Customer Reviews

The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla

5 star:		(121)
4 star:		(74)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Stephen King's fans who don't read the Dark Tower series are really missing out. The "Wolves of Calla" is an impressive, well-written, story that raises questions King has been giving us in other works and ties in one of his very first stories in a unique way.

The suspense and drama of the books are fantastic, but I think it's the characters that really set this series apart. In "Wolves of the Calla", each member of the ka-tet has agonizing personal choices to make and their decisions, sometimes flawed, sometimes heroic, make this series something beyond classification. This isn't a drawn-out epic fantasy or a gimmicky tie in of other novels. Like "Wizard and the Glass" this novel is memorable both in itself and in what is does for the series storyline.

Jake is growing up. The Gunslinger is growing a heart (has been for some time). He's also losing some of his physical abilities, but he's a much more interesting character than when he started out. Susannah's latest personality would defy belief if written by any other writer, but Stephen King handles her masterfully. And Eddie the former junkie is now the one that's desperate to hold the group together. The battle to project a town's children against seemingly unstoppable "wolves" is just one part of the story.

The stakes are raised at the conclusion of this installment by a new character with his own stunning background added to mix and Stephen King tantalizes us with the first real glimpse of how this serious might conclude. I hate the spoilers, so that's all I'll say.

Don't miss it.

I finished this book just over an hour ago. The earlier entries drew me deeper and deeper into Roland's world. In this one, it seems like Stephen King lost nearly all creative function and started borrowing from the world's of others - and even his own earlier creations!

Dr. Doom makes an appearance!

If you like Star Wars, you'll find lightsabers aplenty here!

Harry Potter fan? Give this one a go!

But if you're a fan of the Dark Tower, this is NOT for you. This book divulges little to no information on the Path of the Beam, the Tower, the ka-tet. Instead of giving what's wanted, King instead draws a portrait of the town of Calla, and probably the most important resident: Father Callahan. This is a character from a previous work of his (Salem's Lot). Later on, Father Callahan will find the book and read it.

That's right - Salem's Lot (the book) exists in this book as if it were something REAL, not a piece of fiction. The character's find it, read it, and draw some clues from it.

Overall I have a very bitter aftertaste, and hope OH SO VERY MUCH that the series gets back on track in the next book - or the final one. This book does little for the Tower or the ka-tet, save for 30-40 pages. I wish this book could be OMITTED!

What a letdown!

Stephen King is a master storyteller, a shaman of the written word(s). The way he has interwoven his lifes work to the greater story of the tower is awe-inspiring. Though I was disappointed with Wizard and Glass, Im glad hes back packing lead. I trudged through Wizard and Glass and moved quickly through Wolves of the Calla with a curious eye.
I have to say this though. I miss the writing styles of books one through three. They were shorter and less edited, perhaps more stephen kingish. I found the later books to be heavily edited, which isnt necessarily a bad thing, and long in the tooth. They tend to lag and get bogged down in backstory, sidestory, and every-which-way-story. The narrative of book one moved quickly, pulling the reader through Rolands life like a child being pulled by its mother through an amusement park or the zoo, all these new and bizarre things rushing by in the blink of an eye. The later books read more like the child being forced to ride the merry-go-round while mommy talks to the nice zookeeper about something, or like the child being plopped down in front of the monkey cage while mommy talks on her cell phone for a couple of hours (talking to that long-haired hippie who worked the merry-go-round). In any case, Stephen King has obviously matured as a writer, so Ill just have to get used to it. Long gone are the early 80s.
PS I swear I saw Roland at a Knicks game in 02.

For all of you, like me, who despised Wizard and Glass this book is for you. Finally we are getting somewhere. It has been YEARS since King has been this good. It is good to see him back. Don't listen to the reviews of people who don't like the fact that it seems King is going to include himself in the Dark Tower series. What is the difference between that and Eddie, Susannah, and Jake entering Roland's world. Obviously they don't understand the point King has been hinting at all along: the thinness of reality. He even goes into a beautiful aside about how the choices we make and how one side step can change the course of our history. This is King's oh so subtle way of letting us know that our perception of reality may not be the truth of the matter. I'm hooked again Mr. King. Bring me to the Dark Tower. It has been years and I am ready. As we all are. I'm sure you won't dissapoint.

Again, King has the skill to develop his characters into breathing, thinking, 3D personalities, and once again he has done this in Wolves of the Calla. I loved this book. King takes his time, which some don't have patience for, but for me is essential in devoloping the story, the tension, and the life of these people. I just finished it today, and have already opened up Dark Tower VI to begin the next step in the journey.

King has matured greatly as a writer and storyteller, and he doesn't rely on just scares, plot twists and gimmicks anymore; his vision and goals, it seems to me, is to truly build another world and people who we must care about. And he has done so in this exceptional series. I look forward to the two final parts, even though I'll be sad when it ends.

Also, I'd recommend these books to non-King fans: it is truly above par to even his own works, which, in my opinion, are fantastic...!

I'm completely disappointed with the series at this point. The dark story of a gunslinger's quest for the Dark Tower seems to have taken a back seat to a new premise: fictional works are not truly fictional; they are the real life occurances of other worlds.

As intriguing as it may sound, Mr King tries to convey this point by including plot items only from 19th Century American pop-culture! The characters actually find and read one of Mr Kings books! Will the last book of the series spontaneously combust in my hands as the gunslingers read about themselves forcing the plot into a death spiral of circular references?

If that weren't bad enough, both this book and Wizard and Glass have very similar storylines. In both books, 700+ pages of the book is spent trying to develop a story that leads up to a battle with gunslingers grossly outnumbered, while the battle itself is over after only several pages. The characters even get the idea for how to fight this new battle from what happened in the previous book!

I bought book 6 about the same time I bought this one. I'm not anxious to read it. If I do read it and it doesn't salvage the storyline, I won't be reading book 7.

The Wolves of the Calla is a good book and essentially has two stories. One story is the staying on the track of the Dark Tower and what the ka-tet needs to do to get there and the other story is their defending the people of Calla Bryn Sturgis. A lot of the book is figuring out what the ka-tet needs to do to get to the tower and a lot of it has to do with Calvin Tower and the vacant lot on 2nd and 46th. We also meet a new character to the Tower series but a familiar one to King in Salem's Lot, Father Callahan. This book will frustrate some Tower fans as it doesn't really solve too much from beginning to end but it does give you more information on what lies ahead for the ka-tet and the transformation of the characters. I liked the story but it shouldn't have been as long as it was.

I have to admit that a lengthy amount of time passed for me before picking up the series again on a flight from CO to FL with Wizard and Glass. I was at once sucked in and rejuvinated to see how the Tower series ended. Since reading Wolves of Calla I'm starting to wonder just what happened in the world of Steven King to change the series layout. The story was good and there were the elements there that were wholly Mid-World therefore wholly engrossing. I was disappointed in the necessity to lend from so many other resources outside of Mid-World. Cross referencing King's other books and popular fiction. I'm hoping that there is some deeper purpose for this other than a desire to just finish up the series. I've come too far now to NOT know how the story is resolved or if Roland will finally ascend into the room at the top of the Tower. I'm just hoping that the last two books in the series aren't a let down.

I have been into the Dark Tower books from the start. They have been with me from college thru fatherhood, almost like my own saga. Ka. Any way King had the magic for these books for a long time, did he get bored along the way, sure, I did too sometimes. Wizard and Glass was hard work to read. Most of Kings work is from his own experience's and life. I am sure you all have read Bag of Bones. Somewhere in Boston or New York or maybe even Bangor there is a safety deposit box.

What began as a series I would have expected to be studied in literature classes some fifty years from now and would have ranked as finer than the Lord of the Rings series has become the pop fodder that Stephen King naysayers have falsely accused him of for years. Is it better to burn out or fade away? In Stephen King's case, I suspect die-hard fans would have preferred the series left uncompleted, leaving their imaginations to follow the logical path this series had begun with book IV.

No longer. Not only has Stephen King revised his premise for the book from this point on, he has reissued the first four to better fit with his new ending. When you have to rewrite the first 4 books to fit with the final three, you've failed as a writer to produce a viable series.

Further evidence that SK is "phoning-it-in" are the ridiculous references to fad pop culture, including the Harry Potter reference that runs through the whole book and serves only to draw the reader out of Mid-World and back into disappointing reality. When the book states plainly at the end that, yes, they are talking about Quidditch, the realization turns your stomach. I'm already reading the Harry Potter books to my son, thank you very much, and they're much better than this.

It's obvious from page 3 that Stephen King wanted to be done with the series, had lost his love for it, and lumped out three quick books all at once to stop the nagging fan letters and make a good chunk of change. His greatest villan for decades, Flagg, is now a ruined puppet of what must have been everyone's favoite King character to have survived this long. Having come 5 books and 10 years with the series, I can't imagine not reading the final two.

Then again, I was so much more satisfied with the series before.