Song of Susannah (spoilers!)

[duke]

I'm now half way through Song of Susannah. I'm at the point where Eddie and Roland have just left Aaron Deepneau and Calvin Tower, and are on their way to pay a visit to Stephen King in Bridgton.

I'm uncomfortable with King's self references so far. I'm getting the distinct feeling that it will be Stephen King they find at the top of the Dark Tower, and that the end of the journey will be not that "it is all just a dream", but that "you're all just characters and this Dark Tower is just stuff I made up."

Then there's King's "explanations" in SoS - Eddie realising that what he saw in The Magnificent Seven parallels the 7 people fighting the Wolves, Sturges being the director of that movie and the name of the town in Wolves. I'm happy for King to use other stories and movies as inspiration (for example I enjoyed Eddie's Lord of the Rings references), but he doesnt need to *explain in the story* where they have come from. That just makes me feel like he's selling out the story - that the journey to the Dark Tower is just a journey from the characters and settings and plots and inspirations and King's influences back to Stephen King himself.

Please don't spoil the ending of the Dark Tower for me, I'm not discouraged enough to stop reading. But I must say that I think King has broken a major rule of storytelling by putting himself into the story and having the characters wonder whether they are fictional, and he better have a damn good reason for taking the story in this direction. So far I'm not convinced...

[Menolly]

heh...
You're being a lot gentler on King than I think I was in the Fresh Journey thread when I reached the same point.

I agree, keep going.
King does redeem the story, even though there are some debatable points still yet to come.

[Avatar]

I'm getting the distinct feeling that it will be Stephen King they find at the top of the Dark Tower, and that the end of the journey will be not that "it is all just a dream", but that "you're all just characters and this Dark Tower is just stuff I made up."

Yeah, I though the same thing. Luckily I can tell you without spoiling things that what we feared does not come to pass.

--A

[duke]

I finished SoS a few minutes ago. Very, very disappointed.

I was hoping for an ending where the whole ka-tet storms the Dixie Pig in an attempt to save Susannah ... a big show down with consequences carried over into DT7... but it didnt happen (yet).

The last 30 pages were just a diary of King and his writing of the Dark Tower - life imitating art, or something like that.

At least King only imposed himself on SoS, and should not be what is at the top of the Tower in DT7.

My other disappointment is there's nothing memorable about SoS. There's no key scene that I want to go back and re-read. The other books in this series have those - Jake being dropped by Roland in the Gunslinger, Eddie in the plane carrying drugs in Drawing, Blaine in the Waste Lands, hell, all of Wizard and Glass is memorable, and Roland dancing in Wolves still sends shivers down my spine.

But thinking of SoS, although there's no key/memorable scene, I did enjoy seeing Roland, Eddie and King together - not because of King being in the story, but because of Roland and Eddie getting "screen time" together.

At one point - King said to Roland and Eddie - "In fact, whenever I run out of inspiration and resort to plot, the story I'm working on usually turns to shit."

That pretty much sums up what I think has happened with SoS. King introducing himself into the story to me feels like one huge mistake, an idea that his editors (or his wife, or someone) should have told him "No!".

I'm 6 books in, and I only have Insomnia (I'm curious as to what King does to a person with insomnia...) and DT7 to go, so I'll keep going.

SoS is a big disappointment, the worst book in the series (so far).