I disliked the speeches given to us by Mia. Actually, I dislike the Mia character entirely. She seemed unnecessary, when Susannah was already prone to multiple personalities. Why have a "hitchhiker" personality? Is it to absolve Susannah of the responsibility so she'll remain a sympathetic character? It would have developed her character more if the baby issue wasn't imposed upon her externally, but developed and resolved an inner conflict of her own.
Back to the Mia speeches ... not only are they wordy, unnecessary, and boring, but they also feed into a belief that is absolutely false, but sounds good to the gullible. Mia says:
We replaced magic with machines, and now the machines are failing, and that's why the world is "moving on."King wrote:You doom yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism.
Bullshit.
I know this is a fantasy-ish novel. It has magic and monsters, and this is fine as long as they are metaphors, but King is literally pitting magic against reason here. Myth and metaphor are literally meeting reality in this story. And the problem with reality? Well, not enough unreality! Not enough made up bullshit ... i.e. magic.
Rational thought is not merely good for launching probes to Pluto. It's how humans have survived in conditions that would wipe out less intelligent species. It's how we developed agriculture, medicine, air conditioning, sanitation systems ... where is the death in rationalism? [Okay: weapons ... but those can be used defensively to save lives.] Rationalism gets to the core of the human experience, it's what moves us out of Plato's Cave into reality. It puts us into the world to a much greater degree than any other species on earth. It lets us comprehend our reality, to know our actual state of Being better and more accurately than any other creature. It pierces illusion.
I'm sick of being lectured about magic by people who miss all the "magic" right in front of them, who fail to see how "miraculous" rationality is, because they crave illusions instead of truth. Yes, many of us have lost our faith, but in the process we have freed our minds. This is not death, this is life.
But I guess that doesn't make a good story for people who crave illusions.