Song of Susannah — The Dark Tower, Book 6

Song of Susannah Review

Song of Susannah is the shortest and most structurally adventurous entry in the main Dark Tower sequence, and it divides readers more sharply than any other volume in the saga. King’s willingness to insert himself — literally, as a character named Stephen King, a young writer in Maine, 1977, working on a novel called The Gunslinger — is either the series’ most courageous meta-fictional move or its most self-indulgent, depending on the reader’s tolerance for an author making himself the pivot of his own mythology.

The novel’s plot splits the ka-tet across time and world. Susannah, possessed and pregnant, is drawn to New York, 1999, where she must navigate the city alone while the demonic Mia manoeuvres toward a terrible birth. Her storyline is urgent and grounded, the closest thing to a thriller the series has produced. Roland and Eddie’s journey to Maine to find King and secure the vacant lot is stranger and more unsettling — a scene of an author being told that his characters are real, and that his life is necessary to the Tower’s survival, is genuinely affecting even as it threatens to collapse under the weight of its own cleverness.

The meta-fictional conceit ultimately holds because King follows its logic without retreating. If the stories we tell shape reality, then the storyteller must be implicated in that shaping. The presence of King-the-character is not vanity but consequence.

What the novel cannot escape is its function as connective tissue. At 432 pages it is the leanest book in the sequence, and it earns its place primarily by setting up the final convergence. Readers who have committed to the series will find it propulsive; those hoping for a self-contained experience will be frustrated.

The ending does not let up.

Our rating: 4.0/5 — Audacious and propulsive, though the meta-fictional gamble will test readers who prefer their fantasy without the author in the room.

Reading Order

1. The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, Book 1)
2. The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower, Book 2)
3. The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, Book 3)
4. Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, Book 4)
5. Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, Book 5)
6. Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, Book 6) ← you are here
7. The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, Book 7)
8. The Wind Through the Keyhole (The Dark Tower, Book 4.5)

Publication History

Song of Susannah was published by Scribner in June 2004, within three months of Wolves of the Calla, as part of King’s rapid-fire completion of the Dark Tower series following his 1999 accident. The three final volumes of the main sequence were published in 2003, 2004, and 2004 — a pace reflecting both King’s urgency to complete the project and his genuine creative momentum once the series resumed.

The novel is the shortest entry in the main sequence at 432 pages and was, on its publication date, the first volume to appear in a simultaneous hardcover and limited-edition release strategy that reflected the series’ expanded profile by the mid-2000s.

The Meta-Fictional Gambit

King inserting himself into his own fiction as a character — a young writer in Maine in 1977 who is working on a novel called The Gunslinger and who is visited by Roland and Eddie to be told that his characters are real and his life is necessary to the Tower’s survival — is the most polarizing narrative decision in the series’ history. The reaction of readers has divided sharply between those who find it the series’ most audacious and thematically coherent move and those who find it an act of self-indulgence that breaks the fiction irreparably.

King’s defense of the decision — that if the series argues stories shape reality, then the storyteller must be implicated in that shaping — is philosophically coherent. The presence of King-as-character is not vanity but consequence of the series’ own premises. The Crimson King needs the Dark Tower to fall; the Tower can only stand if the stories that feed it continue to be told; the stories are being told by a specific man in Maine who is therefore necessary to the Tower’s survival. The logic follows, even if the execution requires a significant tolerance for self-referential fiction.

Susannah and Mia

Susannah Dean’s storyline in Song of Susannah — navigating New York, 1999, while carrying a supernatural pregnancy that has divided her consciousness between herself and the demonic Mia — is the novel’s most grounded and kinetically paced narrative. Susannah’s New York, rendered with the specific social texture of the late 1990s, is King’s most vivid depiction of the contemporary world in the series since Eddie’s JFK Airport sequence in The Drawing of the Three. Susannah’s management of Mia, the competing consciousness within her, requires a kind of psychological negotiation that King handles with the care he brings to his most complex character work.

Penultimate Volume Dynamics

Song of Susannah has a structural challenge common to penultimate volumes in long series: it must advance every major narrative thread toward convergence without providing resolution, while simultaneously functioning as a satisfying reading experience in its own right. King solves this problem by leaning into the fragmentation rather than compensating for it — the ka-tet’s forced separation is not a deficiency but the novel’s actual subject, the breaking of the fellowship as a condition of the final gathering.

Readers who have invested in the series through its five previous volumes will find the sense of dread generated by this fracturing proportional to their investment. The novel rewards commitment and earns its place in the sequence as the indispensable setup for the convergence that The Dark Tower delivers.

The Coda and Roland’s Diary

Song of Susannah ends with King-the-character writing in his diary about the experience of being visited by his own characters, a coda that King the author then excerpts directly. This self-conscious layering of fictional and authorial voice is the most extreme expression of the meta-fictional strategy the novel has pursued throughout, and it either confirms the strategy’s thematic coherence or exemplifies its excess, depending entirely on the reader’s engagement with the device up to that point.