The Dark Tower reread pt. 9: Song of Susannah

"Was it God that made magic, 

or was it magic that made God?"

A reasonable question.

When last we met on the Path of the Beam, I mentioned how it was (usually) a drag to write negative reviews. That goes even more for installments of a series where the worldbuilding doesn't really matter anymore but the author keeps right on worldbuilding. And this is just book 6! Book 7 is twice as long. As the last volume in a saga should be, but it's just difficult to stay vested in worldbuilding once certain pacts with the reader (namely fourth wall one) are broken. 

Let's see if I can unpack that a little.

MIA AND THE PRIM 

AND KEEP IT MOVING

Here's how I wrote it up immediately after finishing this re-read:

"The basic gist is that roundabout 10,000 A.C.E. the technology/ magic of the world went kablooey and the Prim/ monsters now had access to the world. All of the Pennywises, the Wolfmen, the Draculas, the bug-like monsters of the Mist, you name it. Among these monsters are the can-toi, whom the Crimson King has promised to remake the world in their image. Walter is pretending to work with the Crimson King,  who either knows and is biding his time or is too focused on his own insane ambitions to notice. Walter's doing this because he likes secrets. Maerlyn's globes all pass through his hands, but hey. Walter and the CK are working together, though, on this weird magical pregnancy with a midwife they created from Prim mists and bad vibes. They graft this onto Susannah (somehow) because all prophecies have the protagonist slain by his red-headed progeny. Like literally that is their reason: it sounds good in these old books. Of course, all of the above only has to make the loose sort of sense a skimming-of-King's-unconscious might; we're waterskiing on the random echo-waves of everything he's ever taken to the brain. (Like that J-Lo movie The Cell. Mash-up with King's Cell? Too far.)"

As aforementioned, it's asking a lot of an audience to sit still for more of this stuff - even if prior to the meta-walls crumbling down, more-of-this-stuff was what I eagerly wanted to read - after the author's already yanked the curtain down. Not everyone agrees this is as much of a problem as I do. But personally, the balloon just kind of deflates a little further each time he gets into this stuff - if I was there I'd do the move-it-along-dude Roland finger-roll thing *- or throws beamquakes or other dangers at the characters. There's no real danger or suspense anymore, just a patient curiosity to see how it will all end up. And since I know that already, the re-read for these sections is a lot like the alien / smoking-man storyline in The X-Files. Who gives a crap? Plot developments (or plot derailments) of the series itself already made this stuff moot, and it's the sort of thing that only works if it remains very-much-not-moot.

* Does Roland do this anytime in The Gunslinger or did he develop this affectation after he lost several fingers on his other hand? Or does he do this gesture with his afflicted hand? Even better. "Let my absent fingers remind you of time you'll never get back."

Again, not everyone agrees. (About that aspect of the X-Files, neither.) It's worse here though because King carries on with the conceit that these are characters moving towards a goal in a universe with rules. All the whole extra worldbuilding, all the mystical pregnancy stuff retconning the speaking demon sex scenes, and the various timelines-hopping and interdimensional mental projection: I'm just waiting it all out. It doesn't matter if it makes sense; you move beyond judgment, beyond good and evil, once you turn down the "why don't I put myself into this story?" path. Throw one Harry Potter sneech and look what happens. 

ALL THAT SAID...

I actually enjoyed reading this much more than I did the first time. I wasn't disappointed by the mystery unfolding in directions I didn't like, since I knew what was going to happen, so I could just enjoy some of the moments. And there's plenty of fun scenes and sequences, especially once John Cullom - one of King's everymen - and Jack Andolini and his pals show up. 

The illustrations by Darrell Anderson are kind of cool. My least favorite book in the series (perhaps) gets my favorite illustrations. Weird. 

ROSALITA, ROSALITA...

that stout-of-heart, wide-of-hip, Oriza-throwin', Beams-knowin' woman of the borderlands.

I got nothing here, the description just amuses me. Roland's range of romantic action is kind of odd in the Dark Tower books. From a few different whores to the love of his life in Mejis to Rosalita to the strange affair with Irene Tassenbaum in bk7. And the one semen-swapping demon of course.

...eww

FUN LINE

"It hurt like the veriest motherfucker of creation."

MORE OF THIS STUFF

"Once upon a time all was Discordia, and from it, strong and crossing at a single unifying point, came the 6 beams (...) There was magic to hold them steady for eternity, but when magic left from all there is but the Dark Tower, which some have called Can Calyx, the Hall of Resumption, men despaired. When the Age of Magic passed, the Age of Machines began. They created the machines which ran the beams, and now the machines are failing. The Crimson King's breakers are only hurrying a process that's already in train." 

I hate to even get wrapped up in this after deciding none of it matters anyway, but how long exactly have the Breakers been at this? Several generations of Calla folken at least. What exactly are they doing? Magic built the beams and the Tower - or they themselves are manifestations of magic - and then men built machines to bolster them, and now Breakers are using squiggley-doodles and tele-Sudoku to un-beamify the multiverse?

All of these epic sagas square protagonists up against the undoing of everything from some ultimate force/ evil; I don't need it to be literally spelled out in every detail. But I need to understand more than I do here. I need something more tangible than "To Break is divine". I guess these are more Book 7 thoughts. Mark your calendars!

Speaking of:

THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

It doesn't get more tangible than the author having a few beers with (in front of, I guess, while they look with a measure of awe and embarrassment) his creations.

This is another section I liked more than expected. King comes across well, and I'd be curious to hear from those who know him (or knew him in the 70s) if he got himself right. Storytelling-wise, the todana-death-bag and other foreshadowing works pretty well. It doesn't get the pay-off it deserves in bk 7.

King's diaries that end the book are an interesting narrative device for the penultimate book of the series, but the voice is off. He doesn't sound like the guy we met earlier in the book, or the King we know from countless intros and endnotes. Okay, let's say he has different voices for different tasks. Problem is, this King sounds like the diary writer from countless other King works (The Plant, "Survivor Type," The Regulators, etc.) Could he actually be commenting on his tendency towards sameness of diary-voice? It seems impossible. Could he be that much a master of meta-puppetry?

A FEW LAST THINGS

- I haven't even commented on the title character too much. I didn't care for the Maid of Constant Sorrow refrains, or the jailhouse/ answering machine of the damned motif, although I guess that was an effective way of straddling various timelines. (I liked it better in "1408," though.) 

- King's hostility towards Calvin Tower continues to crack me up, both in-story and meta-wise. I guess this is pretty much the high point of it all. All the characters abuse him to a degree I never quite understand. But it feels very meta. There's something going on here, some reaction to his fame or marketability or both. I bet there was a scene where Roland pistol-whips him that Tabby made him take out.

- The sköldpadda (the item in the lining of the bag teased throughout the last act of Wolves of the Calla) is awfully convenient. More magic items from the man behind the curtain - is King commenting on himself here, too? Ka. Anyway, like all such magic items, they'd have come in useful elsewhere or are not utilize beyond getting the characters out of certain scenes.

- I covered the fake language stuff and how much it bugged me by this point in the series, so I won't spend time on it, do'ee kennit? Kra? Twim. 

- I didn't read a single one of the "commala" stanzas that end every chapter. I hope there's gold in there - the secret to the universe, even. I'm happy to die missing out on it from skipping these. Two can play the stubborn game, Mr. King. 

FINAL VERDICT

All in all, a better read than I remembered, but my original opinion (what the hell did you do to your series, dude?) remains unchanged.

~