The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

by Stephen King

Book Overview

The penultimate volume in the Dark Tower series, The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah, a #1 New York Times bestseller, is a pivotal installment in the epic saga. Set in a world of extraordinary... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416521496
• ISBN13: 9781416521495
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 4.2" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Disappointed With Transaction

The edition that I was led to believe I ordered was not the one I received. I was not able to return it. Very disappointed.

Swapped

Ordered this as a hardback cover and received the paperback version instead. Never received any correspondence as to why or if the version I ordered was not available. Not happy with the lack of communication regarding this order. Item was not what I ordered.

favorite horror writer

one more book for my collection this one belong in a series of the dark tower books great condion on my orders thank you

99...100 or The Dark Tower VII Ending For Dummies *SPOILERS*

To offset all the negative reviews with spoilers I thought I would provide a positive one. There are numerous spoilers ahead so PLEASE don't read until you finish the book! Ok, I'll admit that I didn't get it immediately after finishing (I felt like I'd just been Matrix-Revolutioned to be honest)....but after re-reading it a few times I did get the ending and I must say it is ABSO-FRIKKEN-LUTELY the best damn ending King could have possibly written. Sheer genius no matter what others might think. Reread it, think about it, let your subconscious play with it and you will be enlightened....or read on and I'll spoil it for ya and you will ken the ending....you will ken it well. First off the bad, the expected and the good of this final DT book. The Bad: - No real antagonist. Of course Lord of the Rings suffers the same problem. I didn't care much for Flagg as spider chow or the finale with Mordred. They rang flat. Maybe in the final loop.....100..... - No 'Traveling Jack', Pennywise or Buicks. I was hoping for more stuff from his other books but I guess they can't all be in the path of the beam. - Santa Clause and the Snitches. I guess I have to re-read 'Insomnia' but I still think King should have delved deeper into the Crimson King....I was always under the impression the CK was Pennywise/The Spider from IT. - Oy! - The first part of the Coda where he apologizes to the reader for what is to come. This should be yanked out. The ending is pure genius and needs no apology. The Expected: - King tossing his characters aside like Rag Dolls. ....just like in everything else King has written. Of course all characters are just there to help Roland get to the Tower.... The Good: - A wonderful, imaginative journey. The settings were very cool and the characters very enjoyable. - King including himself in the story. Many folks don't like this but I find it is ingenious. Not only does he get to tie his accident into the series (and his motivation for finishing it), this plot device also works well in tying the series to our 'Keystone World'. Does King believe he sings the song of Gan and that the events in DT occurred? I believe he does on a certain level and who knows maybe they have! The ABSO-FRIKKEN-LUTELY Genius: For those of you who want the ending spelled out for you. Here it is. I encourage you not to read this until you have thought about the WHOLE series and the last 20 pages of the book for at least a week. If you have not had a head slapping AH-HA moment like I did last night, then come back. Still here? Ok. Hint #1 The real ending to Roland's saga wasn't written by King Hint #2 "It'll be your damnation, boy. You'll wear out a hundred pairs of boots on your walk to hell." - Cort Hint #3 The Dark Tower series is Robert Browning's poem in narrative form....except for one glaring difference. Hint #99.....100 Get it? Ok. Here's the deal-io. The story is fundamentally about addiction, in this case Roland's addiction to the song of the Tower

Not quite like any other book

I've read a lot of Stephen King, some of which was great and some of which was a little too out there for me. Even the Dark Tower series has been highly variable, with the great second, fourth and fifth books being diminished by the terrible first and third books. But this book takes the series into a whole new place, a place where squabbles about earlier books seem a bit ireelevent.I can honestly say this book is like no other I've read. It completly fades the line between reader and book. I was almost uncomfortable reading it, like he was breaking some fundemental rule and pulling me a little too far into the story. The way he blends his story with real life and continual references to the act of writing, makes it possible to actually start to confuse the fiction in the book to the reality of the world around you.I don't know what he will do in the seventh book, but if he continues in this vain, Stephen King may have cemented his place in literary history as a true master.

"Hile, wordslinger."

If you thought that the previous five Dark Tower books were departures for King, just wait until you read this one. At some point around the 11th Stanza ("The Writer"), "Song of Susannah" is, like the song says, guaranteed to blow your mind.Picking up right where "Wolves of the Calla" left off, our heroes Roland, Eddie, Jake, and the relative newcomer Father Callahan prepare for yet another sojourn out of Roland's world and into ours. Right off the bat, though, things do not go quite as planned. A Beamquake shakes the foundations of all the worlds, and we learn that the Tower is in much greater jeopardy than we may have previously suspected. And as always, wherever Roland goes, gunplay is sure to follow, but this time, it's waiting for him...King's further explorations into the rich world of the Dark Tower are as rewarding as they ever were. The characters, by now, have become as comfortable as old friends. Still, there are new facets to be seen yet, and we get a closer look at each of them as the story goes on.It's very difficult to write about this latest installment without giving what makes it so different away completely. The events and revelations found in "Song of Susannah" are so central to the themes of the overall story, and yet revealing them here would entirely ruin the fun of discovering them as King has presented it. Some readers will doubtless dislike the road King has begun to travel as the story approaches its conclusion, but I am convinced that many more will absolutely love it. It is a credit to King's growth as a writer that he can even attempt this ambitious sort of storytelling, and more, that he can do it successfully... at least, so far.One thing is certain: love it or hate it, "Song of Susannah" is King's riskiest and most surprising work yet. One the one hand, he is taking one of the most overused plot elements in fiction -- the baby of uncertain parentage -- and making something original and interesting out of it. On the other, he is attempting something seen in modern fiction only rarely... a self-relexive work that engages the reader on multiple levels. By the end of "Song of Susannah" you may find yourself thinking about the realities that fiction creates, and the fictions that "real" life presents us with every day. And if you do, I believe that is entirely the point. King seems to be angling not only toward a conclusion to Roland's quest, but also toward a deeply personal statement about what it is to be a writer. It is an ambitious road to travel, but so far, King has not let us down. In fact, what he has begun with this book has the potential to exceed all the expectations I had for it.'Ware, Constant Reader: "Song of Susannah," like "The Waste Lands," ends with a cliffhanger. In fact, there is not only one cliffhanger here, but two. The last pages of "Song of Susannah" should leave many readers, as it left me, powerfully hungry for the final book in the series. What lies in wait on the final page is, to say the

Wow

First off, I have to admit that I'm new to the Dark Tower series. I bought a copy of the Gunslinger four or so years ago because I heard that this series was supposed to tie in the Stephen King universe and I thought "That sounds pretty nifty" but I only made it about 1/4 of the way through before I got bored (sorry to say). However, when I heard that King was finishing the series as sort of his swan's song and when I was faced with his passion for the magnum opus of his life, I was excited and I bought all the books and read them back to back. I couldn't put them down. I wanted to get all caught up so that when Books 6 and 7 came out, I'd be able to read them right along with everyone else. Two things told me right away that I was a different Dark Tower fan than most. Number one: I actually LIKED Wizard & Glass :) :) Number two: I don't read Stephen King. Sure the short story here, saw that X-Files episode that kinda sucked. I watched IT, and The Stand, and Storm of the Century on TV and loved them all, but that was pretty much where my Stephen King background stopped. So, I can't compare Dark Tower to his other works and I think that is GOOD. Because they are NOT like his other works. It's as if everything else is a shadow of this. THIS is the real deal folks.With that said, Song of Susannah was wonderful. Gotta admit, at first I thought it was going to be a little slow. Not a whole lot of action happens but there is a lot of palaver. And BOY what palaver! King lays it all on the line, answering questions that have been floating around since before my introduction into the series. Who is Walter? Is he Flagg? Is he Marten? Is he all of them or only a couple or none? It's all spelled out. No more riddles. This is gearing up for the end and it is such an emotional climax! Okay, no real tears were shed, but this was powerful stuff, folks. Jake and Callahan. Read it. That's all I gotta say. That was some of the most stirring...yeah. Great stuff. So, I gush a little, but it's not because it's Stephen King because - I don't read Stephen King :) It's because you can tell that this is DIFFERENT. There's something "more real" about this series...at least to Mr. King. So GO! Buy the book! The Tower is almost here and you don't want to miss it!

without giving anything away...

Arghh!!! What a frustrating book!!!Don't get me wrong, it's great, but it ends in a cliffhanger that is guaranteed to leave you just plain disgusted that you can't keep reading. This is nothing new to King's "Dark Tower" series -- he did something similar in book three, "The Waste Lands." And this time, we know when the next book comes out; we've only got to wait until September, when the whole saga will be put to bed finally. After book three, no one knew when the next was coming; I was aroudn back then, and trust me when I say that the wait was awful.So, without giving anything away, let me try and make a review. The best thing I can say is that if you have read the other books, you definitely should read this one, too. That sounds sort of obvious, but it isn't, really: the last book in the series, "Wolves of the Calla," was good, but it was a relative disappointment in my eyes, one in which very little happens during some 700 pages of text. Anyone who might have chosen to quit reading the series at that point would not receive much scorn from me. Additionally, there was a disturbingly weird plot twist near the end of that novel; and I use the word "disturbingly" because it sort of shook my faith in the quality of the series, not because it was morally repugnant or anything like that. It was just... weird. Or, in other words, it brought a tremendous amount of suck potential into "The Dark Tower." If you've read book five, you know what I'm talking about; you may or may not agree with me.In any case, "Song of Susannah" addresses that concern, and it does so better than I expected. There still isn't an awful lot that "happens" in this novel, but that's sort of been true of all of the entries in the series thus far, and at a slim (for King) length of just over 400 pages, "Song of Susannah" feels WAY more nimble than did its predecessor.In short, "Song of Susannah" restores my faith in the series overall, and makes me positively antsy with anticipation for book seven.