Susannah/Mia's baby is on its way and whilst the Calla are celebrating the destruction of the Wolves at the end of book five, she has snuck off with Black Thirteen (one of many glass orbs that have been in existence and exerted the Crimson King's bidding for a very long time - Lord of the Rings esk. The very same orb that controlled Rhea of the Coos who betrayed Roland's first and only true love, Susan Delgado in book IV of the series - of which Black Thirteen is the worst of course) and gone through the door in the cave from The Calla in Mid-World, to our world and New York.
The entire book takes place over a single day, with Susannah/Mia being in a park, finding a bewitched turtle trinket, which she uses to persuade people to do her biding - book hotel rooms, sing her songs, taxi her around town - all whilst visiting the Dogan in her mind (this being a room full of panels [I had film-set power station with banks of lights and dials in my mind when I read this] where she is able to control her unborn child's arrival, the pain she feels and weather the baby is asleep or not).
Confused yet?
Inter-spliced with this you have Eddie, Roland, Jake and Father Callahan (of Salam's Lot fame). The latter two are supposed to go to a small Maine town and track down the author of Salem's Lot (guess who) and find out how Callahan became a character in his fictional book when what happened in Salem's Lot was real - the low men, the vampires, all of it - but the door switches them around so Jake and Callahan end up in New York in search of Susannah/Mia, whilst Eddie and Roland find themselves looking for the author - who is of course the author of this book!
Still not confused?
When Eddie and Roland arrive in their 1999 all hell breaks loose and for me, this was the best bit of the book, the part I wanted more of. 'Gunslingers deal in lead' they say, which Andolini and his goons (low life Mafioso types who Eddie and Roland have already killed in the future back in book two) soon find out to their disadvantage when they ambush them - having been tipped off by Mia when she arrived - and the resulting gun battle and subsequent fifty pages or so disappears in a blur.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, so, back to New York with Jake and Callahan, hot on the trail of a very pregnant Susannah/Mia who's heading off to the Low Men to have her baby and . . .
It ends. That's it.
The book just ends. Susannah/Mia are in the very depths of a downtown skyscraper surrounded by the Crimson King's henchmen (and chimeras) Mia finally realising that she will have no hold over her baby after its born (the child is Roland's by the way, by default - long story) with Jake and Callahan outside, ready to burst in and then . . . that's it!
The last twenty or so pages are a collection of diary entries by the fictional Stephen King about how the area that he lives in is the epicentre of strange sightings of people who may have travelled between worlds (known as Walk-ins) through doors not to dissimilar to those Roland, Eddie, Jake, Callahan and Susannah/Mia have used, and ends with him (the fictional him remember) reported as being killed by a van whilst out walking!!!
I'm so confused that a star rating will have to wait. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the book - it wasn't Kafka - and some of it was all that I love about King but, overall . . . well, maybe I'll know when I've read book seven.
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