DT6, without any info about or input from the rest of DT

[wall of fog]

I would like to hear what people think of DT6 by itself, without any info about the other DT books, and without any input from the rest of the DT books

[TBlack]

What you ask is like trying to bake a cake & deciding not to use any flour!

[Ubasti]

I liked DT6. It has a lot of action and is a fast moving book. It and DT3 are my favorites from the series.

[BTRNYC]

I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I appreciated the different layout... Song of Susannah hearkening back to Song of Solomon, with the staves of music.

Roland and Eddie's journey to Maine and meeting our beloved sai King, and the rest of the ka-tet's adventures in NYC are awesome too. I think it's a perfect transition out of the Calla and into the Dark Tower.

Not sure what you mean, "without any input from the rest of the DT books". I wouldn't read it out of context if I were you.

[Lencho_of_the_Apes]

I get the events of DT 6 and the earlier part of DT 7 confused, but off the top of my head, without going back to the book and looking through, I got a kick out of Roland and Jake's visit to Maine, but I thought long long sections of the book were kinda weak; the whole narrative about Susannah, her baby, the alien spirit that was possessing Susannah and laying claim to the baby and the mental space that that spirit took Susannah to... all of that seemed unnecessarily complicated, and I had a hard time following the story's logic through that part.

But the image of Susannah going off and eating dead rats and rotting plants to satisfy her pregnant cravings was a very powerful one. Nobody but Sai King...

We all float down here.

[wall of fog]

I did read it first, and my head is spinning. I'm not sure if you mean read the book first (which I read in an article is not recommended) or a reading out of the context of the rest. I was looking for the first impressions :down:

[All Hail The Crimson King]

I did read it first, and my head is spinning. I'm not sure if you mean read the book first (which I read in an article is not recommended) or a reading out of the context of the rest. I was looking for the first impressions :down:

Why did you read Song of Susannah first? Did you not know it was part of a series? I suggest starting with The Gunslinger and go from there. No wonder your head is spinning... ;)

[Mr Nobody]

Hard to answer, because if you've read them in order, you're 'tainted' (can't 'unread' what's been read, etc).
My opinion of it as a standalone (as far as is possible to say): tbh, I would have been left wondering what the blue hell most of it was about. There is something of a self-contained story there, but there are also references to the previous parts that would leave me floundering. It'd really be like just seeing half the picture (if that) while the rest was blurry and tended to fade to black in apparently random areas.
Basically, you could enjoy some of the story on merit, but for total satisfaction...you need to go back and read what came before.

[michal]

The 7th book, I thought was great, but it is a seventh episode in a pretty long tale and while getting in the middle is possible, coming at the end offers you only a partial angle of the story.

Still, you asked and I will say - it's an epic book, a pure dark fantasy fairytale with creatures from below and true heroes. It has tragedy, triumphs, twists and while some may dispute if it is or not a Happy Ending, the story is told all the way through.

Really, what else can you ask for?

[OhhDiscordia]

I liked it a lot, thought it was largely focused on Susannah's mind and I guess, how troubled, out of sync, schizophrenic, split, etc; it is. So much so, that when Mia enters her body, she doesn't even realize it at first, just as she didn't realize Detta was there. That, despite what Roland has done for her in creating Susannah, she is still who she is after all they've been through. Does that make sense? Huge part of this revolved around her MPD, not the science of it but, how it is a huge part of who she is. Don't ever read any of the books out of order haha.

[wall of fog]

Yes, I really enjoyed the parts about Mia because I an old stone ruins fanatic. Teleporting around such places really tickles my fancy. When I first read the book, the story of the wolves seemed exciting, but to be explained another day. The Manni were interesting, but I recognized the richness of their character as being left in the first pages of the book as I got to the middle.