I read this via paperback and underlined / added a bit of commentary, might share some pictures of it

we don’t even get to the flashback before we learn new things about Gilead re: Susannah accidentally misgenders Blaine via the tapping gesture. 'Seems to be based on the gender of the recipient, that's interesting.

I knew the Long Flashback was coming but I liked a lot of it! I think it's because (1) I'm not reading this after cliffhanger and a six year hiatus, (2) I like Gilead and was excited to learn more about it, (3) I was excited to learn more about Susan, Cuthbert, and Alain. But I do agree that this book was very light on the modern ka-tet, and more could have been done with Topeka as a setting, and I will admit I started to get impatient with the Long Flashback after the interlude. I feel as though this book's reception would have improved with a shorter flashback, but I'm hard pressed to figure out what could have been cut (maybe some of the back and forths with Susan in the middle when not much is happening?)

I loved Susan as a character and got so attached to her that I'm at this moment writing a fanfic where she lives (as well as the rest of the tet but she's stolen the show) so when I learned that "Her part in the ka-tet had ended" i started to get really sad. I don't cry while reading books but I was close to it while reading the final leadup to her death.

Eldred Jonas was cool! I liked him and the sorta dark reflection thing he had going on with Roland. Unfortunately due to the descriptions of his voice, in my mind he sounded like Morty from Rick and Morty

When I started reading, I thought of Mejis as being pronounced "May-jis" but as I went on and there were more and more bits of Spanish and Mexican analogues sprinkled throughout, I moved to calling it "May-hee"

Currently Alain is my favorite of Roland's old ka-mates :)

I think it would be fun to do a comparison of how the comics and the book tell the story, because there are a lot of differences and discrepancies both from the medium and details that were included / excluded. I skimmed over the WAG stuff when I read Gunslinger Born so as not to spoil myself but just reading the opening scene with Roland and Steven I noticed a lot of differences.

On that note, I will say there is a big discrepancy in how the comics handle the Fall of Gilead. Roland says in this book that his efforts in Mejis delayed the Fall of Gilead by twenty months. This doesn't happen in the comic-- I'd say he gets back from Mejis and Gilead is down within, like, a few weeks at most. Also we learn in the Grapefruit flashback that Roland killed Gabrielle three days after the welcoming banquet, whereas in the comics, he kills her at the welcoming banquet. Which... I actually like as a change, it's more dramatic.

Here's a quote on page 214 of my copy, during the first scene with Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain, that kinda implies that Roland had dead siblings ---- “I’m going to send you away, Steven had said… looking somberly at his only son, the one who had lived”

I knew vaguely that Roland, Alain, and Cuthbert formed a ka-tet and that Alain and Cuthbert are analogous to Jake and Eddie. But I was not expecting Roland to declare Susan a part of the ka-tet, implying that the current tet is twinning the Mejis ka-tet, and that therefore Susan is Susannah's twinner

(also I am writing fanfic and when you keep Susan alive but also add in Susannah stuff gets confusing real fast. I'm considering having Susan go by "Sue" once Susannah arrives or having Susannah just... keep the O/Detta name)

HEY ISN"T IT INTERESTING THAT APPARENTLY THE DARK TOWER IS TO THE WEST OF MEJIS, AND GUNSLINGERS ARE SENT WEST IF THEY FAIL THEIR TEST?

I definitely think you could write a theory or AU where Roland's Dark Tower obsession is specifically planted via the Grapefruit. Like, an AU where, idk Eddie or Jake break the Grapefruit after Roland shows them his mother's death and then they find out that it had low-level possessed him through the entire prior series and it was affecting his personality.

Even though the situations are very different, I find it interesting that Roland's starcrossed romance with Susan can be paralleled with Gabrielle and Marten. The metaphor falters when comparing Hart Thorin to Steven (iirc Steven's only crime has maybe been being a stoic harsh gunslinger and a neglectful husband, whereas Thorin is a creep and a traitor) but Roland, like Marten, steals the girl out from marriage and set the events of her death in motion. I also find it interesting that Roland killing Gabrielle is positioned as the final ending to the story Roland told, something that completes the whole dreadful affair (and Roland only breaks down crying after having to recount his mother's death specifically)

One of the questions I'm grappling with that's being posed by the text is how responsible Roland is for all the bad stuff that happens around him. Are the deaths in his wake the consequences of his heartless behavior or a curse laid on him by ka and the Tower? It's a bit of both, I wot, but I do think a lot of the forces keen on keeping Roland from the Tower (which remember needs fixed, at this point Roland isn't wholly in this for himself) are deadset on blaming Roland alone for all the killing they've wrought, and Roland has started to believe them. I think his personal level of responsibility shifts but at the very least I think Roland is less culpable wrt Gabrielle than Jake or Susan.

I made a meme about this but all throughout the book I just couldn't help but imagine Steven Deschain, sitting at home in Gilead, waiting for the kids to come home. "Oh I hope nothing happens, Mejis is peaceful and loyal to the Affiliation. Maybe none of my warnings will come to pass and this really does just end up being a mission where they count resources. I hope Cuthbert doesn't do anything stupid." And then the tet comes home and he learns "Half the town was actually working for Farson and trying to supply him with horses and crude oil and tanks, Pat Delgado was dead and his daughter was going to be sold as a gilly to the Mayor of Hambry, Roland fell in love with her and got so horny he nearly fucked up the mission, there was a witch who had the Grapefruit and a tet led by a failed gunslinger and we had to blow up the oil refinery and the tanks and kill all of Farson's men by driving them into a box canyon with a thinny in it and we were framed for murder and the girl that Roland fell in love with got burned in a charyou tree :( " and then three days later Roland kills his mother