"Would'ee speak a word of prayer first, Roland? To whatever God thee holds?" 
 "I hold to no God," Roland said. "I hold to the Tower and won't pray to that." 
 Damn, I love that line. It so perfectly sums up Roland, his quest to find the Tower, what it's cost him, and how he knows he isn't done paying yet. 
 For years, it seemed like Dark Tower had been walking in aimless circles during the long breaks between the third, fourth and fifth books. We knew that King had finished the final three volumes after losing a game of chicken with a minivan, and he'd gotten the story back up and striding briskly in the right direction with Wolves of the Calla including ending that one on a pretty wicked cliffhanger. 
 Still the pace of this one took me by surprise. It's like King suddenly pulled out a whip and started cracking it over the heads of the DT fans while screaming, "Run, you bastards! You gotta run if you want to find out what happens! BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!" 
 And he didn't even let us stretch properly first. That's how you end up with a pulled hamstring. 
 Susannah's demon pregnancy led to her being taken over by the personality of Mia, and she fled Mid-World to New York in 1999 via the Doorway Cave. As Susannah wrestles Mia for control of her own body and learns more about the Crimson King, Roland and Eddie plan to follow and save her while Jake and Callahan also come to our world to protect the rose growing in a vacant lot which is actually a critical incarnation of the Tower. But when things go off the rails, all of the gunslingers will have to scramble to try and save not only Susannah, but their own lives. 
 This is essentially a set-up book that preps the way for the conclusion in the last one, and it doesn't resolve a helluva lot on it's own. Still, I like it for its breakneck pace and the sense of urgency that King worked into this one. The breaking of a beam in Mid-World before the action moves to New York was a great reminder of the stakes here. The lines of force holding reality together are being subverted by the Crimson King's breakers, and the so-called beamquake when one snaps is a stark warning to Roland and company that they are quickly running out of time. 
 Unfortunately, while the Susannah pregnancy story makes for a pretty good hook to drive the urgency of the story, it ends up being kind of unsatisfying overall once you know how the whole series ends. Plus, the conflict between Susannah and Mia reminded me a lot of a very similar plot that King had done in Dreamcatcher shortly before this book was released so it didn't seem all that fresh. 
 Overall, there's a feel of desperation in this one that takes us nicely into the final volume, and the cliffhangers here had me on the edge of my seat the first time I read this. 
 There's one controversial piece to this part of the DT story. (view spoiler)[ A lot of fans don't like that King wrote himself into this, and I was hesitant about it myself the first time through this when I wasn't sure how the story would end. At the end of Wolves of the Calla and into this one, I was worried that it was going to turn out that the Dark Tower was Stephen King himself and that its fall was his 'death' due to the minivan accident. 
 Knowing the ending now and rereading this, writing himself into the story doesn't bother me as much. If he'd portrayed himself as some kind of all-knowing creator, I might have hated it too, but he didn't. He's a pawn with a role to play. A role he kind of screws up by not getting off his ass and finishing this series sooner. 
 I like that the power behind the Tower is the force of creation itself, and that the Crimson King and the other baddies are agents of chaos and destruction. I think of it as the Tower was saving itself by creating a story of a hero on a quest, and it needed someone to write that story. Enter King, who actually made himself look kind of crappy in the process. 
 It's not my favorite part of the series, but it didn't ruin it for me either. (hide spoiler)]