If someone would have told me back in the ‘90s that the way to get Stephen King to finish up the Dark Tower series quickly was to hit him with a minivan, I would have been on my way to Maine to rent a Dodge Caravan before you could say, "Bango Skank was here."I confess this not to do more complaining about the long suffering years waiting on some advancement in the Dark Tower books, but to illustrate how utterly obsessed and frustrated I was with this goddamn series. Then King nearly came to the clearing at the end of the path but instead recovered and cranked out three books like they came off an assembly line to finish the whole thing. Before that, I had pretty much given up hope on ever getting another book, never mind seeing an end to it, and King wasn’t doing much to make me change my mind with no news about him even working on another DT book.And then came the minivan. Ka works in mysterious ways….Wolves of the Calla had a lot of things to accomplish. It needed to get the story rolling again after years of it laying fallow. It needed to set up the end run of the series. It needed to be a satisfying book aside from moving the overall arc forward. And most importantly, it needed to answer the burning question all Dark Tower fans had: Whatever happened to Father Callahan from ‘Salem’s Lot? Oh, wait. I had never asked that question. Oh, well. I found out anyhow and it turned out to be a pretty good part of the story.Roland and his crew have been moving along the path of the Beam towards the Tower, but they seem to have been in a kind of timeless funk. (One of the things I love about the series is that the decay of the Tower has caused both time and space in Roland’s world to become soft and drift. It’s also a nice metaphor for the limbo that characters are in between books.) Just before entering the nastiness of End-World, they find Calla Bryn Sturgis, a farming town with a big problem.Almost all the children born in the Calla are twins. Every twenty years or so, dozens of creatures the townsfolk call Wolves come on horseback and steal one from each set of twins. They take those kids back to Thunderclap, a place the gunslingers have already been warned about, and eventually return them as almost mindless husks who grow to jumbo sizes before dying young. Try to fight or hide your kids, and the Wolves kill everyone who resists instead of just taking half the kids. The Wolves will arrive in a month, but some in the Calla want to fight back this time if the gunslingers will help. Roland's group has other problems too. They’ve been making dream-like excursions to New York in the 1970s and found that the special rose growing in a vacant lot there is in terrible danger. The rose is a key manifestation of the Tower in that world. Roland is convinced that if the rose is destroyed, the Tower falls in his world, too, and there goes your ballgame for all of existence. They have to find a way to get to New York in person and save the rose from those threatening it by protecting the owner of the lot.The gunslingers also meet Callahan, a former Catholic priest last seen in the King-verse fighting vampires in ’Salem’s Lot. Callahan has an incredible tale to tell of years spent traveling between worlds and being chased by vampires and other nasty agents of the Crimson King before he wound up in Calla Bryn Sturgis.* Callahan has been hiding an evil object that terrifies him, and he wants Roland to get rid of it by taking it with him when they leave.*(Anyone reading the series who wants some more info about who was chasing Callahan and other bits that come into play here should check out King’s ‘Low Men in Yellow Coats’ story in his ‘Hearts in Atlantis’ collection.)If they didn’t have enough on their plate, Susannah’s previous encounter with a demon has left her a little bit pregnant, and her personality is being taken over by the baby’s ‘mother’, Mia. Pregnant women are known for strange food cravings, but let’s just say that Mia’s are even worse than usual.I love this book partly because it’s the one that got the Dark Tower story back on track and set up everything for the end run to the last book. I also love it just because this is Dark Tower at its best for me. It’s a mash-up of westerns, fantasy, horror and sci-fi. It’s like The Magnificent Seven if Yul Brenner and Steve McQueen had to make multi-dimensional trips and deal with robots and vampires as well as protect the town with their six-guns.Another thing I like about this one is that Eddie, Susannah and Jake are now full-fledged gunslingers and not just apprentices, and King expands on exactly what a gunslinger is. They’re not just killers, although they do that pretty damn well. They’re also diplomats and protectors of the defenseless. It was fun to see Roland’s manipulative political side come out when dealing with the Calla folk. The pregnancy storyline didn’t do much for me in this, but it becomes a key driver of the plot of the next book.All in all, this is one of my favorite of the DT books, and it was King’s clear statement that he was done screwing around and ready to finish this mother. Too bad it took him nearly getting killed to get it done.
Originally reviewed at Bookwraiths ReviewsWolves of the Calla was one of those novels that it took me a while to actually "get into" (A four month hiatus between reading attempts to be precise.), but once I did, it was enjoyable. Not a masterpiece like several of the preceding Dark Tower novels, but interesting enough for me to continue the journey to the Dark Tower with Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers, and Oy. The story itself begins with Roland and his ka-tet moving slowly but steadily along the Beam towards the shadowy edifice of the Dark Tower. Now, however, there is an undercurrent of desperation beginning to rear its ugly head among the group, since time is passing more quickly than earlier in their journey and the Beams, which hold the multiverse together, are beginning to deteriorate more rapidly. So it is while dealing with this growing sense of impending doom that the five friends are unexpectedly approached by a group from Calla Bryn Sturgis.The “Callas” - as the locals call their region of the world - is the final bastion of humanity before one enters the death and doom of End World. Calla Bryn Sturgis itself being one of the small farm town in this tranquil region. Here farmers, merchants, and ordinary folk live their lives to the fullest, slowly forgetting about the world that was before and focusing on tending their fields and raising their children, who always seem to be twins. Yet even in this land of idyllic farms, the horror of the world “moving on” cannot be completely forgotten, because every twenty years or so the Wolves come for their harvest of horror as they reap the children of the Callas! The Calla folk do not know why the Wolves come. They just do. Nor do they understand what the wolves do with their stolen offspring. All that they know is that the Wolves take them into End World to Thunderclap, and when they return by train, they are near mindless caricatures of themselves, fated to grow into huge adults that die young and in pain. And soon the Wolves will return to Calla Bryn Sturgis. At least, that is what Andy the Robot says, and he would know, because he has lived among the farmers from their grandfather’s grandfather time and, somehow, Andy always knows when the Wolves are destined to return. Yet knowing the date of their children’s abductions does little good to the common folk of the Calla. They are not warriors and cannot hope to stand against the wondrous weapons of their persecutors. But now, Roland has led his gunslingers among them, and it must be fate that has brought such an unlooked for group to the Callas when the Wolves are soon to reappear. And so, the people of the Callas come to the ka-tet begging them to fight off the Wolves and save the children of the Callas!From this The Magnificent Seven beginning, Stephen King concocts a tale that has a pinch of western, a dash of scifi, a dollop of apocalyptic, a splash of fantasy, and a drizzle of horror. He takes his “Constant Reader” from the green fields of the Come-come-commala Calla, say thankya, to the dream-like visage of 1970s New York City. He introduces them to the gunslingers as diplomats and protectors of the defenseless while reintroducing us to a vampire killing companion from old, Father Callahan: a former Catholic priest last seen in Salem’s Lot. There are talking robots, zombies, and vampires as well as references to popular culture such as Harry Potter and Marvel comic books. Indeed, this novel is a psychedelic wonderland of variety; sure to fit the fancy of most any reader of speculative fiction. Do ya ken? But while Wolves of the Calla is a novel that excels in its lively, creepy and fun narrative, it did not live up to its promise as the book to begin the process of straightening out the mess that was The Dark Tower series plot line. In fact, there were more new plots begun in this story than old ones finished. Does that mean, this book is “bad” or not worth reading?Absolutely not. It is a fine tale that was a joy to read. But . . . The problem with this book, in my opinion, is that due to Mr. King’s ending of the series this novel has no meaning.Like an old song says, this novel is a “Cab fare to nowhere.”A story that is a “White line to an exit sign.”A “Locked door on a candy store.”So if – like me and the kid from The Incredibles movie – you are hoping for “Something amazing, I guess” that begins to wrap up The Dark Tower series and shed light on all its mysteries, this one is probably not going to satisfy you.
What do You think about Wolves Of The Calla (2006)?
8.5/10Another stonking effort from the Dark Tower series in a book that has left me drooling at the prospect of what the last two books hold. Initially it seemed like a slow read, this might not be so much the book as external factors making me unable to get chance to read it, and it plodded along and then all of a sudden I was swept up with it all and was engrossed and the last few hundred pages flew by. I would go as far as saying this is in my top two DT books but the slowness of the start means that it can’t pip “The Drawing of the Three” for me but there were plenty of positives that would mean I would gladly look forward to re-reading this in my, inevitable, series re-read.The nuts and bolts of the plot was basically the Gunslingers defending a helpless village from invaders who would take their children. This is a very basic view of the main plot but that isn’t the main attraction here. All the sub stories are what adds to the story here and make for a great read. I’d read some negative reviews of the story saying it took too long and was all filler but I would disagree with the filler part of that argument and say all the extra bits, whilst maybe at first glance, don’t appear to add anything to the story but when the whole thing is looked at it’s clear that they add to the tale overall and make it a great story. I feel reading some of King’s other works first may have helped, such as 'Salem's Lot as there is a main character drawn straight from that novel but I’ve never come across due to me never reading that one yet.The ending leaves it open as to where the story can go but I’ll be keen to read the next book and see what comes from the ending of this book. Overall, a really good read adding to a series that is slowly climbing up my list of all-time favourites.If you like this try: “The Ecstasy of Gold” by Metallica
—Richard
The story continues.....wow does it. Okay this book is the one that seems at times to take itself a little less seriously yet still does it without once ceasing to be dark, depressing, and foreboding. Actually a pretty good trick if you can pull it off.This book continues King's "tying together" his multiverse, but with oh so much more. In this book we get not only parallels with other popular fiction...but comic books and even Harry Potter.... There's also a story element that I can never stop myself from associating with a popular toy...though that may be just me. The story also answers a question I had in the "what ever happened to" "vein". There's a character who seemed to sort of wander off into the night in one of Mr. King's earlier works (Salem's Lot) leaving many of us wondering what became of him. Mr. King had seemed to hint we hadn't seen the last of the character and now, low and behold, here he is, along with his back story. We get a strange side event sort of story here. One of those that we see a lot in "western fiction" (by that I mean western as in the American west...okay I'll say it, cowboys, rather than western lit.). The hero needs to be about his business doing the larger more important job only to be side tracked by a duty he can't ignore. In the end we find that the job at hand was more critical than we could have known. This book shows us a different kind of action than we've seen so far in the battle fought. It also sets up the continuing story based on elements we've seen laid out in prior volumes.I'll close with my regular disclaimer that I really can't say I "enjoy" these books mainly because of their general outlook and Mr. King's vision of his multiverse. They are however well written and the convoluted plot line works within it's own logic and hangs together.
—Mike (the Paladin)
May it do ya fine. This book did me real fine. Say thank ya.I must be picking up the language from Calla Bryn Sturgis/Mid-World because it seems lately, I've been saying the speech of the people. I almost said, "Thankee-sai" as I was handed my receipt today at the grocery store. "Say thankee" I didn't. Anyways, I'll stop being silly. (The grocery store thing is true, however.) What a fan-freaking-tastic book. I really enjoyed the town of Calla Bryn Sturgis, the people, and I LOVED the way they spoke. The story in this volume was just about as great as The Waste Lands....ahem...my favorite installment so far. So, I put this tied with The Drawing of the Three as my second favorite installment. Things were kind of mysterious in some parts, such as who was the snitch, and who or what were the wolves. The end with the 'Salem's Lot mention was also pretty brilliant. Father Callahan's part in the quest for the Dark Tower, the voices at the bottom of the cave, and just all of the connections to the number 19, Calvin Tower, the bookstore, etc....just brilliant.King has such a creative mind, and I think this book completely made up for Wizard and Glass for me. Thanks King for delivering a solid book again. It was real trig. Say thank ya. I won't be surprised if Calla Bryn Sturgis/Mid-World speech is here to stay in my English speech.
—Kathryn
