Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4275 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-10
• Released on: 2006-04-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Customer Reviews

Dark Tower 6 - Song of Susannah

King's sixth book in the "Dark Tower" series picks up immediately where "Wolves of the Calla" left off, reinserting the reader into the world of the gunslinger and his travelling companions. They resume their quest for the Dark Tower with a great opening scene, and soon cutting to the absconded Susannah and her new passenger ...

Things progress smoothly and very competently in this penultimate volume, a shorter story than many of its predeccessors and more focused for it. The writing is condensed but not neglectful of the characters or the scenarios, and has all the fluidity and poetry of the previous volumes, although sadly not to the extent of the wonderful "The Gunslinger".

The novel benefits from the sense of movement and progress, that was sadly lacking in the last two novels, "Wizard and Glass" which was almost entirely flashback, and "Wolves of the Calla" which took place entirely in one town. Now things are rolling and the excitement and urgency return to the story.

I'm not a fan of the metafictional aspects of the series, which begun in earnest last novel with the mention of "Stephen King, the authord from Maine", a plotline which is expounded upon and reaches a kind of conclusion here as well. Mixing real-life with fiction is often a bad idea, and although Stephen King appears here as a character, the novel itself doesn't appear to suffer greatly despite the cringing feeling you might get at the hubris of the author.

Still, there are some truly heart-stopping moments, such as the escalation of Susannah's troubles in the final chapter, and the moment of Jake and Pere Callahan's emergence into the New York of 1999. Despite another cliff-hanger ending, which generally drive me nuts with anger and disappointment, it's still a strong book and worthy of the collection. If you felt a little deflated after books four and five, you'll be happy to see a return to form with book six.

the best novel to date
my favorite novel of the whole collection. one of the main attributes was the introduction of a new character; mia. while the other five books although good found the characters becoming a bit stale. mia threw my emotions in termoil from hatred to sorrow, from cruelty to love.

one of the highlights of this novel was the introduction of 'stephen king' into his own novel!this other character turned the book (more) surreal than ever - yet strangely this made the novel as beleivable as non - fiction.

finally, throughout the collection there has been a lot of information. some which is hard to get your head round. this book puts everything into perspective, any confusion beforehand will be answered.

My overall rating: the best piece of fiction i've read. This book is unique and is a breath of fresh air from the multitude of fiction being written.

Hmmm....calm before the storm !
Having just finished the series, I can sum this book up by saying, for me, it is the least memorable. Every other book has a definite purpose, be it the bringing together of the main characters, Rolands history, the finale etc, but this seems to go nowhere.
Jumping from book 5 to 7 IMHO, would not cause any major disruption to the flow of this otherwise excellent series.