Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, Book 6)

by Stephen King

book data

8,730 ratings, 3.92 average rating, 271 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		34%
4		33%
3		23%
2		6%
1		1%

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published

May 23rd 2006 (first published 2004) by Pocket

binding

Paperback, 544 pages

characters

Roland Deschain, Eddie, ..., Susannah

isbn

1416521496 (isbn13: 9781416521495)

description

Susannah Dean is possessed, her body a living vessel for the demon-mother Mia. Something is growing inside Susannah's belly, something terrible, and s...more

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04/16/07

taarak rated it:

bookshelves: robbarrettsaudiobookshelf

Read in January, 2005

recommends it for: Sci Fi and Fantasy Buffs

Steven King's magnum opus. I've given a short review of all the books below. Based largely on the strengths of books 1, 2 and 4, I rate the whole series of seven books a three.

On "THE GUNSLINGER" His first book in a very long series starts out well enough.

On "THE DRAWING OF THE THREE" Gotta chuk!? Gotta up-chuk!? Okay, not so bad but not as good as the first.

On "THE WASTELANDS" The series improves with fast-paced, difficult to...more

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02/03/08

Cindy rated it:

(review of isbn 1880418592)

Read in June, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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02/26/08

Kara rated it:

Read in April, 2008

The story wasn't bad, some of the new characters were interesting, but I cannot give it a higher rating because of the author himself.

Stephen King has indulged in the ULTIMATE form of ego stroking in this volume and it pissed me off. The plot could've been structured some other way to avoid what he's doing right now - you *can* adjust plot, much as it sometimes hurts to do so - and the fact that he went ahead and wrote what he wrote is annoying and... well, gross. It's gross.
...more

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11/10/08

Maureen rated it:

bookshelves: fantasy, series

Read in November, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Dear Stephen King,

Why oh why did you have to write yourself in the story? I understand that you like to indulge in a Hitchcock-like fashion by casting yourself in cameo, extra-like character roles in the movies based on your books. In my humble opinion, that is acceptable. Even when your name and book showed up on the menu board outside the Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, I could buy it. But what possessed you to give yourself such a concrete and crucial role in the Dark Tower Sa...more Dear Stephen King,

Why oh why did you have to write yourself in the story? I understand that you like to indulge in a Hitchcock-like fashion by casting yourself in cameo, extra-like character roles in the movies based on your books. In my humble opinion, that is acceptable. Even when your name and book showed up on the menu board outside the Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, I could buy it. But what possessed you to give yourself such a concrete and crucial role in the Dark Tower Saga? Roldan of Gilead bowing to you? How totally out of place with his prideful, self-assured character.

Beginning in Wolves of the Calla, and continuing in SOS, I started to get worried that all the characters were going to come to realize somehow that they never really existed in a world of their own. I wondered with uninspired dread if the ca-tet would find that they were never physically born, raised, educated, loved, hated, or respected. That there was no childhood in Gilead for Roldan, that Susannah was never the Odetta stalked and created by the serial killer, that Jake's never went crazy in his elite private school, or that Eddie never shot up smack with his selfish, foul, brother. With creeping disdain, I wondered if they would discover that they had no reality within their own fictional consciousness. I was prepared to be disgusted when they realized that all they were good for was entertainment for crotchety old men falling asleep on a lazy Sunday afternoons while watching the Gun Slinger episodes on the rerun Western channel.

In short, I felt wary of being cheated as an avid fantasy reader. Even though I understand, and appreciate, that there are no hard and fast rules to the science of the physical world in fantasy writing, you have to admit that there needs to be a consistent world, even parallel worlds, where the denizens adhere by their own set of magical, mystical truths. Doors to other wheres and whens, OK. Fictional, un-living, oblivious characters who are trapped in a series of stories, jumping from page to page, book to book, shelve to shelve? No Thank You!

After finishing Song of Susannah, and reading between the lines a bit, I am hopeful that it is not your intention to create an (anti)climatic moment where you will turn out to be "god and creator" of all in the final book of the series. And of course, I will read the Dark Tower. After all, I have already invested some of my life in six volumes of your series, your Magnum Opus...

I might have enjoyed the reader's journal entries at the end of your story if I could distinguish between fictional and nonfictional accounts. Maybe they are blended tales, but I don't really want to take my time to do the research to find out... One thing I will have to admit: It takes guts to kill yourself off in such a realistic way. That was a spooky touch. And, now that you are "dead" in the "real world" it gives me hope for the last installment.

Sincerely,

A Humble Reader

P.S. Another technique that worked; I will probably read Salem's Lot now as Father Callahan has piqued my interest.(less)

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01/19/08

Robert Beveridge rated it:

bookshelves: finished

Read in July, 2004

Stephen King, Song of Susannah (Donald M. Grant, 2004)

It's quite ironic that, less than a year after announcing his impending retirement, Mr. King has graced us with one of the best pieces of writing he's put out in years (excepting "Blind Willie," one of the strongest stories of his career). After a string of books ranging from the mediocre (From a Buick 8, Wolves of the Calla) to the out-and-out bad (Dreamcatcher), during which, one can assume, King decided to hang up his h...more Stephen King, Song of Susannah (Donald M. Grant, 2004)

It's quite ironic that, less than a year after announcing his impending retirement, Mr. King has graced us with one of the best pieces of writing he's put out in years (excepting "Blind Willie," one of the strongest stories of his career). After a string of books ranging from the mediocre (From a Buick 8, Wolves of the Calla) to the out-and-out bad (Dreamcatcher), during which, one can assume, King decided to hang up his hat, we get Song of Susannah.

The sixth book in the Dark Tower series starts just after the end of Wolves of the Calla (so much so that the last sentence in Wolves of the Calla and the first sentence in Song of Susannah could have been part of the same chapter in the same book), and takes place over the next... couple of days? Time's getting weirder in the spaces between Mid-World and Earth. Roland's decline into age-related illness is speeding up, making the quest for the Tower more urgent. Callahan is now part of the crew. So's Mia, albeit in a different capacity. (One wonders, idly, why Roland didn't take Rosa with him, if he took Callahan.) And, in his own odd way, Stephen King himself, which became obvious about fifty pages from the end of Wolves of the Calla.

That last bit sounds cheesy, doesn't it? And it's hard to tell whether it is or not, really, until the final few pages of Song of Susannah. But to his credit, King paints himself as quite the dysfunctional deity, which was by turns amusing and horrifying (given the autobiographical quality of the scenes, which are mostly in-more-detail pieces of the self-abusive parts of hie life he detailed in On Writing). My final thought on it was that it probably could have been done better, but certainly could have been done worse (it blew Jonathan Safran Foer's overhyped and barely readable Everything Is Illuminated out of the water).

So the question is, why's Song of Susannah so much better than the rest of his recent books? It's not necessarily because he's writing in a different style (he had the outline in place when he wrote Wolves of the Calla, too), or because he's changed anything about the way he portrays characters and events. In fact, the only real change I can discern in Song of Susannah is that it's... shorter. Yep. King, who has been working without an editor who does more than token work since the complete and uncut version of The Stand sold eighty-seven trillion copies (and rightly; the editor who worked on the original version of the novel hopefully is picking cigarette butts out of a gutter now), takes a special moment to go out of his way to thank the person who's edited the last few Dark Tower books. Whoever she is, she's gotten it into gear and really started whipping King's writing into shape. Song of Susannah is better-paced, more tense, a lot more visual without losing that special King ability to draw characters and scenes in the space of a few lines, and, well, just overall better. He also adds in a new (to him, anyway) dimension here, with both Roland and Eddie sticking around Earth long enough for them to really smack into the wall of culture shock (usually, they've been making quick trips up till now for one specific thing, while this time they keep getting derailed in almost Luis Bunuel fashion), and King handles it with a gentle wit that's been missing from his novels for years.

The abbreviated scope of this novel, combined with the brilliance of "Blind Willie" from a couple of years ago, gives me some small hope that instead of retiring, King will focus on what got him noticed in the first place, the punch-to-the-gut short stories that showed King both being effective and working with an economy of words he's completely neglected for twenty years or thereabouts. But one way or the other, this left me salivating for the seventh Dark Tower book, and what might or might not come after. **** (less)

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08/28/07

Greg rated it:

bookshelves: fantasy, fiction

Read in April, 2008

As of this writing, I've just finished Song of Susannah and am about to start the 7th and final book in The Dark Tower series, and I'm scared. Not scared in a "oh, stephen king is scary" sort of way, but scared in a "maybe I should've listened to what everyone told me and stopped reading the series after book 5".

And really, I can't say I wasn't warned, but how the heck are you going to stop reading a fantastic book series after getting 5 books in, and knowing the...more

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08/30/07

Andrew rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

If you want to read an amazing seven-book series of epic proportions where the main character is a gunslinging loner and he fights amazing crab-creatures and pulls people through magical doorways while on his way to save the entire universe, then stop reading this series at book 3; skip book 4 and read book 5 and imagine the ending for yourself.

Seriously though, Stephen King did a fantastic job of recovering this story after so many years of it sitting on the shelf--though book 4 wa...more

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03/28/07

Jason rated it:

Read in June, 2007

I love the Dark Tower Series. However, this book really did seem incomplete. In the past all the books have had a beginning and end with a continuing story arc. Except for maybe Wizard and Glass. This one just felt like an unfinished story. Plus it took him so long to get this series completed, I'm going to have to go back to remember all the characters he refers to. I know he is trying to create a joining mythology for all of his fiction but I really wished he didn't bring himself into th...more

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12/21/08

Stacey rated it:

(review of isbn 0743254554)

I've enjoyed this series immensely, all the way up until this book. Now I am reading the last one just to see if he can straighten out the mess he made here. What was he thinking? This is the ultimate in mental masturbation an author can produce. I liked the parts Eddie and Roland right up until they left Tower, and I kind of liked the bits with Jake, but the rest? Crap. It's crap!

I know authors of serials sometimes put themselves in the story (Clive Cussler comes to mind,) but it's...more

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02/17/08

Josh rated it:

bookshelves: novels

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in August, 2008

This is more like it! After the dreadful Wolves of the Calla, my expectations lowered dramatically for the rest of the series. This volume, however, makes up for lost time. We get another old-fashioned shoot out with Roland, and a whole lot of answers to longstanding questions about the world this series is set in. There are a few clunkers - Susannah taking over a listening station in her mind was a little weird, and I'm not terribly gung-ho about the surprise guest star that appears in thi...more

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02/28/09

Dreadlocksmile rated it:

Read in December, 2006

Stephen King's novel "Song Of Susannah" is the sixth instalment of the seven part epic "Dark Tower" series. The novel runs for 427 pages out of the series total of 3712 pages. Unlike within the previous installations, the book does not include an introduction from King himself (Wolves Of The Calla delivered his last `argument'). However, the book does finish with a two page afterward. Again, the hardback version includes some full colour illustrations (ten in total), this tim...more Stephen King's novel "Song Of Susannah" is the sixth instalment of the seven part epic "Dark Tower" series. The novel runs for 427 pages out of the series total of 3712 pages. Unlike within the previous installations, the book does not include an introduction from King himself (Wolves Of The Calla delivered his last `argument'). However, the book does finish with a two page afterward. Again, the hardback version includes some full colour illustrations (ten in total), this time by Darrel Anderson.

The story begins directly from where the previous novel left off, throwing the reader once again into the mysterious world King has created. From the very beginning, the tale picks up a fast pace, setting down clever twists and turns for each one of the main characters we have followed closely throughout this adventure. With a similar construction of the storyline to that of "Wolves Of The Calla", the fragmented plot lines that gradually draw together is a lot tighter within this action packed novel.

King develops upon the character of Susannah's multiple personalities, bringing out further layers to their rich personalities. Whilst the three separate tracks of the story weave their way through the book, King takes his almost surreal angle of bringing in the real world by introducing himself as a major character within the book. This brings a whole new and original approach to the saga, which tricky as it sounds, works surprisingly well. In doing this, the Dark Tower series becomes a more involved and personal adventure for King.

The novel draws to a close with a chapter constructed from the pages of the character of Stephen King within his own novel. These fictional accounts detail the real life of the writer in a way that reflects the parallel world from the series. Confusing as it sounds, it does work very well, bringing all the previous books tighter together and linking them to our own reality.

All in all, I found this instalment into the "Dark Tower" series one of the most rewarding and enjoyable reads of all the books so far. Short as it is compared with the previous books, "Song Of Susannah" is rich in its storyline and cleverly ties in almost all of the previous events laying the ground for the final book to complete this epic journey. An absolute pleasure to read.(less)

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06/04/09

Jan rated it:

bookshelves: fantasy, fiction

Read in June, 2009

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I was deeply, deeply disappointed by this book. I have been a huge fan of the series, and have enjoyed all of the books up to this one thoroughly. Song of Susannah is the worst of the series thus far. I honestly feel betrayed by the weird direction King took in this book, a direction that I had feared was coming at the end of book 5.

The only reason I didn't give this book just one star is because I felt that it did have a few redeeming qualities. The chapters with Roland and Eddie we...more I was deeply, deeply disappointed by this book. I have been a huge fan of the series, and have enjoyed all of the books up to this one thoroughly. Song of Susannah is the worst of the series thus far. I honestly feel betrayed by the weird direction King took in this book, a direction that I had feared was coming at the end of book 5.

The only reason I didn't give this book just one star is because I felt that it did have a few redeeming qualities. The chapters with Roland and Eddie were great, up until the point that they left Calvin Tower. And I enjoyed the one chapter that Jake and Callahan graced as well.

However, the chapters that focused on Susannah were tedious at best. The Susannah/Mia interactions got old very, very quickly. And the story of who Susannah's baby is was a big "say what?" moment for me. A hermaphrodite demon had sex with Roland in book 1, kept his seed, turned into a male until he could rape Susannah and put Roland's seed in her so she would create a baby to kill Roland? What? I must have read that over 5 times and when it finally sunk in what he was saying, I still thought it was stupid.

But by far the worst part of this book was that King wrote himself into the story. I find this incredibly gauche, self-indulgent, and egotistical. But he made it even worse by essentially declaring himself "god," suggesting that he might be immortal, and hinting that his own characters save him from death in his 1999 accident. Ugh. It was just awful. I actually fantasized about finding King and punching him in the face for ruining this amazing series with this drivel.

Obviously, King was profoundly affected by the accident that nearly killed him. I have to believe that it changed the course of this story, since books 5, 6, and 7 were completed after it. I hope that, when he started the series, King never had any intention of writing himself into it. If the series was always meant to go in this direction, then I will have lost all faith in King as an author.

One final "say what?" moment for me: did King really suggest that the Twin Towers were knocked down in 2001 because Black Thirteen was hidden in a storage locker underneath? Really? What a horrible thing to do, writing himself into such a tragedy like that.

I will read book 7 because I want to complete the series. I really hope King cleaned up some of his mess and turned out something spectacular for the final note of what has been, by and large, a fascinating journey.(less)

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08/17/08

Matt rated it:

Read in December, 2008

Not one of my favorites. Some of the cross stories drag on and on. But still not bad. And it is a shorter book. All in all, worth reading just to get to the last and final book.

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06/19/09

Chris Harrigan rated it:

Read in July, 2009

I'm going to reserve an more thorough review for the final book in the series. However, a few points specific to this volume;

First and foremost, I did enjoy reading this book, albeit even less than book 5. As stated in my review of Wolves of the Calla, however, there is a clear break between books 1-4 and 5, 6 and (presumably) 7; the story takes a major shift from being a narrative of Roland's ka-tet's story to becoming a Metafiction. The character's self-awareness of being character...more

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01/21/09

Sharon rated it:

bookshelves: adult-fiction, fantasy

Although apparently much maligned among fans, this is a respectable entry in the "Dark Tower" series that reveals Susannah's fourth (?!) personality, Mia, as well as the origins of her pregnancy, to the reader. The trips into modern New York are simultaneously funny and harrowing, and Susannah's trip into the Dixie Pig is positively frightening. This is also the book where the author Stephen King first inserts himself as a character and also a Beam holding up the Dark Tower, which had ...more

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03/25/09

Marty rated it:

Read in March, 2009

The border between reality and fiction blurs to near invisibility in this volume, to my extreme enjoyment. Each of the main characters face challenges which threaten their lives, and the safety of reality itself. Most taxed among them by her experiences is Susannah, who finds she has to dig very deep indeed, back to her days of singing folk songs and demonstrating for civil rights. She becomes stronger, and her ka-tet backs her, but the situation seems insurmountable. I'm really looking forward ...more

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04/24/09

Sean rated it:

Read in April, 2009

Susannah is the Lisa Simpson of The Dark Tower, so I was afraid this installment would prove less interesting than the first five, but not to worry -- quite good, and with less fat than some of the earlier novels.

Getting quite odd, indeed. The series is increasingly meta, with any number of references to characters, events, and places in other King books; King himself looms large in this book. These shenanigans could fall flat, but I rather liked them. I'm looking forward to wra...more

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11/24/08

Gail (myJunegirls) rated it:

(review of isbn 0743254554)

bookshelves: favorites

Read in May, 2009

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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08/05/08

M the Bibliophile rated it:

bookshelves: dark-tower, read-in-2008, sci-fi-fantasy

Read in September, 2008

recommends it for: everyone

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

This book really brings the song to an end; the book sharpens the ideas brought forth from the previous books in the series. The song of Susannah is not only the cry of Susannah, but the cries of Susannah, Detta, and Mia. The cry of childbirth to the son of Roland of Gilead, last gunslinger.

The door from the Calla opened onto different paths for each of the gunslingers, and Father Callahan. Jake and Callahan find themselves in New York City 1999 as does the separated Susannah/Mia/De...more