Book #25: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
There is a lot going on in Stephen King's fifth Dark Tower novel, so I'll attempt to summarise.
The main plot involves a small community that is being threatened by a gang of child-snatching "wolves", outlaws who wear wolf masks, and who look to Roland and his companions for salvation. The book also crosses over with another Stephen King novel, "'Salem's Lot", with the appearance of the character Donald Callaghan. The Wolves physically appear very late on in the book; in the penultimate chapter, in which a climactic battle breaks out.
There is also a sub-plot that once again has Roland and his companions crossing over from Roland's world to 1970s New York; in this case they go to the 1970s where the plot revolves around them attempting to buy a vacant lot.
The book also introduces a new personality for Susannah, called Mia, who seems to hallucinate that she is in a banqueting hall. For some reason, at one point Jake seemed to be able to visit Mia in his dreams.
Overall, the tone and length of this novel put me in mind of King's "The Stand" at times, but it also felt somewhat bloated (767 pages), and introduced a large number of new characters, including a robot (most of these characters were introduced in the prologue), so it was a little difficult to keep up with who everyone was. I didn't enjoy this quite as much as the first four novels, and I'll list all the negative points first.
First off, the pace of the book was a little strange; some chapters seemed to try and cram as much action as possible in, making them feel slightly exhaustive, while others felt a lot slower paced, with not a lot happening. My main bugbear was the second of the three parts, which primarily had the characters waiting for the day when The Wolves were intending to attack. It felt very slow-moving at times, and was full of stories-within-stories, which felt like a chore to follow at times. The main one was Donald Callaghan's, which at first seemed to recap 'Salem's Lot, with stories of vampires, though it did start getting interesting with some dramatic scenes set in New York.
My other big issue with the book was something I complained about in "The Regulators" (one of the Richard Bachman novels), and that was that Stephen King name-checked himself: four times, the book even got really meta by explaining that Donald Callaghan was a character from another novel, at which point I almost groaned.
The positives: There were some enjoyable, and typically gruesome horror elements, most notably the fact that when Roland and his companions visit New York, there are dead people walking around, very similar to the film "Sixth Sense", and as usual King makes them as messed up as he possibly can. I wasn't sure why they were included, and am hoping this, and the story involving the vacant lot, is picked up again in the final two novels.
I also noticed what appeared to be the first seeds of King's later novel, "11.22.63" when the characters started to talk about whether they could travel back to Dallas and prevent the Kennedy assassination.
The book picked up a lot towards the end (even though the battle with The Wolves seemed to be over very fast), and I was left wanting to find out what happens next (although I have read some very negative things about Book 6: Song of Susannah).
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