Wolves of the Calla, Stephen King

Image from Corey Morgan

This is the fifth book of The Dark Tower series, by Stephen King. It's of equal length to book four, and thus the exponential growth of page numbers seems to have comAmazon, the book ranges in price from $.69 for a second hand copy to $20.85 for the library binding. The ebook is a reasonable $7.29.

The introduction is new for this novel, which is good. The rampant growth in the books' girth from book one to book four was quite impressive. However, the growth at this point seems to have subsided. It is roughly the same length as book four.

The story begins away from the main characters. A village gets raided for 1/2 of each twin set of sons and daughters every 24 or so years. This time, they want to fight back, and look to hire the young gunslingers, Roland and his two partners, to protect the village. It has a more than passing semblance to the western movie, The Magnificent Seven (itself an appropriated from the movie, Seven Samurai). King acknowledges that this, among many other novels, contributed to the creation of this book.

For the most part, this book has been the most difficult to get through. The side story about Callahan is entertaining. But for the most part, the book feels tired and uninspired. I'm more than half way through it. Books like this are like a tar pit: you struggle to get through it and you can't really do anything about it. You've already stepped in it (this is book five, right?). Gotta slog through it...

OK, finished slogging now... the book is done. This one was not fun. It had some enjoyable moments, but for the most part I didn't like it. Had it been book one and not book five, I likely would have walked away from it. However, one must sometimes read through or miss important parts that need be known in book six. And, even if books six to eight are as sluggish as book five, I will probably still read every word just to see how the Dark Tower series ends.

There were no really brilliant parts to this book. It was uninspired and dull. I will have to write later if it was worth it after I have finished the series.

Suspension of disbelief is an important component of a book. You have to accept things like robots with antennae which, when shot or cleavered off with a titanium plate, disconnects them from the controller and they 'die.' I can accept that. What is harder to accept is the role of the android (not really a robot, Stephen), Andy (short for android perhaps?) warns the town that these wolves are coming. They decide to seek out the help of Roland and his posse. Then, later on, it's revealed that Andy is in fact a spy and agent for those who seek to harvest some kind of telepathic essence that twins are born with. Why would Andy betray both those who control him and those whom he has fooled into believing he was a kind of simpletonish friend?

But, this wasn't a huge drag on the book. Again, one must suspend disbelief or else miss out on a reading science fiction, horror, and fantasy.

I kind of like the cameo Stephen King does at the end. He becomes a part of the narrative as do some of his books. I find that interesting and wonder where he will go with that.