Wolves of the Calla

There are a few things that are taking up residence in my head that I can't get into here without blowing the lid off the series as a whole, but woooo-weeee, cowboy (or girl!) it's a doozy!

*giggles and rubs his hands together and is NOT at all surprised that the extended TV show that was supposed to DO THIS SERIES JUSTICE had been pulled*

So, who out there wants to see a wild mashup of westerns, fantasies, horrors, and science fiction?

*crickets*

What? Just me? No. Obviously not just me. But let's add one little detail, my friend number 19. Or should we also add my other friend 99? Or is it 1999? As in, we're gonna party like it's 1999? Or shall we draw back the curtain in the emerald tower and take a good long look at that Dodge show more Caravan?

Muahahahahahahaha

I LOVE a good in-joke. I especially love great popular references used by a great writer who is just as much a FAN of popular culture as he is a creator of so much of it. Gimmie that Snitch! Oh, it must have been made by this fellow named Harry Potter...

Honestly, I didn't really have ANY clue as to what this book was REALLY supposed to be about when I first picked it up years ago. A big battle on the way to the Dark Tower? Yeah, sure, it is that, but when you start making the world super thin and the todash keeps sending you to New York City and you wish you had a godlike florist to protect the universe from zombies, vampires, and thugs who terrorize bookstore owners, you've got to start wondering why the WOLVES on the edge of End-World are such a mystery. And they are.

And I cry beg your pardon, but I LOVE me a good cyborg, thank ye sai.

The first time I read this book, I thought it was pretty fine. A bit long in the tooth with padre Calahan, mayhap, but once I'm in on the joke, I like it ALL just fine, now.

Bravo, Mr. King. Bravo. show less

My goodness, every step on the road to the Tower is better than the previous one.

First of all, the fact that the previous books set up this detail of the number nineteen is beautiful. Going back to the other books to see that it was always there, every time a little bigger, is just amazing.

Second of all, the inclusion of Salem's Lot, as in Callahan, but also the physical novel in itself, and by extension Stephen King, is such a powerful element that connects all of Stephen King's books together in the most elegant way I can think of. Only a novel like the Dark Tower, rich in intertexuality, can pull something like this off.

The Dark Tower is probably one of the few series that has me wanting to read the full series in one sitting. I hope show more I find the time to rejoin the journey real soon.

I regret giving the previous books a five star rating, because that means I can't praise this book any more than the previous one. show less

This is Book 5 in the Dark Tower series, and at this point, I have to admit, my insistence on carrying on through this series is pretty much the very definition of the sunk cost fallacy. I've put too much time into this thing to give up now, dammit!

All right, it's not unmitigatedly terrible. If it were, I'd probably find it easier to quit. There really is the skeleton of something interesting and exciting in this series somewhere. It's just buried under so very, very, very many dull, stifling layers of flab and nonsense. This particular volume features a town in desperate need of help, in the grand tradition of Westerns, but with a science fantasy twist, and that's a little bit interesting. Things are also getting increasingly meta, show more which is normally something I enjoy. But the most relevant fact about Wolves of the Calla is that it's well over 900 pages long, and there's enough story here for maybe 300.

Also not helping is King's continual chalking up of every massively coincidental plot contrivance or random thing he wants his characters to do for no reason to "fate." Although I could probably manage to mostly suspend my disbelief, accept the concept, and wait for a cool, satisfying payoff for it all, if The Stand hadn't taught me decades ago that King is not to be trusted with this sort of thing.

And, on top of all that, the characters themselves are sometimes so awful here that it's getting harder to think of them as the good guys, and I don't think that's exactly King's intention, even if he is trying to make them complicated, or whatever. But I especially have zero patience right now for men taking it upon themselves to "forbid" a woman to have an abortion even thougt the fetus probably isn't even human and may very well kill her. I hope the monster baby kills them instead. Slowly and painfully. Not that I hold out much hope for that. The killing part, I mean. Whatever happens, I think we can count on it being slow, and I'm not exactly betting against it being painful.

Ah, well. Five books down, two to go! I can do it! show less

This right here is (so far) the peak of The Dark Tower series. As usual, character work is amazing. There is something to love, or hate, or both about each and every person who appears on page.

The story was gripping.. the pacing was excellent, and the ending had me buying book 6 right after I finished.

The worldbuilding in this series is so good, and it feels like all the world building ground work culminates in this book into one epic and vibrant world. The language stands out to me. I find myself saying things the way they're said in these books.

Also, I love when universes collide (think the cosmere, or the MCU) and I feel like this series, and so far specifically book 5, is SK's magnum opus to his book universe.

4.6/5

I picked up The Gunslinger in a bookstore on a hunch and a sense of obligation. I can't put my finger on why, but I'd never read a Stephen King book before, though they're certainly in my wheelhouse of interests and I've always had great respect for the man as a writer. When I opened The Gunslinger, I'll never forget the first line or my reaction to it. I read that line, what I still believe to be the greatest first line of any novel, in the graveled voice of Castiel from the TV show Supernatural:

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

I read the entire book in Castiel's voice, and that book's been my gateway into not just the Dark Tower series, but all of King's novels. But with The Drawing of the Three, we show more got a book that was, honestly, mostly set dressing and character movements; the ka-tet must be drawn, and this was a serviceable book to do so. The Waste Lands brought us to the city of Lud and Blaine the mono, a book I thought as barren as its title. Wizard and Glass brought us a story of Roland's old ka-tet, and a fine one at that, but bracketed with incomprehensible Wizard of Oz nonsense, and very little time was spent with the ka-tet of which we Constant Readers care. The Wind Through the Keyhole was a quick fun book, wheels within wheels, stories within stories, but only tangentially related to the matter at hand. As Eddie would say, the series had gone nineteen, and only halfway through.

I find it odd: in Hollywood the middle movies of a series are often the best, but in novels the middle books are often the worst. Movies seem to find themselves, but then run out of ideas before they end the series. Novels, on the other hand, start with great ideas, end with great ideas, but have so much trouble getting from the opening to the end.

With Wolves of the Calla, I feel the series has finally gotten back on track, but how I find it difficult to define. Is it less ridiculous, with fewer Wizard of Oz-ish pop culture plot elements? It is not. But it feels more... lived in. The Calla feels real, in ways that Lud did not, with a fine merging of western aesthetic and decaying technology. The characters, both the ka-tet and the folken of the Calla, seem fuller and more themselves and less plot elements, hear me, I beg. Most importantly, we spend ample time with the ka-tet, and for the first time since they were drawn, I feel I've gotten to know them better.

Spoilers:

I do worry for Song of Susannah. The entire sideplot with Mia and her chap bothered me through and through. Not that it was shoehorned in, clearly this was always the direction the story was going to go, but I've never been a big fan of the "demon pregnancy" trope, and we seem to be playing that tune to the hilt. show less

3.25 stars. this is the best in the series so far. best for characterization, plotting, pacing, all that stuff. it felt - not as much as the wind through the keyhole, but still - like a bit of a diversion from the main story. the chasing of the tower seemed to take a backseat, although i see how it's all intertwined in a way that the story in the last book really was a scenic outcropping on the road, and how this diversion builds the main story. and the ending is a great cliff hanger that made me want to immediately pick up the next one to know what was going to happen to susannah, and where (really, when) she went.

one thing he's done well in this series is make all the different dialects he has to for each of the communities they come show more across. this was my favorite of the ones he's written i hope they keep talking this way for a while, if it do ya fine. it's maybe a little like his maine speech, which might make it more true and more complete, but whatever it is, i like it, kennit.

i really liked the way he talked about abortion in this. that as soon as the idea comes up, people who before would have rationally discussed the people involved can't see her for who she is anymore: "Susannah was no longer Susannah to this man. She had become the woman." that said, the pregnancy she was sure of in the earlier book wasn't addressed and i wish he had been consistent with that.

this was funny to me:
"'Your Man Jesus seems to me a bit of a son of a bitch when it comes to women," Roland said. 'Was He ever married?'
The corners of Callahan's mouth quirked. 'No,' he said, 'but His girlfriend was a whore.'
'Well,' Roland said, 'that's a start.'" show less

It started with the beginning of Wizard and Glass. My interest in the Dark Tower had begun to wane.

At first I thought it was just a byproduct of the jarring left turn King made by going from being on board a sentient, maniacal monorail who was obsessed with riddles to a novel length flashback. "Wtf is he doing?! I want more ruined Topeka! I want more homicidally insane robots! I don't want a flashback, not right now." so I force fed the first hundred pages or so. Slogging through it in the hopes that it would get good and help me understand why so many people declare Wizard to be their favorite of the series. And what do you know? It absolutely did. About a month and 150 pages in and I finished the rest of the book in a few days. It is show more now, absolutely my favorite book in the series so far. (I haven't finished it yet and have only started Song of Susannah.)

Then, after the whirlwind that was Wizard I jumped directly into Wolves of the Calla. What will happen in this one? Who are the wolves? Werewolves? It is Stephen King so werewolves are a definite possibility. What's a Calla? I know the Spanish word for street is Calle, and there is a lot of weird Spanish words in Wizard... My interest in Wolves started growing before I was even finished reading the Drawing of the Three. So maybe that's why I found it to be the most disappointing of all the books in the DT series up to that point. It had the most interesting titles, the cover I kept seeing had a sort of pulpy, almost noir-ish vibe to it, and wolves! I think I had set my expectations a bit too high.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it. It had a lot of interesting ideas, interesting moments and hey, those homicidally insane robots make something of an appearance after all. I just get the feeling that somewhere during the creation of Wiz, King started losing the thread. It feels like the world he has created is vastly more interesting than the stories he tells about it.

Wolves presents a lot of really intriguing concepts but due to King's predilection for spreading things out to being just this side of bloated, none of them really seem to carry much weight or significance. The reveals end up coming long after the mysteries become tiresome and the stakes seem to be very low. That last one may be a result of the fact that there are two more books after this one. Maybe the stakes felt higher when it was first released.

Anyway, it was still enjoyable. I just can't seem to shake the feeling that the rest of the series won't be able to live up to it's potential. show less