Ah, Song of Susannah — probably the weakest link in the Dark Tower series, but still vital to the overall story line, since basically sets up the entire ending. But still. It’s not the greatest.
“You doom yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism.”
At the end of Wolves of the Calla, Susannah (with the woman Mia sharing space in her mind) sneaks off to the unfound door to return to New York and finally deliver her chap. Of course the rest of the ka-tet try to follow her, but everything goes wrong when Jake, Oy and Father Callahan end up in New York of 1999 sometime after Susannah’s arrival, while Eddie and Roland land in Maine in 1977 (the location of Calvin Tower, who possesses the deed to the property that contains the rose). Obviously, none of this makes any sense at all if you haven’t read the previous books, and if you haven’t, don’t start here. So while Jake and the Pere search for Susannah in New York, Susannah fights mentally with a scared and ready-to-deliver Mia, who can wrest control of the body from Susannah. Mia wants to find the vampires who promised her the baby in the first place, so she’s trying to make her way to the Dixie Pig, even though Susannah knows it will all end very, very badly. Meanwhile, Eddie and Roland (who have the much more interesting storyline in this book — sorry Susannah — mostly because I love John Cullum and his ayuhs and my god does the audiobook’s narrator nail that accent) emerge through their unfound door to end up under gunfire at a convenience store in a little vacation town in Maine. They befriend an ex-cop named John Cullum who helps them with the next part of their quest: finding the author Stephen King.
So there’s two main issues with this section of the series. First of all, the Stephen King as a character/creator thing starts out cute and gets old quick. I remember liking it a lot more the first time I read this (seven or eight years ago); it just exasperated me this time. Second of all, having the ka-tet broken up? I don’t like it. I want them all together. It makes me nervous when they’re not. And in this book, King basically reduces Susannah’s character way down. She’s normally such a smart, bad-ass lady and in the book focusing on her, she’s trapped in her own body, fighting with a bitch of a demon in her mind while trying to kill time, waiting for rescue. Makes me mad, even if she does get the better of Mia eventually (next book).
Word. Everything you said just nails my issues with this book. I want to try and like these plot lines more and try and appreciate Susannah more, but this book makes it so damn difficult.
But I do love John Cullum. As a New Englander who spent a lot of summers in Maine, I love how real and human he is. Ayuh.