Song of Susannah
Year: 2004
Author: Stephen King
Length: 822 minutes / 13.70 hours
Six books into the Dark Tower series, and I’m glad that things are wrapping up. I felt Wolves of the Calla was only as good as it was because it was clearly a ripoff of The Magnificent Seven (1960). And with so many of the books in this series focusing on the men of the ka-tet, it was nice to get a book that mostly focused on Susannah’s experiences. A lot of weird stuff happened in this book, but at least it laid the groundwork for the last entry in the series.
Perhaps the weirdest part of this book was its meta-narrative with Stephen King. I was a little surprised this fourth-wall-breaking move worked as well as it did. Then again, King clearly hinted that this was a possibility in the previous book in the series. Author self-inserts usually take the form of the main character living out the author’s fantasies. However, literal author self-inserts are a little rarer. It also felt like King was trying to remind himself why he started on this Dark Tower series at all, which doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in the reader.
I wasn’t wild about the somewhat cliffhanger ending, but it didn’t matter too much as I knew I could jump into The Dark Tower shortly after finishing this book. It’s mostly frustrating because there are a lot of things that are cut short in this book that clearly will be resolved in the next. Song of Susannah gathered King’s top ideas from his previous works, making it almost a “greatest hits” from his bibliography. That there’s been some good action in books five and six of the series bodes well for the conclusion.
A meta setup for the last book of the Dark Tower series, I give Song of Susannah 4.0 stars out of 5.
