Ok, time for some honesty: I have, for years now, claimed to love the Dark Tower above all other series. And I do....at least through Wizard and Glass. I have read the first four DT books countless times.

The last three, however, I have only read once, back when they were first published. I found them disappointing, to say the least. So THE GREAT DARK TOWER REREAD OF 2016-2017 marks my first time revisiting Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower in more than a decade.

(More honesty: I have never read The Wind Through the Keyhole. I know, I know, I'm an Inconstant Reader.)

I had hoped that the passage of time would help me to have a greater appreciation of the end of the series. I had thought that perhaps I had just been suffering from DT fatigue--when it began permeating nearly everything King was writing, I grew a little weary of the whole thing. I suspected that distance would make the heart grow fonder.

Nope.

Let's have even more honesty: Song of Susannah is not a very good book. If it had been written by anyone other than King, it would long ago have been out of print and forgotten.

The biggest problem is that nothing really happens in this book. It's really all about getting the players in place for the final volume. That's fine; that's essential; that has to happen; but did we really need nearly 550 pages to accomplish that?

Song of Susannah is also plagued by an extreme lack of action. Much of the book is composed of lengthy conversation after lengthy conversation. That's also fine; exposition is a vital part of storytelling; but after awhile I just wanted something to happen. What I did NOT want was yet another pointless discussion between Mia and Susannah.

(Fun DT drinking game: every time Mia utters the phrase, "I was made to have my chap and to raise him," or some variant thereof, take a shot.)

What makes Song of Susannah work, even a little, is the characters, whom by now we know and love so well that we would read about them going grocery shopping (oh, wait, that was Wolves of the Calla), and with good reason: they are great characters and reading about them is like seeing old friends. The addition of Callahan just makes it better.

I'm not bothered, as some are, by the splitting of the ka-tet here. The interplay between Roland and Eddie is always great, and Callahan and Jake make a nice pair also. It's like that season of Friends where they decided to shake things up by rearranging all of the roommates, so you had Chandler and Monica getting married and Joey and Rachel living together. It's not the best season of Friends, but hey, at least it's still on the air.

That's how I would characterize Song of Susannah: it's not the best, but hey, at least it's another Dark Tower book.

I suspect that a large portion of Wolves of the Calla could have been excised, and a large portion of Song of Susannah could have been eliminated, and the remainder could have been combined into one very strong novel. We've seen extremely episodic DT volumes already, so it's not like there wasn't precedent.

This was not to be the case, however, and as a result the finished product is a bit (wait for it)...nineteen.