Review by the Hondas

(The way they've written it will make perfect sense if you have read the book.)

Wren: Hear me, I beg.

All: We say thankee-sai.

Wren: To understand what's going on here we have to give you some plot exposition, if it do ya. In the Dark Tower series there's a character named Susannah. Her legal name is Odetta, but she split into two people at a young age when someone dropped a brick on her head.

A low murmur spreads through the crowd.

All: We say thankee-sai.

Gina: And in very beginning a new personality pops out. Her name is Mia and it's says she's born from Susannah in a time of stress. Ok, we can accept that, ye ken. But what we can't accept is that she's fucking nutzoid. She hops around eating leeches and wild animals whole because she's pregnant with a demon's baby and it's demanding animal blood to sustain it. Plus she talks with all the other "personalities" out loud in many different voices and everyone who sees her mentions how dangerous she is and how she can't be trusted.

Jason: It's alluded that the child she carries may be responsible for her odd behavior, Gina-sai. Her pregnancy has nothing to do with her multiplicity.

Gina: Yeah, whatever. Anyway, they go on like this and--

Jason: We should go into further detail before we continue, folken, may it do ya.

Siren: Do ya fine. Hear me, I beg.

All: We say thankee-sai.

Siren: Mia makes her first 'pearance in chapter three, one tenth of the way through the book, ye ken. She lives in a fictitious castle with banquet halls full of food, and every other night or so she borrows the body to go a-huntin for vermin in the real world to snack on. When she does this, Susannah loses time. Furthermore, Mia "talks to herself out loud in many voices, creating kind of a lunatic chitchat." I have trouble imagining, folken, just how it is Susannah remains unaware of Mia when she apparently converses with her out loud.

Gina: Plus people see her doing this and they're all horrified and stuff. Check this passage out, if it do ya!

"Eddie and Jake say she's a schizophrenic." Roland pronounced this exotic word with great care.

"But you cured her," Callahan said. "Brought her face-to-face with her two selves in one of the doorways. Did you not?"

Roland shrugged. "You can burn away warts by painting them with silver metal, Pere, but in a person prone to warts, they'll come back."

Aaron: So there you have our main problems with the portrayal of multiplicity in this book. First, Mia is portrayed as a dangerous individual who will snatch away the body at whim and run off somewhere to give birth to a demon baby. Second is the common "schizophrenic" goof, and how come no one in the editing room caught that, I beg? I can't tell ye just how the comparison of people in a multiple system to warts made us gawk when we first saw it.

Muse: He speaks true, aye, so he does. Hear me, I beg.

All: We say thankee-sai.

Muse: Have we not gone over this before many a time, folken? If King's portrayal of multiplicity troubles you so much, why do you keep reading his books? Can ye rightly blame anyone other than yourselves?

Cries of "Hear her, hear her well!" resound throughout the meeting hall, and from somewhere in the back comes the stomp of shor-boots upon the wooden floor.

Jessie: Because it's ka.*

Aaron: And because some of us would like to see how the story ends.

Siren: I offer you this, folken, hear me I beg. Is it so hard to imagine that you can sit and enjoy a book, regardless of the semantic quibbles you have with it?

Wren: Nay, if it do ya. And that's something we leave the readers to decide for themselves. Say thankya big-big.

*ka: destiny, fate, the will of Gan the creator.

Read Hondas^Helena's review of Drawing of the Three, in which Susannah and company first appear.