Rate: 4.5/5

Medium: Audiobook

Overview (No Spoilers):

I can hardly believe my Dark Tower journey is almost over! It has been no secret that I’ve been fully enamored with this series, despite a most rocky start in The Gunslinger. The aforementioned introductory novel resulted in one of the most scathing reviews I’ve ever given in science fiction or fantasy, two of my favorite genres.  Based on the overall popularity of the series, and much encouragement by fellow bloggers I knew I had to continue reading as there has to be a reason behind the well-deserved hype.  With that being said, I became caught up in the adventures of the ka-tet, failing to recognize that the Song of Susannah was the next to last novel in the series, until I’d already finished it.  While I’d heard conflicting reviews of this penultimate Dark Tower novel I still thoroughly enjoyed this continuation of the Roland’s journey as the characters we’ve come to know and love further develop as they face new extraordinary and dangerous challenges.  In Song of Susannah our ka-tet splits with Eddie and Roland traveling to a different time period than Jake, Oy, and Father Callahan to each pursue their own missions either to save the rose or try to find Susannah. On an aside, the reader is introduced new, yet all too familiar character in a literary, and literal risk by King. In this section I want to make an effort to not give away the identity of the surprising person that Eddie and Roland have a palaver with, although I did thoroughly enjoy the novelty of the appearance.  Overall, with the major cliffhanger King so kindly bestowed to the reader at the end of Song of Susannah I’m thankful I’ll only have to wait a week or two before picking up the concluding novel in the Dark Tower Series! There wasn’t a dull chapter in this novel as each changing narrative surrendered secret after tightly guarded secret that we’d been teased with since the beginning of the series.

Additional Insight (Spoilers Abound):

• Will we find out more about how Cuthbert and Alain died in the ambush? What did Roland do in the after years before finding Jake?
• I enjoyed learning more about Mia and found it rather amusing how overwhelmed she got in New York. Additionally it was interesting to see how timid and shy she was at the core.  What will it mean that it is Roland’s baby? What will he or Eddie think? How will the baby destroy Roland? Will it be a normal baby?
• Will Jake and Father Callahan save Susannah? Wil they survive the gunfight they’re about to walk into?
• When did Eddie and Roland have time to officially set up the Tet Corporation? Who pays or files those taxes? It would be a shame to lose to Lot they’ve spent so much of an effort to get to a bureaucratic mistake.
• Will Calvin Tower make another appearance in The Dark Tower? Personally he can stay way. Bless him for his love of books but he was so tunnel visioned.
• Eddie and Roland actually met and talked with King. It was an interesting concept to ponder about if characters could actually meet their creators. Let us pray that George R. R. Martin avoids that possibility.  I especially enjoyed the little mistakes sprinkled into to emphasis the literary creation. Were those actual mistakes make useful to the story or purposely planted? As much as I liked this twist, for me it pulled it out of the magical fantasy realm by having the actual author apart of the story.  And at the end of the book King dies! How will that impact Roland and Eddie? Or how will it tie into the end in general? How will Roland and Eddie get to 1999?