The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah: 6 - Softcover

King, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743254554 ISBN 13: 9780743254557

Publisher: Scribner Book Company, 2005

Synopsis

Now a major motion picture starring Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba

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 circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, the Dark Tower series is unlike anything you have ever read. Here is the penultimate installment.

About this title

Review:

Song of Susannah continues directly from the almost literally cliff-hanging epilogue to Wolves of the Calla. As ever with such series, this is not the place to begin and new readers are strongly advised to start with volume one, The Gunslinger.

Meanwhile the penultimate instalment in the Dark Tower septet follows three interlocked storylines. Roland and Eddie in New England, where they undergo the firestorm of the book’s only major action set-piece, Jake and Father Callahan hot in pursuit of Susannah in New York, and Susannah herself, together with her alter ego Mia, struggling with probably the strangest pregnancy in all fiction. Her travails certainly make the New York horrors of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby seem almost mundane. The novel is not complete in itself, but leads to a duel climax-cliffhanger leading directly into the final volume, The Dark Tower.

While the journey itself is compelling and the finale riveting, it is Stephen King’s imaginative boldness which make this episode so remarkable. Stories about storytelling have become increasingly common in modern fiction, with books within books and fictional authors being central to such metafictions as Christopher Priest’s The Affirmation and Jonathan Carroll’s The Land of Laughs. King though takes the process further, writing himself into the saga, playing ingenious games with what the public knows of his life, even to his famous near fatal accident in 1999, and in a breathtaking achievement weaving the 34 year long writing of this series of books into its own fabric. The shocking sting in the final pages mean all bets are off for the epic final volume.--Gary Dalkin

Review:

"The sixth installment of this magnum opus ends with the biggest cliffhanger of Stephen King's career."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"One gets the feeling that this colossal story means a lot to King, that he's telling it because he has to....He's giving The Dark Tower everything he's got."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"[A] hypnotic blend of suspense and sentimentality...sprawling, eventful tale of demons, monsters, narrow escapes, and magic portals."
--The New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0743254554
• ISBN 13: 9780743254557
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448
• Illustrator: Anderson Darrel