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.
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Well I'll be honest, I'm not really sure what happens in half of this book . . .
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 December 2020
. . . the Susannah/Mia half, because when you're with her you're with Odetta Holmes (Detta/Det) and Mia - daughter of none mother of one - because they're all one person, even if they want different things! Of course this gets a little confusing from time to time, especially when they're talking to each other (which is constant) and arguing over who does what.Susannah/Mia's baby is on its way and whilst the Calla are celebrating the destruction of the Wolves at the end of book five, she has snuck off with Black Thirteen (one of many glass orbs that have been in existence and exerted the Crimson King's bidding for a very long time - Lord of the Rings esk. The very same orb that controlled Rhea of the Coos who betrayed Roland's first and only true love, Susan Delgado in book IV of the series - of which Black Thirteen is the worst of course) and gone through the door in the cave from The Calla in Mid-World, to our world and New York.The entire book takes place over a single day, with Susannah/Mia being in a park, finding a bewitched turtle trinket, which she uses to persuade people to do her biding - book hotel rooms, sing her songs, taxi her around town - all whilst visiting the Dogan in her mind (this being a room full of panels [I had film-set power station with banks of lights and dial in my mind when I read this] where she is able to control her unborn child's arrival, the pain she feels and weather the baby is asleep or not).Confused yet?Inter-spliced with this you have Eddie, Roland, Jake and Father Callahan (of Salam's Lot fame). The latter two are supposed to go to a small Maine town and track down the author of Salem's Lot (guess who) and find out how Callahan became a character in his fictional book when what happened in Salem's Lot was real - the low men, the vampires, all of it - but the door switches them around so Jake and Callahan end up in New York in search of Susannah/Mia, whilst Eddie and Roland find themselves looking for the author - who is of course the author of this book!Still not confused?When Eddie and Roland arrive in their 1999 all hell breaks loose and for me, this was the best bit of the book, the part I wanted more of. 'Gunslingers deal in lead' they say, which Andolini and his goons (low life Mafioso types who Eddie and Roland have already killed in the future back in book two) soon find out to their disadvantage when they ambush them - having been tipped off by Mia when she arrived - and the resulting gun battle and subsequent fifty pages or so disappears in a blur.Where was I?Oh yeah, so, back to New York with Jake and Callahan, hot on the trail of a very pregnant Susannah/Mia who's heading off to the Low Men to have her baby and . . .It ends. That's it.The book just ends. Susannah/Mia are in the very depths of a downtown skyscraper surrounded by the Crimson King's henchmen (and chimeras) Mia finally realising that she will have no hold over her baby after its born (the child is Roland's by the way, by default - long story) with Jake and Callahan outside, ready to burst in and then . . . that's it!The last twenty or so pages are a collection of diary entries by the fictional Stephen King about how the area that he lives in is the epicentre of strange sightings of people who may have travelled between worlds (known as Walk-ins) through doors not to dissimilar to those Roland, Eddie, Jake, Callahan and Susannah/Mia have used, and ends with him (the fictional him remember) reported as being killed by a van whilst out walking!!!I'm so confused that a star rating will have to wait. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the book - it wasn't Kafka - and some of it was all that I love about King but, overall . . . well, maybe I'll know when I've read book seven.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 December 2020
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