Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
It's been about a year since I read a book in this series. The last entry I read was 'Salem's Lot and seeing the crossovers into this story were fun. I would say that we basically have a sequel to that novel within the pages of this one. Father Callahan was awesome. I like his character a lot and him being added to Roland and crew helped me enjoy this installment perhaps more than any of the others. I also loved the choice to have a much more contained story in Wolves of the Calla. No massive cliffhanger ending this time, the book starts out with a clear objective right at the beginning and has less meandering in between. I'm still not a fan of some of the characters and I still think some of the references are too much at times but this book gets a new twist thrown in, a meta element that was not around before, or at least not to the level it is here. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that right now. It's a mixed bag for me at this time but I'll wait to reserve judgement untilI have read book six at least and maybe even until after I finish the entire series. Oh and Roland is still a great character in my opinion. And it is largely because of him that I am still enjoying this strange journey with some caveats along the way. Stephen King certainly has a distinct style and these stories stand out to me for all their flaws and strengths.
So far this has been my favorite in the dark tower series.
adventurous
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
A wonderful build up of dread: classic King and my favourite of The Dark Tower series so far.
This is easily my favorite book in series. The things that happen in it and how they tie into the rest of the Stephen King universe as well as our universe are very interesting and well done.
I have to say, this was not my favorite book in the series. It felt overly long and rambling, and I struggled to keep up interest in parts.
I also struggled because the narration was handed back over to George Guidall for the 5th installment in the series, and Frank Muller had really, really brought the stories to life for me in the previous installments. There was an explanation at the end for Muller's absence, and it was sad to discover that he won't return for the last three books in the series. I got used to Guidall, but there was something magic about Muller - he embodied the stories and the characters in a way that was really something special, and the audiobooks suffer from his absence.
Anyway, back to the actual story. There were some good moments. I really like Jake a lot as a character, and there was a scene in particular with him and Oy that was really fantastic for me. I love them both, and I liked watching Jake grow a bit as a character, earning Roland's respect. Roland himself was more of a struggle for me in Wolves. I didn't like the way he kept things from his ka tet, since it made it seem he didn't trust them somehow. I was angry on their behalf for the truths he kept from them.
I'm interested to see what happens in the next book, and feel like I need to just power through the last few books in the series, or the length of the stories might keep me from ever finishing them. So, on to the next!
I also struggled because the narration was handed back over to George Guidall for the 5th installment in the series, and Frank Muller had really, really brought the stories to life for me in the previous installments. There was an explanation at the end for Muller's absence, and it was sad to discover that he won't return for the last three books in the series. I got used to Guidall, but there was something magic about Muller - he embodied the stories and the characters in a way that was really something special, and the audiobooks suffer from his absence.
Anyway, back to the actual story. There were some good moments. I really like Jake a lot as a character, and there was a scene in particular with him and Oy that was really fantastic for me. I love them both, and I liked watching Jake grow a bit as a character, earning Roland's respect. Roland himself was more of a struggle for me in Wolves. I didn't like the way he kept things from his ka tet, since it made it seem he didn't trust them somehow. I was angry on their behalf for the truths he kept from them.
I'm interested to see what happens in the next book, and feel like I need to just power through the last few books in the series, or the length of the stories might keep me from ever finishing them. So, on to the next!
So... The Dark Tower series up until this point was already weird. In fact, I would say that's a really large part of its appeal to most people. It sort of takes the conventional "hero's journey" and just throws a bunch of weird shit on top of it, blurring the lines between reality and non-reality. You got doorways leading to other dimensions, giant robot bears, time travel, evil sentient riddle trains, etc., and this is all stuff that happened before this book, Wolves of the Calla. And all of this is to say that, again, this series was weird from the beginning and I won't deny it. However... I also don't feel incorrect in saying that this book is perhaps the weirdest yet, and considering how intrinsically the concept of "weirdness" is tied into these novels", I also feel like this is the most Dark Tower-y book of the series yet. Not my favorite necessarily, but the one that I feel best exemplifies the attitude of the series the most.
To explain why I think this, I'll run through and explain a little bit of the two main plots we have going on here. First, the ka-tet (our pals Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy) are doing their thing, traveling along the path of the beam, when they realize they are being followed by a group of unknown individuals. They eventually decide to confront this group, and they learn that it's a pack of ranchers and farmers from the small village of Calla Bryn Sturgis. The group explains that once every generation, a small army of what they call "wolves" (strangers riding on horseback who wear wolf masks) come into town and take one child from each pair of twins, brings them into a mysterious place out east called "thunderclap" and returns them "roont" (meaning mentally handicapped, physically giant, and tending to die young painful deaths). It becomes more complicated when you find out that nearly everyone in the town has twins, and "singleton" children as they're called, are actually quite rare. This is what I would consider the primary plot of this book, and much of its time is spent with the ka-tet in this small town as they're trying to convince everyone to fight, and preparing them to do so.
At first I was slightly annoyed with this concept because it felt like another side-mission to the dark tower, coming straight off the heels of Wizard and Glass, which while excellent, is almost entirely a flashback in itself. But then the "second" plot (as I'll call it) begins to reveal itself. First thing to note is that Donald Callahan from 'Salem's Lot happens to live in this small town. He's referred to as Pere Callahan here, and much of the book deals with his back story, and how he arrived in mid-world after the events of that book. This is important because he basically arrived here with the help of "black thirteen", another magic ball from the Wizard's Rainbow, and the ka-tet now must use this ball to get back to New York City in 1977 in order to buy the vacant lot which contains the dark tower / rose thing (explained in previous books) before the evil Sombra corporation (who we still know little about) can buy it and destroy it. It's admittedly a little more complicated than how I just explained it, but these are some long books.
Anyway, these two plots grinding together are the source of tension throughout this book: waiting for the Wolves to come, and trying to buy the lot before it's too late, creating a stressful time crunch for the entire duration of the book, basically. Oh, and also Susannah is pregnant with a demon baby, and is slipping in and out of another personality named Mia, so there's that to deal with too. And in between all these moving parts and shifting gears, there are some really strange details and occurrences that are really only possible in this series. There's Andy the nine-foot-tall robot who's history and origins no one really knows and who the ka-tet begins to expect is maybe kind of evil in some way? There's Callahan's experiences of killing more vampires while constantly switching between different versions of The United States, noticing this as the presidents switch places on the money and the name of the motel he's staying in changes. There's the groups' experience of going Todash to New York City, being there and also not really being there, pedestrians being able to sense them but not see them, reality feeling thin, I guess zombies are there too? Then there's Susannah, slipping out in the middle of the night as her new alter-ego Mia, slithering around the forrest and nearby swamp naked and eating bugs and small animals to feed her aforementioned demon baby.
Then when the wolves come, there are all the weird cultural references from our world that they seem to possess. They look like Dr. Doom, they have lightsabers, and they have snitches from Harry Potter, but one's that explode like bombs, (also, spoiler, it turns out that they are robots too). I could go on. There is absolutely no shortage of the weirdest shit imaginable, and given the circumstances of what happens in the book, it's all very tense and disorienting, and honestly really fun to read. I won't get too much into it, but the end of the book gets extremely meta as well with the introduction of 'Salem's Lot the book... as a book... in this world that contains a character from that book. It's strange as hell, and even though I was expecting this at some point, it's always at least interesting to just see the fourth wall get shattered like this (my favorite book of all time is Don Quixote so I eat this shit up).
I would also just like to mention that I've been trying my absolute hardest to not let the Mid-World lexicon of "if it do ya" and "say thankya" into my actual lexicon, and it's harder than it probably seems. So is it my favorite book in the series? No. But do I think that it goes irredeemably off the rails like I've heard from others? Absolutely not. I still think this is a thrilling read, packed to the brim with all the strange idiosyncrasies that come inherent with this series, and I'm happy to just ride this weird wave wherever it takes me. Hopefully to the actual Dark Tower soon, and hopefully with everyone in tact.
To explain why I think this, I'll run through and explain a little bit of the two main plots we have going on here. First, the ka-tet (our pals Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy) are doing their thing, traveling along the path of the beam, when they realize they are being followed by a group of unknown individuals. They eventually decide to confront this group, and they learn that it's a pack of ranchers and farmers from the small village of Calla Bryn Sturgis. The group explains that once every generation, a small army of what they call "wolves" (strangers riding on horseback who wear wolf masks) come into town and take one child from each pair of twins, brings them into a mysterious place out east called "thunderclap" and returns them "roont" (meaning mentally handicapped, physically giant, and tending to die young painful deaths). It becomes more complicated when you find out that nearly everyone in the town has twins, and "singleton" children as they're called, are actually quite rare. This is what I would consider the primary plot of this book, and much of its time is spent with the ka-tet in this small town as they're trying to convince everyone to fight, and preparing them to do so.
At first I was slightly annoyed with this concept because it felt like another side-mission to the dark tower, coming straight off the heels of Wizard and Glass, which while excellent, is almost entirely a flashback in itself. But then the "second" plot (as I'll call it) begins to reveal itself. First thing to note is that Donald Callahan from 'Salem's Lot happens to live in this small town. He's referred to as Pere Callahan here, and much of the book deals with his back story, and how he arrived in mid-world after the events of that book. This is important because he basically arrived here with the help of "black thirteen", another magic ball from the Wizard's Rainbow, and the ka-tet now must use this ball to get back to New York City in 1977 in order to buy the vacant lot which contains the dark tower / rose thing (explained in previous books) before the evil Sombra corporation (who we still know little about) can buy it and destroy it. It's admittedly a little more complicated than how I just explained it, but these are some long books.
Anyway, these two plots grinding together are the source of tension throughout this book: waiting for the Wolves to come, and trying to buy the lot before it's too late, creating a stressful time crunch for the entire duration of the book, basically. Oh, and also Susannah is pregnant with a demon baby, and is slipping in and out of another personality named Mia, so there's that to deal with too. And in between all these moving parts and shifting gears, there are some really strange details and occurrences that are really only possible in this series. There's Andy the nine-foot-tall robot who's history and origins no one really knows and who the ka-tet begins to expect is maybe kind of evil in some way? There's Callahan's experiences of killing more vampires while constantly switching between different versions of The United States, noticing this as the presidents switch places on the money and the name of the motel he's staying in changes. There's the groups' experience of going Todash to New York City, being there and also not really being there, pedestrians being able to sense them but not see them, reality feeling thin, I guess zombies are there too? Then there's Susannah, slipping out in the middle of the night as her new alter-ego Mia, slithering around the forrest and nearby swamp naked and eating bugs and small animals to feed her aforementioned demon baby.
Then when the wolves come, there are all the weird cultural references from our world that they seem to possess. They look like Dr. Doom, they have lightsabers, and they have snitches from Harry Potter, but one's that explode like bombs, (also, spoiler, it turns out that they are robots too). I could go on. There is absolutely no shortage of the weirdest shit imaginable, and given the circumstances of what happens in the book, it's all very tense and disorienting, and honestly really fun to read. I won't get too much into it, but the end of the book gets extremely meta as well with the introduction of 'Salem's Lot the book... as a book... in this world that contains a character from that book. It's strange as hell, and even though I was expecting this at some point, it's always at least interesting to just see the fourth wall get shattered like this (my favorite book of all time is Don Quixote so I eat this shit up).
I would also just like to mention that I've been trying my absolute hardest to not let the Mid-World lexicon of "if it do ya" and "say thankya" into my actual lexicon, and it's harder than it probably seems. So is it my favorite book in the series? No. But do I think that it goes irredeemably off the rails like I've heard from others? Absolutely not. I still think this is a thrilling read, packed to the brim with all the strange idiosyncrasies that come inherent with this series, and I'm happy to just ride this weird wave wherever it takes me. Hopefully to the actual Dark Tower soon, and hopefully with everyone in tact.
A crazy novel that somehow seamlessly mixes sci-fi, fantasy, time travel, post-apocalyptic, and western all in one.
While this was one of the longer novel in the series, I think it was one of the strongest, hands down. King successfully expands the world while not quite giving all the answers, and this cliffhanger was much more successful than “The Waste Lands.”
HOWEVER this book committed a cardinal sin of book writing: purposefully not disclosing information to the reader that the characters know so that there could be a twist later.
While this was one of the longer novel in the series, I think it was one of the strongest, hands down. King successfully expands the world while not quite giving all the answers, and this cliffhanger was much more successful than “The Waste Lands.”
HOWEVER this book committed a cardinal sin of book writing: purposefully not disclosing information to the reader that the characters know so that there could be a twist later.