The English Student

Did I really give this five stars the first time around?

Which is to say: this series is not standing up well to re-reading.

Song of Susannah is the sixth in King's Dark Tower series, and it sees Susannah going off to New York to have her baby - her demonic "chap", as her alter-ego Mia calls him. Jake, Callahan and Oy follow her, while Roland and Eddie end up in Maine, on the trail of the bookseller Calvin Tower and the writer (wait for it) Stephen King.

Ugh. I am so not a fan of the device whereby King ends up in his own story. I wouldn't mind quite so much if it were just a passing reference, a bit of nineteen, but there's this whole sequence where Roland and Eddie are like, "Hey, we're going to meet our god" and, honestly, how self-aggrandizing can you get? The fictional King is the key to all worlds. Enough already. Please just go away.

There are draws to the book: we finally start getting some answers, and if they feel a little hand-wavy they're still kind of cool. ("There is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism." I may not agree with the sentiment, but the words have a nice ring to them.) And I really appreciated the development of Susannah and Mia's relationship, their grudging alliance and their moments of empathy: it's nuanced and complex and interesting.

The book sails by quickly, too, thankfully: it's no drawn-out Wolves of the Calla, although now I think about it very little actually happens in 400 pages. But for the most part, I just found it a bit...meh? I think I'm in a bit of a reading slump at the moment, which doesn't help.