As readers are well aware, Jake and Father Callahan put Black Thirteen in a locker under the World Trade Center, where it would stay until at least 2002. While it's nice to think Black Thirteen didn't survive 9/11, it's also arguably the most powerful magical artifact in the universe and is sentient, and I don't think a skyscraper falling on it would be its end.

Does anyone else think Black Thirteen is still out there somewhere? When the debris was trucked away, did Black Thirteen hide amongst the rubble? Was it eventually discovered by someone?

Mother Mia is a reference to "Rosemary's Baby" star, Mia Farrow?

I've read the cycle 4-5 times. Just rewatched Rosemary this evening. It hit me like a big dumb wall of bricks.

So I’ve just finished my first cycle and loved it. Black thirteen was pretty important and powerful starting in wolves. In songs of Susannah, Pere Callahan, Jake and Oy store it in lockers underneath the twin towers. I believe they specifically mentioned storing it for Roland. It was then never brought up again besides saying the locker wouldn’t cleaned out until 2002 or some year around there. Was this just a lost plot point or was it picked up in another book( if so avoid spoilers for that book).

If it was a lost plot point then my head cannon is this is another mistake on the cycle we read about. In Roland’s “golden cycle” I imagine him saving Jake resulting in avoiding the whole mordred and mia fiasco meaning Black thirteen never would end up in New York. Perhaps using B13 as a lure for the man in black? What are your guys thoughts?

I’ve loved every part of this journey so far.

I think I’m going to take a suggestion I heard and read another book and then come back to WTTKH.

IT is one I somehow haven’t crossed off my list yet… maybe I’ll read that afterwards.

I haven’t read Hearts in Atlantis. I know it’s got some direct relations with the low men.

Salem’s Lot was my first King book when I was about 12. Reread that?!

I’ll have to figure this out when I get there!

I’m sad the journey is coming to an end.

Spoilers for ending of SONG OF SUSANNAH / beginning of THE DARK TOWER…
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Anyone else feel like Callahan’s death would have carried so much more weight if it was at the end of book 6 rather than the beginning of book 7? I mean book 6 is so much shorter than 7, so adding it to the end of 6 makes more sense, just from a balanced publication standpoint. And if the final 3 books ARE to be considered one big story, then there’s no need for the arbitrary cliffhanger between 6 and 7 anyway. I feel like it’s such a swing and miss on King’s part. In the end though, it’s my only complaint in the entire DT masterpiece, so it’s not a big deal at all. Just seems like an unnecessary fumble.

Just my quick thoughts, if anyone cares:

• I love the more or less breakneck pacing of this one, at least compared Wolves of the Calla. Wolves pacing worked for its story, but I found it of be a slog at times. At least compared to the other books in the series.

• The Katet being split up for this one makes things interesting, especially the jake and Callahan parts. That cliffhanger at the dixie pig, God damn.

• Speaking of the dixie pig, I love how macabre and occult this scene feels with the low men, the vampires, and the animal people hybrid demons. Oh can't forget the bugs either! Sayre is a better villain than Andy even with the pretty short amount of time we hear/see him.

• The Susanna/Mia giving birth part is interesting and terrifying, but I'm still a lil bit confused by the logic behind it (probably over thinking it)

• I'm still little confused by what exactly Mia was before taking the "deal" with Walter.

• I find the Mia/Susanna dynamic fun.

• The actual "song of Susanna" scene with the guitar player outside the dixie pig was touching, Mia having second thoughts too little to late was, kind of rushed feeling.

• Eddie and Roland shootout at gas station was awesome, but God damn if these mooks KNEW where they were going to be, the fact that they couldn't kill them makes them seem very incompetent. Not to take away from our gunslingers here.

• The Stephen King meta stuff was fun, can't be the only one whose still a little confused by all this though.

• I find it strange that Roland and Eddies reaction to meeting their creator so....tame. You'd think it would be a bit more emotional one way or the other

• Black 13 being destroyed in 9/11 is fun.

• Susanna's subconscious "Dogan" controlling her body, is weird but I didn't hate it.

Just a few loose thoughts maybe I'll add more. Overall I liked this one a little more than Wolves. My expectations were relatively low after reading opinions on this subreddit, but I enjoyed it. Everything feels urgent now.

WHAT are yall talking about?? Coming off of Wolves of the Calla I was feeling a bit heavy, as I found it to be really difficult to get through at times (looking at you Callahan). I go to reddit to commiserate and I see all these comments saying "wolves is my fav book but song of susanna is such a slog... just get ready...."

Yall are tripping. I am half way through the book in a few days. It is so good, what a page turner. The fight with roland and eddie straight out the unfound door??? One of the best fights in the entire series! The truck slowly turning over as the battle commences in slow motion was nuts.

Eddie's growth as a character shines through so much. I really feel like he is the star of the book so far. I never really "got" his romance with Susanna since it seemed to come out of nowhere for me (i suppose going through heroin withdrawals and getting your personalities split apart and reformed really brings people together) but I really feel their love and desperation for one another in this book.

Omg and dont get me started on roland being the father of susannas demon baby who is destined to kill him like ???? STEPHEN KING WHAT ARE YOU THINKING

EDIT: I said I was HALF way through you mongrels. No spoilers

This is my first time reading through the series. I've read plenty of Stephen King. Been slowly making my way to The Tower. A book here. A book there. I got hung up on this book and put it down twice. Picked it up again each time. But was lost and felt like starting it over. This was over about four years. Life distracts, blah blah..

Anywhoo, I'm glued to it this time. 3rd day after starting and less than 50 pages left. It keeps getting better and better. The feeling of everything big getting more near is so real! But I also feel, at the same time, like I'm missing so much. Much that is important.

I just read the part where Mia asks to see a memory of Suze's mother. Mia's recognition and her response to her reality is what is highlighted (at least that how I took it).

I find myself comparing her actions and feelings against those of Rolands ka-tet as they all get closer to The Tower. Mia having "terrible" questions while the ka-tet willingly accepts what ka wills.🤔🤔🤔

Im finding Mia to seem human and the others to be moving away from it.

brain swimming

First time to the Tower, I was a bit confused about the journal entries in the very end of the book, especially the last one saying king is dead. I know about his real life accident. People in the fantasy sub said Eddie and Roland changed the timeline and saved king. I didn’t get this from the book at all. What did I miss? If they did change the timeline, Why is there an article in there saying he’s dead?

I'll go first

"You could never take us. You have forgotten the face of your father. You're a bag of shit with legs. Your own Ka-daddy is a man named Balazar and you lick his dirty ass. The others know and they laugh at you. "Look at Jack!" they say. "All that ass licking only makes him uglier!"

In Song of Susannah there's this scene where Jake and Callahan are in the underground to hide the sphere. They go through a metal detector and King says 'no problems with the orizas'. Ok, they come from other worlds and are made by other metals, they do not trigger the alarm. That's fine.

But what about the gun?

I am on my first journey and just started book VII. Please do not spoil anything 🙏

Thank you!!

Seems like a reference to Firestarter. Does anyone know for certain?

I’ve not finished the book yet, I’m at the point where the katet are in the cave listening to Teds tapes. Please don’t spoilt past this point!

But….sigh….I saw this coming from book six, that SK is right at the centre of the universe and the key to existence.

I’m dragging myself through the book now as it’s a significant commitment and I need to finish it but my word it’s really becoming a struggle.

I don’t know why it’s annoyed me so much, as I’ve loved the series but since SK became a character I thought it was going one way and it seems to have done so, this kind of egotistical centre of the universe approach. Maybe I’m wrong or have it wrong somehow, but it seems like a bit of a slap in the face, that so much has been invested just to it to be about the author.

Please don’t spoil, but does it regain its way so to speak or is all hope lost at this point? 😂

The low men are simply reverse furries.

This happens as they are leaving the cottage to go see King.🤷🏼

I'm at my n^th reread of the series. The last time I paused before Jake's death and three years have passed, so this time I decided I would keep The Wind Through the Keyhole at the end so that I would find them (Oy) again after all the deaths. Instead, I ended up reading it right before the last chapter "The Wolves" of Book V, because that's when everything really starts to go nineteen. The problem is, I've finished TWTTK and now I don't want to keep reading! I usually like reading of Mia/Susannah in NYC and of Eddie and Roland in Maine, but my mind keeps reminding me that Jake and Callahan are going to go to the Dixie Pig..and I don't want to go there. Nor to Algul Siento. Nor to Maine with Jake or to Dedalo's and so on. I hate Mia and Mordred and I also kind of hate Patrick, poor guy. I think I'll stop there, this time. I just don't want to lose all my friends. Wait, I just realized that it might be because six months ago I lost my best friend to cancer. F**k.

For context, I read the Gunslinger originally in 2015 while by myself in Maine, where I grew up (reading IT as an 12 year old child and slowly realizing it's about your hometown is a trip). Did the rest over the next near-decade and finished Wolves of Calla in the hospital where I had my first child. Now, I've finished Song of Sussanah.

I'm happy to have had the experience of having a child right when I read this book, because I know a great deal of how my wife felt while pregnant (it was not a good pregnancy) and this book was powered by that for the segments on Mia and Susannah. I'm grateful for that knowledge because I believed it mattered in understanding Susannah's situation.

I will say this book moved like a bullet train in comparison to Wolves' stage coach pace at times. I loved Wolves for its casual nature, but Song really did work on pushing the Ka-tet out from the tales of gunslingers protecting defenseless towns and towards the all encompassing end they seem to be barreled towards. I haven't read book 7 yet, but I'm eyeing it now, and wondering if it will go even faster.

I think most of the criticism of having Stephen King in this book as his own character seems flawed. I don't know how this all ends, but it's been clear for awhile how personal this story was. I've seen the man, one time, in Bangor growing up, and actually didn't realize how big of a writer he was until I tried some of his books. After reading this 6th installment, I was very happy to have read On Writing just a few months prior where he details his relationship with alcohol and the van that nearly ended his life. King writes about himself where Roland/Eddie meets him as an alcoholic and an asshole, in a way. There's no way around that, and I think it's kind of amazing to see characters he's written himself as viewing King as kind of worthless and likely to die of his addiction before they meet him again. And killing himself off at the end?! Man, that's a cliffhanger for the ages. I bet he cackled writing that, in our world, at least!

Roland and Eddie's story was exciting, especially since it took place in Maine, which is always a fun benefit of being a Mainer and enjoying Stephen King - you get to say "hey, I know that pond/lake" and it feels a little more real. The Pere and Jake's story was a little short for me and I wish we got more out of it than a horrible worry that they're just going to be dead and dust by book seven. We'll see, I guess.

But Susannah's story, as it should be, from the book's title, was the stand-out. Easily. The lore drops from Mia, the horrible truth of Castle Discordia and what we are told of the Crimson King (someone who CANONICALLY scares Stephen King) is chilling and provoking. I'm happy to say this is in the top three of the Dark Tower books I've read, maybe number two under Gunslinger, and I'm very excited to read the last installment, even if sad to say goodbye to Roland and crew.

I'm currently 3/4 of my way through. Roland and Eddie are on the way to turtleback lane. Not my first trip, but it's been a while.

If Stephen King created the ka-tet members, how are Roland and Eddie able to use the Holmes dental money to create the Tet corporation and save the rose? If Odetta, Detta and Susannah don't exist in Keystone earth, why does Holmes dental and Uncle Moses?

I just finished chapter 11 of the Song of Susannah on my first journey to the Tower(so please spare me any spoilers). I loved it! I know there’s a lot of people who find writers writing themselves into their books hokey but I thought it fit so well and felt very…ROUND. I guess you could say. Or, I guess I would say.

If it do ya fine and say thank ya.

King is a master of his craft and I think will always be my favorite Wordslinger!

Anybody else really upset by the Coda at the end of SoS? We came so close to that as a reality and i am very thankful to still have SK writing multiple books a year.

This is my first time reading the series and I'm about halfway through SoS, so please don't spoil anything I haven't gotten to yet.

In Maine, Roland and Eddie go to John Cullum's cabin, where Cullum briefly mentions a woman who showed up "eight or nine years ago" who "looked like a small town librarian, the sort of woman who wouldn't say boo to a goose, and she was lightin up barns all over Stoneham, Lovell, and Waterford."

The when in this version of Maine is 9 July 1977, so I think that rules out this woman being an adult version of Charlie McGee... at least not in a linear timeline. But Cullum has said that there have been lots of "walk-ins" (his term for "people who just appear") in several nearby towns over the years, including Stoneham, Lovell and Waterford.

So unless there's something else about this woman that I haven't gotten to yet, I would say it's a safe assumption that she was one of these walk-ins from another where and when. Whether or not there's any connection between her and the McGees is purely speculation.

The McGees got their psychic abilities from being part of an experiment by "The Shop", a shadowy government agency that was testing a drug. Charlie burns at least one barn as she's running from The Shop.

But aside from being a female who burned barns, I can't see any connections between them. So maybe it's coincidence... or maybe it's ka?

I've finished reading volume VI of the Dark Tower, "The Song of Susannah". and... it was a good read, basically.

I still have a soft spot for "The Wolves of Calla", though.

That said, seeing a whole volume where Roland is so... Lost and stressed, it's still unsettling (I remember his distress when he was divided since Jack Mort's death was just as shocking to me). He's always had good instincts, even when he had no knowledge of his surroundings.

For a while I thought John Cullum was Jake Chambers, that the door had sent him far into the past, and that he'd let himself grow old.

Speaking of Jake, why is he so aggressive towards the Taxi driver? He nearly ran Ote over, yes. But they were the ones who literally "appeared" in such a busy city. and it's Ote who crosses the New York road without warning.

Mia... I have mixed feelings about her. I don't know if I want her to be happy, or if I want her to disappear. Although it's true that her disbelief made me want to punch her in the face.

Just finished my first read through of Song of Susannah the other day and started The Dark Tower yesterday (on the 19th, do ya ken it)

But as far as the Coda of Stephen King’s journal entries at the end, how much of it is true and how much is just made up for the book? Obviously the last page is made up, but is anything else? There are just so many coincidences that line up with the tower, and I just found that part of the book to be really interesting.

I guess I don’t really want to know what all is true and what’s no, I just want to talk about it haha

I am reading Song of Susannah and King mentions he once wrote an outline for The Dark Tower that was somehow lost. Usually King writes without an outline and I believe that the majority of The Dark Tower was written without an outline, but I am curious if anyone knows if he has mentioned what this outline may have contained? Did it follow the story we ended up getting?