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A review by rashthedoctor
Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
2.0
As always , a somewhat more detailed and better presented version of my review can be found at :
A Blog About Book
Stephen King is a world renowned name , even If you haven't read his work , you must have seen his movies , or even if you haven't done that you have at least heard of his name*. Compared to what he has achieved I'm absolutely insignificant in this planet and here I'm ready to write a blog that's gonna tell you how much of a snooze-fest and overrated this book of his was.
* and if even that hasn't happened to you , well come back to civilization man , stop hiding under that rock of yours .
Although I have already stated my feelings about this book on the intro to this blog post , There is no denying the fact that the basic premise of the whole series remains absolutely intriguing and the first 100-150 pages were completely focused on that and it raised stakes in terms of this premise .
Meanwhile the final 100 pages were filled with some gripping action sequences and some real cliff-hanger in terms of the 'Dark Tower' .
There were plenty of 4th wall broken , many real life character brought into the story , many shared universes and many easter eggs for fans of various Kings Novels ,that really made for some amusing time
OK , this will sound like , "I think too highly of myself" or I'm simply too arrogant to say this ,but I was absolutely unimpressed with the writing . There were plenty of paragraphs , that were just filled with unnecessarily written words.
The exposition was so filled with rubbish details that it really dulled me off , in fact , I saw one whole page where King went on and on about people in the city of Calla , who played absolutely no role in the whole book . There was another page with couple of paragraphs of King going on about the rice field and it wasn't descriptive , it felt repetitive.
I'm no editor , but If i was I would have trimmed nearly 400-500 pages of this book . At one point it felt like King was trying to force this book into the realms of Epic Fantasy without making any effort to create a detailed world or any magic system or focusing on character or wars , both present ones and the past ones .
Talking of magic system , there's still absolutely no clue , after five books , on how the magic system works , or what it's limitations are , or what it can do . It's just there and for plot convenience it keeps doing shit , which again for plot convenience keeps helping the protagonist and his team. I in fact have never before read a book where the Plot and the scenario helps the protagonists so much , usually it's the other way around , help for antagonists is always there and these antagonist usually pile more misery for the protagonist, in here the antagonists actually seem to be helping the protagonists.
As I stated before the first 100 and the final 200 pages were entertaining but the rest 600 pages or so were just a unnecessarily dragged dull affair , the biggest culprit in this was the introduction of Father Callahan*, the character in itself was bland and irritating , but learning of His back story , for 5 long chapters amounting to nearly 150+ pages, was arduous to say the least .
*Readers of the Salem Lot series may know of him.
And remember that action sequence I previously wrote about in the "WHAT I LIKED" section ... yeah .. about that. The book is over 900 pages , the action is around 50 pages , and the preparation for that action lasts around 50 more pages . So what were the other pages about? I DON'T HAVE A CLUE!
The book in whole felt like a filler book ,having deviating really far away from the main plot of the journey towards Dark Tower , in a way one can successfully argue that there was absolutely no need for this book to be written and maybe King could have just gone on to write the next one . The unnecessary introduction of a side quest , an absolutely uninspiring new world creation , another dull Character addition with an even duller back story and long unnecessary exposition filled this book and at more than one time I was worried this may turn out to be my first DNF. Overall I don't care how big an author King maybe , I absolutely hated this book.
A Blog About Book
Stephen King is a world renowned name , even If you haven't read his work , you must have seen his movies , or even if you haven't done that you have at least heard of his name*. Compared to what he has achieved I'm absolutely insignificant in this planet and here I'm ready to write a blog that's gonna tell you how much of a snooze-fest and overrated this book of his was.
* and if even that hasn't happened to you , well come back to civilization man , stop hiding under that rock of yours .
What I Liked :
Although I have already stated my feelings about this book on the intro to this blog post , There is no denying the fact that the basic premise of the whole series remains absolutely intriguing and the first 100-150 pages were completely focused on that and it raised stakes in terms of this premise .
Meanwhile the final 100 pages were filled with some gripping action sequences and some real cliff-hanger in terms of the 'Dark Tower' .
There were plenty of 4th wall broken , many real life character brought into the story , many shared universes and many easter eggs for fans of various Kings Novels ,that really made for some amusing time
What I Didn't Like:
OK , this will sound like , "I think too highly of myself" or I'm simply too arrogant to say this ,but I was absolutely unimpressed with the writing . There were plenty of paragraphs , that were just filled with unnecessarily written words.
The exposition was so filled with rubbish details that it really dulled me off , in fact , I saw one whole page where King went on and on about people in the city of Calla , who played absolutely no role in the whole book . There was another page with couple of paragraphs of King going on about the rice field and it wasn't descriptive , it felt repetitive.
I'm no editor , but If i was I would have trimmed nearly 400-500 pages of this book . At one point it felt like King was trying to force this book into the realms of Epic Fantasy without making any effort to create a detailed world or any magic system or focusing on character or wars , both present ones and the past ones .
Talking of magic system , there's still absolutely no clue , after five books , on how the magic system works , or what it's limitations are , or what it can do . It's just there and for plot convenience it keeps doing shit , which again for plot convenience keeps helping the protagonist and his team. I in fact have never before read a book where the Plot and the scenario helps the protagonists so much , usually it's the other way around , help for antagonists is always there and these antagonist usually pile more misery for the protagonist, in here the antagonists actually seem to be helping the protagonists.
As I stated before the first 100 and the final 200 pages were entertaining but the rest 600 pages or so were just a unnecessarily dragged dull affair , the biggest culprit in this was the introduction of Father Callahan*, the character in itself was bland and irritating , but learning of His back story , for 5 long chapters amounting to nearly 150+ pages, was arduous to say the least .
*Readers of the Salem Lot series may know of him.
And remember that action sequence I previously wrote about in the "WHAT I LIKED" section ... yeah .. about that. The book is over 900 pages , the action is around 50 pages , and the preparation for that action lasts around 50 more pages . So what were the other pages about? I DON'T HAVE A CLUE!
Conclusions:
The book in whole felt like a filler book ,having deviating really far away from the main plot of the journey towards Dark Tower , in a way one can successfully argue that there was absolutely no need for this book to be written and maybe King could have just gone on to write the next one . The unnecessary introduction of a side quest , an absolutely uninspiring new world creation , another dull Character addition with an even duller back story and long unnecessary exposition filled this book and at more than one time I was worried this may turn out to be my first DNF. Overall I don't care how big an author King maybe , I absolutely hated this book.