That's What He Said: Song of Susannah by Stephen King

First things first.  I'm introducing yet another new feature on my blog -- "That's What He Said".  I know, a silly title, but it's a play off of a silly joke between my husband and me.  In this little series, I'll give you my husband's reviews on books.  We have some overlapping tastes (mainly in nonfiction, sci-fi, and fantasy), but he likes a good horror, military novel, and thriller as well.  I plan on getting a small video memo of what he says and translating it into a shortened version of my usual review, verdict, and thoughts.  I hope you like this new feature!

Important to note is that my husband and I rate things very differently, so until he gets a guideline on how my rating of 10 works, I won't be including these reviews in my rating counts.

From the author's site:  "Susannah, now pregnant, has yet another taking control of her.  The demon-mother, Mia, uses Susannah and Black Thirteen to transport to New York City of 1999.  Jake, Oy, and Pere Callahan must rescue Susannah while Eddie and Roland transport to the Maine of 1977.  A vacant lot in New York is the prize that must be saved and ties these together."

Excerpt at USA Today.


It's hard for me to write this review, because I'm going off voice notes and my husband is asleep.  In fact, this one will be mostly a series of thoughts on the novel.
 
To sum up, this story focuses on the group that has been separated into three subgroups, each with their own story line.  My husband picked the Eddie/Roland story as the one he discussed the most, but that might have been because I prodded him about King's use of himself as a character.

In the Dark Tower Series, Steven King is a character in his own book because Roland and his crew realize they are characters written by Steven King.  He's written the first book and it's sitting in his garage when Roland comes in.  My husband applauded King for the skill in using himself in the books convincingly, which we both agreed was a good conceit for this long series and for King's love of meta and shared universes (see Flagg).

My husband stated that  especially like it for a latter King book, though it is not as good as Carrie, Cujo, or Salem's Lot.  He also mentioned that though the pacing of the book definitely gives it the feeling of being a good penultimate book, curiously, very little actually happens in the book.

Verdict:  7.  An above-average score for this last book which is one of the more coherent, less scattered of the latter books of this series, which were written and published very quickly.


Thoughts:  Probably best not to start here, but if you've made it this far through the series, why not keep going with this decent continuation?