Park your rig in the Dixie Pig
So last night I finally finished "Song of Susannah," the sixth and penultimate volume of the "Dark Tower" series.
I think the fact that I got sidetracked so often from this book and kept putting it down says a lot about how it rates. The first five books were much longer, and yet I literally could not tear myself away from them until I was done with each step of Roland's journey.
This one was just blah, by comparison. The whole book is really setup for everything that happens in the next book, and as such, it can't stand on its own. Even "Wolves of the Calla," which is also very much setup for the finale, also has its own storyline, the retelling of the old Sergio Leone/Kurosawa chestnut of the wandering gunslingers coming to save the town. But "Susannah" doesn't have that.
Indeed, it spends too much time bringing in other characters from the King multiverse and dwelling on characters I simply don't care about. Even seeing Stephen King himself as a character in the book, while amusing, gets old fast. John Cullum, Tower and Deepneau, and even Don Callahan--these guys are just extraneous to me. It's like the "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" of King novels, where all the bit players take center stage.
There's a lot to like about the book--the gunfight at the gas station, the deeper exploration of what is happening to Mid-World and how it affects our Earth, Eddie's realization that he, too, is not "real," and the fatalistic anticipation as part of our Ka-tet faces off with vampires in the Dixie Pig, while Mordred comes kicking and screaming into the world--but in sum, it's really just a placeholder to get all the pieces in line for the finale, and it suffers as a result.
I still hold to the belief that if Stephen King had a more draconian editor, this series would be five outstanding books instead of four outstanding books and three so-so novels. :)
On to "The Dark Tower!"
I think the fact that I got sidetracked so often from this book and kept putting it down says a lot about how it rates. The first five books were much longer, and yet I literally could not tear myself away from them until I was done with each step of Roland's journey.
This one was just blah, by comparison. The whole book is really setup for everything that happens in the next book, and as such, it can't stand on its own. Even "Wolves of the Calla," which is also very much setup for the finale, also has its own storyline, the retelling of the old Sergio Leone/Kurosawa chestnut of the wandering gunslingers coming to save the town. But "Susannah" doesn't have that.
Indeed, it spends too much time bringing in other characters from the King multiverse and dwelling on characters I simply don't care about. Even seeing Stephen King himself as a character in the book, while amusing, gets old fast. John Cullum, Tower and Deepneau, and even Don Callahan--these guys are just extraneous to me. It's like the "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" of King novels, where all the bit players take center stage.
There's a lot to like about the book--the gunfight at the gas station, the deeper exploration of what is happening to Mid-World and how it affects our Earth, Eddie's realization that he, too, is not "real," and the fatalistic anticipation as part of our Ka-tet faces off with vampires in the Dixie Pig, while Mordred comes kicking and screaming into the world--but in sum, it's really just a placeholder to get all the pieces in line for the finale, and it suffers as a result.
I still hold to the belief that if Stephen King had a more draconian editor, this series would be five outstanding books instead of four outstanding books and three so-so novels. :)
On to "The Dark Tower!"