There's something about a crippled, black, schizophrenic, civil rights activist–turned–gunslinger whose body has been hijacked by a white, pregnant demon from a parallel world that keeps a seven-volume story bracingly strong as it veers toward its Armageddon-like conclusion. When Susannah Dean is transported via a magic door on the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis (the scene of much of <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla) to New York City in the summer of 1999, the "demon-mother" who possesses her, Mia, has only one thing on her mind. She must give birth to her "chap" at a predetermined location in Manhattan's East 60s, as instructed by the henchmen—or "Low Men"—of the evil Crimson King. Pressed for time, Father Callahan, preteen Jake and talking pet "billy-bumbler" Oy follow Susannah and Mia's trail in an effort to prevent an act that would quicken the destruction of the Dark Tower and, in turn, of all worlds. Meanwhile, gunslingers Roland and Eddie travel to 1977 Maine in search of bookstore owner Calvin Tower, who is being hunted down by mobster Enrico Balazar and his gang, who first appeared in Eddie's version of New York in <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">The Drawing of the Three. Avid readers of the series will either be completely enthralled or extremely irritated when, in a gutsy move, the author weaves his own character into this unpredictable saga, but either way there's no denying the ingenuity with which King paints a candid picture of himself. The sixth installment of this magnum opus stops short with the biggest cliffhanger of King's career, but readers at the edge of their seats need only wait a few short months (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower will be released on September 21) to find out how—and if—King's fictional universe will come to an end. 10 full-color illus. not seen by <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">PW. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Agent, Arthur Greene. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(June 8)

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 lled a stanza and ending with two songlike quatrains vances one subset of gunslingers' progress. King keeps us on tenterhooks throughout d leaves us there. Before quite departing, he tacks on a clever coda about the gradual creation of the Dark Tower t in which world? The series concludes with The Dark Tower in September.