Song of Susannah had some parts that dragged for me, but I understood why the story needed to spend time on what was happening.
There are a lot of things coming together by this point. The characters have their own problems, the worlds keep crossing into each other, and the journey is getting closer to its end. This book has quite a bit to sort through, and I could feel that in the pacing.
Coming after Wolves of the Calla, it also has a different feel. That book had the town and the approaching attack giving everyone a clear problem to focus on. Here, the group is separated, and several urgent things are happening in different places.
Susannah’s situation is at the center of it.
The story follows her struggle with Mia and the pregnancy while the others try to respond to what’s happening. The journey spreads across New York and Maine, with the group dealing with different circumstances in different worlds. Keeping everyone together has become a problem of its own.
Susannah has been complicated from the moment she entered the series. We first met Odetta and Detta, with all the difficulty that brought into Roland and Eddie’s lives. By this book, there’s another struggle taking place, and it involves Susannah’s control over her own body and what’s happening to her.
That gives King a lot to work through.
There are conversations, explanations, and changes in perspective that matter to the larger story. I could understand their purpose and still feel the book slowing down in places. Sometimes I wanted to move ahead while the story was staying with something a little longer.
That’s probably the fairest way I can describe my reaction. I didn’t need everything to turn into a fight, but there were stretches where I felt the pace drop. Understanding why a section is there doesn’t automatically make it move faster when you’re reading it.
The movement between worlds is still part of what makes the series interesting, though. I liked that aspect back in The Drawing of the Three, and by this point King has made it increasingly complicated. Different places have different people and problems waiting in them, and the group can’t handle everything by staying together on one road.
Roland and Eddie being paired up gives the story another relationship to work with. They’ve come a long way from their first encounter. Eddie has his own way of looking at things, and Roland’s experience doesn’t mean he understands everything they run into in a world closer to ours.
Their part of the journey also leads into an idea I thought was pretty unique.
King gets bold about the connection between a story and the person writing it. I liked where he went with that. I’ll leave the exact circumstances alone, because it’s something I’d rather let a new reader encounter in the book, but it was one of the things that stood out to me.
This series had already made room for doors between worlds, a billy-bumbler, a dangerous talking train, and characters whose lives connect to other books. King still found another direction to take it. I appreciated that he was willing to follow such an unusual idea this far into the journey.
It also fits with what I enjoy about the way his stories touch each other. The connections keep getting more involved, and Song of Susannah pushes that part of the series further. There’s more to think about concerning how these worlds relate to one another and where the stories themselves fit.
I wouldn’t pretend the pacing worked for me the whole way through. Some parts dragged, and that was noticeable. But I understood that there were things King needed to establish before the final book, and the unusual direction he takes was something I liked.
For me, Song of Susannah is a mixed part of the journey: slower in places than I wanted, with an idea that made it memorable. I could see why it belonged here, even when I wanted it to get moving.
Who I’d recommend it to: Readers already invested in The Dark Tower who enjoy its connections between worlds and are open to King taking the story somewhere unusual. Read it as part of the continuing journey.
Caution: The pacing can drag, and the story moves between several characters and locations while setting up the final book. Pregnancy, loss of bodily control, violence, and disturbing imagery are central elements.
Discussion question: How did Song of Susannah’s pacing work for you, and did its unusual turns keep you interested through the slower stretches?
— Cory Lane