Am I the only one who didn't know that both Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower are already out?!!!!

I nearly went nuts when I wandered over to Amazon.com and found out!

Sometimes I adore Stephen King. Other times I could slap him round the head with a wet herring. Today, sadly, I have the latter feeling about him. After writing such a gripping book like Wolves of the Calla, he follows it with this?!! I know that Star Trek movies have a reputation of one film good, next film bad, but why is this sequence of stories so uneven?

I really struggled with Wizard and Glass – it didn’t go where I wanted it to go and I got very impatient with the backstory when I wanted to know what was going to happen next. Wolves, on the other hand, was a book that I read in a single weekend, only stopping for food and sleep, and I loved every minute of it. I finished Song of Susannah in about seven hours over the course of the last two days and at the end of it I closed the book and said wearily, “Oh dear.” Then came straight to the computer to rant.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m still looking forward to starting the final instalment tomorrow, and I really want to believe that it’ll be a belter. Certainly if the one good/one bad routine holds true, The Dark Tower is going to wring every last emotion out of me, and I firmly believe that at least one – and quite possibly more – of our heroes won’t make it to the end and that their death(s) will break my heart. I really wish that tomorrow was Friday and so I could settle down with the book after work and read it cover to cover over the weekend. I might even hold back until Friday night so that I can read it pretty much non-stop.

(Spoilers follow. Stop reading here if you haven’t read the book yet – or jump to the penultimate paragraph and final line.)

All in all, Song of Susannah wasn’t a bad story – my problem with it was one single concept which ruined the entire book for me. You know how it is: it’s the bad bit that spoils the rest – and the bit that wrecked this book for me was the self-insertion.

Maybe I’ve read too many fanfics on the internet where the author self-inserts – they’re inevitably dire, and so as soon as it became apparent that Roland and Eddie were planning to visit an author called Stephen King I started pleading internally, “Please no! Make it look like they’re going to meet him but make fate intervene so that they never meet.” So when the two of them actually drove to Steve’s house and found him at home, I just mentally threw up my hands in despair. And what made me really grind my teeth was Eddie’s thought that, if this Stephen King really had written a book about a gunslinger called Roland, that made him God!!

Fer cryin’ out loud – I got mad enough with Steve when he made what I still consider to be arrogant statements about what he could get away with in The Tommyknockers. I’m still livid with him for publishing old rubbish in Nightmares and Dreamscapes. And now he’s God?!

I’m still too mad to write coherently about the arrogance of this man, so will just comment briefly on the rest of the story instead.

Even though it was several years between the release of The Waste Lands and Wizard and Glass, I don’t recall having a problem remembering the backstory when I read the latter. In my review of Wolves of the Calla, I mentioned that there seemed to be some plotlines that appeared to come out of left field which I didn’t recall ever having been mentioned before. It’s only a year since Wolves came out but once again I found quite a few references that made me go, “Huh?” I didn’t note them down as they came along but I’m fairly convinced that there are some events and words and items that are mentioned as a fait accompli but which I don’t remember reading about before. I’m wondering if there was some editing done before publication of Wizard and Wolves where certain events were removed but were still included in the sequels. Maybe once I’ve finished the entire sequence I can go back and read all seven books again and find that I’d just forgotten – or maybe in time the latter books will be re-released with the edited bits included, like Steve did with The Stand and, I believe, has also done with The Gunslinger.

I also felt that this story moved a bit too slowly. With the title of the book being what it is, it was fairly inevitable that the entire book would be taken up with Susannah/Mia’s progress towards giving birth but there were times when I couldn’t help thinking, “Just get on with it!”

I wasn’t too wild about the reference to the lockers under the Twin Towers, either. It felt like a cheap attempt to get a knee-jerk reaction from the reader.

And then just as I thought we’d seen the last of his God-ship, we get the Coda. I ground my teeth through the whole of that section, and the final entry had me thinking, “I very nearly wish!”

(End spoilers.)

So tomorrow (or Friday) I’ll start the final instalment. It’s been a long time coming and, because of my unhappiness with the penultimate episode, I’ll be starting it nervously. Don’t let me down, Stephen – I’ve waited many years for this story to come to its conclusion and if I don’t cry through most of it and if I’m not all-out weeping during the last few pages, it’ll be a tragedy. I really need this to be like the last couple of chapters of The Talisman where I actually didn’t want the story to end; and I really really want the ending to have the same effect on me as the final, one-sentence chapter of that book did where even now – many years later – I can’t think about it without getting tears in my eyes.

But I’m afraid of being disappointed.

Ooh, that is bad. You expect that sort of thing from fanfic writers, most of whom are making their first attempts at writing. Doesn't mean I like it any better, but it's understandable. To see an experienced professional writer commit such a newbie gaffe is disturbing to say the least.

I agree, I really liked the book, but the idea of King himself being an important player really did not sit well with me. And to be honest, I can't even see the point of him being there.

I for one liked the whole book and didn't have a problem with the self-insertion. I guess maybe I just haven't read enough fanfics.

Nit (and possible Anti-Nit):

I am just reading Song of Susannah. When Jake and Pere Callahan come to the WTC to put the Black Glass into the locker, they have to pass a metal detector, and of course, the alarm does NOT go off.

Hence Jake has got the Oriza plates (according to Wolves, they consist of titanium) and his gun with him, (which should both raise the alarm), the metal detector apparently failed. I guess there are two possible reasons for the failure:

1.) Ka.

2.) The Black Glass somehow deactivated the metal detector. (and ist's still Ka.)