King's epical Dark Tower hastens to a close, and its penultimate volume is one of the speediest. The gunslingers of Mid-World and other alternate Earths have defeated The Wolves of the Calla (2003) but lost one of their number. Susannah Dean, nee Odetta Holmes, lacking her lower legs after a minion of the Satan of Mid-World, the Crimson King, pushed her in front of a subway train, and whose personality is sometimes split between black bourgeoise Odetta and viciously paranoiac Detta Walker, has been taken over by the spirit Mia to be the body in which Mia will gestate a boy who will eventually kill head gunslinger Roland. The child is to be born in New York in 1999, which is where Susannah-Mia repairs through one of the doors between worlds. The other gunslingers pursue through the same door, but only 11-year-old Jake Chambers, accompanied by former 'Salems' Lot priest Don Callahan, get to New York. Roland and Susannah's husband, Eddie Dean, tumble into an ambush in New England in 1977. Each chapter--called a stanza and ending with two songlike quatrains--advances one subset of gunslingers' progress. King keeps us on tenterhooks throughout--and leaves us there. Before quite departing, he tacks on a clever coda about the gradual creation of the Dark Tower--but in which world? The series concludes with The Dark Tower in September.
