Appearance
Wolves of the Calla: Dark Tower V
Bottom line, folks: I started reading this over ten days ago, and I'd rather be writing this review than facing the chore of getting through 300 more pages of the book. This is what Donald Rumsfeld might call "a long, hard slog."It's not BAD. It's just not... compelling. Fitfully absorbing, perhaps; that is, the story heats up temporarily and then subsides into tedium. I'm still holding out hope that the pace will pick up in those last 300 pages I can't bring myself to face yet... but Steverino seems to be going in so many different directions here it's hard to get excited about it.I absolutely loved the first four books in the Dark Tower series, particularly "Wizard and Glass", which I feel is one of King's finest works, a full-bodied fantasy novel remarkably free of some of Steverino's more irritating idiosyncracies. So I looked forward eagerly to "Wolves of the Calla."I realize I'm being premature as I still haven't finished it. But frankly, folks, I wish someone would just tell me what happens so I don't have to bother. Anyone by chance have the Cliff's Notes for this book? A novel of this kind should demand your attention, and "Wolves of the Calla" never quite does that. There are a couple of scenes where Roland makes a gesture with his finger signifying "Get on with it", and that's how I feel about much of this book.Hard-core King fans will probably go easier on the Master than I do. I love some of his books and stories; others, less so. But so far this is a story that just smolders and never catches fire. A major disappointment.
Wolves of the Calla: Dark Tower V
I'll start by saying that, like many readers, I started this series many years ago and was charmed by the early tales of Roland. Unfortunately, the series has been uneven at best since the second book.While I was never a big fan of Susannah or Eddie, both characters seem to have become even more shallow and one-dimensional. Roland remains interesting, though some of the focus has been removed from him. Jake is probably the only redeeming character, though he comes as a package with Oy, the Ewok equivalent in this series.When it comes to style, King has never been my favorite writer, but this book reads as if it had never seen the desk of an editor. As mentioned by many reviewers, it is painfully dragged out and repetitive. The book is filled with gimmicky foreshadowing meant to keep you turning the pages, which ends up getting annoying.Speaking of annoying, the dialect of the townspeople in the book is one of the most painful and pointless things I have ever had to deal with in reading a book. Besides this, by the end of the story, I felt as if I had been beaten about the head for 700 pages by 19, 99, ka, todash, and the rest..I can only hope the final two books return to the formula that worked early in the series-- inspired, original, fast-paced story telling-- and this can be left behind as an experiment that failed.
Wolves of the Calla: Dark Tower V
For me, this was a much anticipated release. Having waited since 1997, when the fourth book in the series was released. The time it took for publication was my biggest complaint. In this fifth part of the epic tale of Roland and his ka-tet, the group is met by, what appears initially to be, a distraction to their journey to find the dark tower. It soon becomes apparent, that this is no segway, but a part of the path they must take, no matter what the danger entails.The fifth book keeps me wondering what the sixth and seventh books are going to be about. The story, which in some respects can stand alone, but in many respects, if you have the first through the fourth books of the series, fits in nicely. If you want to read this book as a standalone story, there are parts that might not make a lot of sense to you, but the story overall will still work. The end will make you want to buy the next in the series when it comes out later this year.At times, the book did seem to drag out. However, if you can continue through those parts where the story slows (probably a direct result of being a part of the MTV generation, where everything changes rapidly) you will be rewarded by seeing the pieces of the puzzle fit together nicely to complete the whole picture of the other world where the story takes place.All in all, The Wolves of Calla, tells a great tale of how intelligence and understanding of the world around you, and a little luck will enable even the most unlikely of people to become heros in some form or another. King has created an elaborate world that is separate and connected to this world in a manner that, in time, will be a major contribution to the world of literature.
Wolves of the Calla: Dark Tower V
If you have read the other four Dark Tower books, you won't even read this review because certainly you have already read the book or already plan to. If not then stop reading this and go get the Gunslinger. You absolutely cannot jump into the middle of this seris. As for this book, another excellent chaper in the dark tower saga. For that is really what all these books are a chapter of one (really huge) novel. I have no complaints except that the next one isn't available yet!
Wolves of the Calla: Dark Tower V
I read a ton of books by quite a few authors and let me tell you something.... They cannot hold a candle to King. If you have read all of the Stephen King's stories that this book touches on you be be extremly happy with this novel , If you have read none of them you be be extremly happy with this novel. Everytime I read a Stephen King book and start to get a glimpse of the complexity that he holds in his head and interweaves into his stories , I am uterly Amazed. The Dark Tower series is one for the ages and should be held in such regard as Tolkein's Epic stories. The thing is Tolkein had Middle Earth, King is speaking of worlds overlapping worlds, intersecting highways that connect the bridges between uiniverse's, that are all contained in a Rose and a Tower! Incredible book ..... Incredible author!
Wolves of the Calla: Dark Tower V
Over the past few years I've been reading through Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I've been doing this as part of an ongoing goal I have to read through many of the classic science fiction and fantasy books ever written. It all began with Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, but since then I've chewed through the likes of Ursula LeGuin, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, and contemporary authors such as George R. R. Martin and Robert Jordan. The Dark Tower series has already become a legend in its own right as a strange amalgam of sci-fi, fantasy, and King's trademark, horror.What to say of Wolves of the Calla? Some complain that this volume doesn't live up to the previous four, but I couldn't disagree more. Wolves is as robust and wildly interesting an addition to the series as the previous four, and despite some off-the-wall criticisms, it most certainly does contribute to the overall Dark Tower story arc. What is that story arc? I will try to summarize this vast tale in a few sentences: In the world of the Tower there exist many, if not infinite, worlds. Indeed there are multiple versions of our own world, some where the difference is as minute as a difference in the name of a professional baseball team. These worlds are held together by a metaphysical lynchpin: the Dark Tower. Our hero is Roland the gunslinger of Gilead, a mythic warrior from one of these worlds who has discovered that there is something terribly wrong with the Tower. Its supports - "Beams" - are under attack and failing. Thus the very fabric of reality is weakening. Some worlds, like Roland's, have "moved on." They are running down: time itself doesn't behave correctly, and one day north becomes east and then corrects itself. As a part of this weakening of reality, doorways between these worlds are opened up through various means, allowing our heroes to pass back and forth.The quest of Roland is for the Dark Tower itself. The ancient caste of gunslingers, of which he is the last, has always had some veiled knowledge of the Tower, but as a young man Roland had a mystical experience of it. The quest to find and repair the tower has become an obsession for him. Due to the strange behavior of time, he has been seeking a way to get t the Tower, and the dark beings that now assail it, for over a thousand years. In Wolves we find Roland and his little band of up-and-coming gunslingers, exiles from our own world that he has "drawn" into his own, continuing on their quest. They are caught up in events in the rural town of Calla Bryn Sturgis, where creatures wearing wolf-masks ride into town on grey horses every generation or so and steal some of the town's children, only to return them as mental invalids who need constant care and die painfully and young. After hundreds of years the "folken" of Calla Bryn Sturgis have decided to stand up to the wolves and fight, even though their enemies carry weaponry far more advanced than their crossbows. As gunslingers Roland's band are morally required to help this town in need.Thus the tale of Wolves of the Calla unfolds. The whole plot follows the classic pattern of such films as Seven Samurai and The Thirteenth Warrior, where a small band of heroes is recruited to defend a helpless town from ruthless invaders. But of course with King, nothing is cliched, even when he's working with an established narrative formula. I've never read stories quite like the ones in the Dark Tower series, where everything is determined by what Roland calls ka, the rough equivalent of what we would call destiny. Thus while the protection of the Calla may seem like a side quest, all things serve ka, and in reality it is a crucial component of Roland's long journey to the Tower.The actual preparation and defense of the Calla is the most interesting part of the book. The revelation of what the wolves are, who they serve and why they take the children every twenty or thirty years is a mystery that King holds until the very end. In a long tale of over 3,000 pages an author has plenty of time for characterization, and King takes the opportunity to grow his characters in interesting and strange ways. Volume 4, Wizard and Glass, consists almost entirely of a flashback into Roland's youth that shows the reader how and why he has become the remarkable man that he has. We see his baptism of fire into the hard life of being a gunslinger, and we also see how personal tragedy has shaped his psyche. The same is true in Wolves to an extent, but this time the baptism of fire is not Roland's but Jake's, the twelve year old boy from the New York City of 1977. Like Roland, here Jake must make some difficult and tragic choices, and through those tragedies we see his dramatic metamorphosis from a confused boy into a hardened warrior.It is the idea of ka, more than anything else, that drives Roland and his companions on their quest. The gunslinger has a monumental sense of personal destiny. He was meant to find the Tower, and he is willing to sacrifice everything dear to him to find it. One reason I continue to read these books - despite the sheer darkness and obscenity that occasionally show up - is because Roland's quest is, in some sense, a quest for God. In the first book, The Gunslinger, the question comes up of who or what has the right or the ability to sit in the top level of the tower. The obvious answer is: only God. He is the one who is ultimately in control, and I assume that it is He who is behind ka. The idea of God's controlling sovereignty faded through some of the earlier volumes, but here it returns in force. Roland, although not a Christian, increasingly refers to the will of God in Wolves, and indeed it becomes almost interchangeable with the idea of ka. There is also some existential questioning in Wolves, as some of the characters begin to question if the top room of the Tower is actually empty. But I suspect that it is not.It is in this sense that I see the Dark Tower series as an inherently philosophical, even religious, tale. Roland's quest is not simply a journey to save the world. There is also the desire to find what really lies at the heart of existence. What is there, really? This is a metaphysical question. No, it is the metaphysical question. I also see in Roland's quest a desire to find his identity. Roland knows why he is here. Ka has determined that he should find the Tower, the lightning rod of all extant worlds. But yet there is also a sense in which he doesn't know why he is here. He doesn't know why he was chosen for this task, and in coming to that great field of roses in which the Tower stands, he hopes that he can find out. The answer that he ultimately seeks is to the question: who is God? I'm not sure if this is what King is thinking, or even if he would have the ability to articulate it in these terms, but I think that in finding the answer to that all important question, Roland is essentially in a search for the meaning of life. Wolves of the Calla is only one episode in his long search for the answer to that question, but it sure is a fun ride.