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Nabaza.net-The MarketPlace - Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, Book 6)
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List Price: $9.99
Our Price: $9.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Pocket
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781416521495
ISBN: 1416521496
Label: Pocket
Manufacturer: Pocket
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 560
Publication Date: 2006-05-23
Publisher: Pocket
Release Date: 2006-05-23
Studio: Pocket
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Editorial Reviews:
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SONG OF SUSANNAH THE DARK TOWER VI Susannah Dean is possessed, her body a living vessel for the demon-mother Mia. Something is growing inside Susannah's belly, something terrible, and soon she will give birth to Mia's "chap." But three unlikely allies are following them from New York City to the border of End World, hoping to prevent the unthinkable. Meanwhile, Eddie and Roland have tumbled into the state of Maine -- where the author of a novel called 'Salem's Lot is about to meet his destiny....
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: tiresome drudgery
Comment: This was painful. I just wanted to get through it. Boring, silly, egotistic and just....bad. If I hear the word "chap" one more time, I'm going to freak out. I'm listening to it now..oh god, please let it end. Kill me
Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't worry, it does get better once we pass this part of the quest...
Comment: I wanted to read the entire series before reviewing this and confirming that it is the worst volume in the series, and it is...perhaps this was deliberate on king's behalf to make the last one seem even better, who knows?
This book is essentially an 'add on' to Wolves of the Calla and the whole story could have genuinely been cut down to 50 pages and put at the end of the last volume...
As the title suggests, volume VI revolves around the character Susannah. How you, the 'Constant Reader', views her will have an impact on the enjoyment you get here. I personally don't rate her as my favourite and perhaps this was the reason I wanted to rush through it and get to the final book...
Anyway, the book is almost 500 pages of, what I feel, needless detail on the struggle between Susannah and Mia in regards 'the chap'. We found out about Susannah's/Mia's pregnancy in Wolves of the Calla and yet King goes on and on and on and on and on, boring us at times and (SPOILER ALERT) she doesn't even give birth to the damn thing until the beginning of volume 7.
I just feel it could have been condensed and the series made into 6 books
with any of the relevant content cut down to 50 pages and added onto book 5...I know King can sometimes go into too much detail but I feel this was well overdone perhaps to make sure the series had 7 volumes, was this King's plan? It seems very likely this is the case because this isn't an enjoyable experience.
There are a few good parts to the story, Roland and Eddie meet up with an old friend named Jack Andolini but I won't spoil that bit ;)
Basically, the parts not involving all the palaver of 'the chap' are good, and if you like you could skip most of these parts and not miss a thing...
Of course, if you've got this far, you'll have to read this as I doubt anyone could give up on the Tower at this point..
Book 7 does get better say Thank Ya!!!!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: SONG OF SUSANNAH by Stephen King
Comment: Song of Susannah is the sixth and penultimate novel in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. This is the shortest book we've had in this series for quite a while. And, as the characters are split up into three groups, we get less than 200 pages for each. Since King likes to move things along at a rather glacial pace, not a whole lot happens here.
Picking up where Wolves of the Calla left off, the characters disperse back to different times and places in twentieth-century America. Here they all mostly wander around for a while until they get to convenient stopping points that will (one hopes) give the last book an exciting beginning. The "cliffhanger" here is anything but. Like the entire Susannah-is-pregnant story arc, it's hardly compelling (and it's grown rather tiresome).
In Wolves of the Calla, King inserted himself into the Dark Tower world. Now he shows up as a character. While the reader's initial impression of this is likely something along the lines of "Wow, how stupid," like most things in this novel, it doesn't matter one way or the other to the story, really, although King tries to tie together his writing career, life, the universe and everything with it. The book ends with a cryptobiographical diary from King the character which is, again, not particularly compelling.
This makes two poor entries in a row into the Dark Tower series. Song of Susannah is practically nothing but setup for the last book. On its own, it wouldn't be worth bothering with.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dark Tower 6 - Song of Susannah
Comment:
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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Stephen King Has Forgotten the Face of His Father!
Comment: I bought the first 4 books and being forewarned borrowed the remaining from the library. And I say thank you if it please, because King ruint the story as the wolves ruint the twins. Read no more for there are spoilers below, but take my word and borrow the last of the series. Or if you have sufficient control over curiosity, just say it ended with Wizard and Glass. No more; say thanks; Roland and his friends continue searching endlessly for the tower.
The Wolves of the Calla gave some reason for concern but had enough action involving the wolves and Black 13 and Susanah's pregnancy to make it interesting. Where it began to fall apart was with the hulldrum story of Father Callahan being forced into our ka-tet? Or is he part of the Ka tet. Though he later dies in the Pig, his death does not unmake the Ka-tet. Still it's obvious King wrote or wanted us to have a strong feeling for Callahan.
I should say it's obvious what King wrote or wanted because he put himself in as a character. Here is where he ruint the story completely. Whenever you read a portion of fiction, you take on a suspension of disbelief. Yes people can time travel, yes they can battle wizards and win, of course Roland's the fastest draw... But when you start to see the seams of the plot waved in front of your nose, you're shocked out of that world. Perhaps it's what he intended but I cannot imagine why. Whenever the character King shows up and says something or is the topic of Roland's Ka-tet discussion, I'm shocked out of their world and thinking about what the Author wants to tell us?
1) Stephen King has to write his series so that the Dark Tower does not fall and the universe collapse.
2) Some of the self-deprication also seems ego driven; Eddie comments that King has a lot of bad habits that needs to be managed. Oh won't the world help King lose 10lbs and stop drinking.
3) Stephen King's too lazy to finish the series; chuckle chuckle
All in all, he started w/ a great story and great immersion. I saw another reviewer mention that 90% of it's good and it's just the 10% that gets harped on. That is true; I imagine if King had limitted Father Calahan to a minor character ("I'm an alcoholic; I used to be a priest; now I kill vampires") and deleted the King is God/Rose plotlilne completely (was never part of the first 4 books) we could have had a great series ending at 6 books. As it is that 10% of the time kept jumping at me; like Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace! I kept trying to enjoy the movie and every 5-10minutes there was Jar Jar.
Finally one other criticism I'll make, while not at the level of his above screwups, the dialog and conversation between Mia and Susannah was overdrawn. A lot of set up and important revelations that ended up revealing nothing and taking a lot of pages. A good editor could have fixed this.
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