came into the world.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from Song of Susannah
“‘Anger is the most useless emotion,’ Henchick intoned, ‘destructive to the mind and hurtful of the heart.'” (Loc . 367)

“Because dead was the gift that kept on giving. Dead, like diamonds, was forever.” (Loc. 382)

“I didn’t go to Morehouse or no house, for instance; that was from Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. When Mia had bought into Susannah, she had purchased at least two personalities for the price of one. It was Mia, after all, who’d brought Detta out of retirement (or perhaps deep hibernation), and it was Detta who was particularly fond of that line, which expressed so much of the Negro’s deep-held disdain for and suspicion of what was sometimes called “the finer postwar Negro education.” Not to Morehouse or no house; I know what I know, in other words, I heard it through the grapevine, I got it on the earie, dearie, I picked it up on the jungle telegraph.” (Loc. 1,492)

“You doom yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism.” (Loc. 1,548)

“If Henry had been there, he would have insisted on TV and would have ragged Eddie constantly about his story-tapes. (“Oh boy! Eddie’s gonna wissen to his wittle stowy about the elves and the ogs and the cute wittle midgets!”) Always calling the orcs the ogs, and always calling the Ents “the scawwy walking twees.” Henry thought made-up shit was queer.” (Loc. 2,217)

“‘Yeah. The Dark Tower, it was called. It was gonna be my Lord of the Rings, my Gormenghast, my you-name-it. One thing about being twenty-two is that you’re never short of ambition. It didn’t take me long to see that it was just too big for my little brain. Too . . . I don’t know . . . outré? That’s as good a word as any, I guess. Also,’ he added dryly, ‘I lost the outline.'” (Loc. 3,929)

“‘But then you changed. Right under my hand. It got so I couldn’t tell if you were the hero, the antihero, or no hero at all. When you let the kid drop, that was the capper.’ ‘You said you made me do that.'” (Loc. 4,046)

“I think telling stories is like pushing something. Pushing against uncreation itself, maybe. And one day while you were doing that, you felt something pushing back.” (Loc 4,060)

“In the Land of Memory, the time is always Now. In the Kingdom of Ago, the clocks tick . . . but their hands never move. There is an Unfound Door (O lost) and memory is the key which opens it.” (Loc. 4,978)