Rating: 
Summary: A detour to Calla Bryn Sturgis
Review: Stephen King has said that of all the books he has written, the Dark Tower is the most important and deeply meaningful work he has produced. Reading each successive volume, I can see that this is increasingly true. The series seems to be the summing up of his writing career by incorporating many of the characters, story lines, philosophies, mythologies, and literary inspirations of his previous works into this single far-reaching fantasy universe. This fifth installment more strongly than ever incorporates such references, including Salem's Lot, The Stand, Hearts in Atlantis, and many others. He also includes references to a myriad of books by other authors besides the obvious Tolkien. I found allusions to the works of L. Frank Baum, J.K. Rowling, Richard Adams, and even Marvel Comics. I will not provide a detailed recap of the story here since so many other reviewers have already done so. What I will attempt to do is explain why I give Wolves of the Calla only 3 stars, as well as to list its strengths and weaknesses. The story of the residents of the Calla and their joining forces with Roland's ka-tet to vanquish the wolves deserves 5 stars. There is intrigue, town politics, an ominous threat hanging over the twin children of the residents, and an exciting battle between Wolf and man. The personalities of the townsfolk, who are divided in their opinions of whether to fight or submit to the wolves, are well developed, as is that of the enigmatic Andy the Messenger Robot. King has done an excellent job developing the mythology and culture of the "folken" of Calla Bryn Sturgis. The reader is treated to a realistic and colorful portrayal of their language, culture, festivals, music, and traditions. After finishing the story, I felt that I had actually taken a trip there and met its inhabitants. Where the story line falls short, and earns the book only 3 stars, is the middle half of the novel, where there is a lot of travel to the New York of 1977 and many side narratives about the pasts of several of the protagonists. The travel, sometimes performed involuntarily through a mystical "todash" and sometimes voluntarily through another magical doorway, leads to efforts to protect the rose of previous episodes from harm. Not only is all this back-and-forth action distracting, but the ka-tet's dealings with the owner of the lot upon which the rose grows, and with the hoodlums who threaten him, is tedious. Also in this middle half is an excessive amount of tale telling about the pasts of several of the characters. Pere Callahan's tale is essentially a sequel to Salem's Lot, and has no place here. The illustrations have added a lot to the cost of the book, but little to enhance the story. I give one star to these illustrations. Granted, Roland's Mid-World is a gloomy place, but these paintings are too gloomy and colorless. Every character is depicted as sinister. They all look physically mangy and stringy, even the good folken of the Calla. Although I prefer King's horror fiction to his Dark Tower epic, being an ardent King fan I feel duty-bound to read the entire story - all seven volumes worth. Besides, I do want to know how Roland and his ka-tet manage to save Mid-World from the evil of the Dark Tower. Reading the entire magnum opus does require a large commitment, since the story, when completed, is projected to weigh in at more than 3,500 pages. Needless to say this volume of the series should not be tackled unless you have already read the previous volumes, and thus it is best left to the diehard Stephen King or Dark Tower fans. Of course this installment will leave the story, and you, hanging in midair. But have no fear... the last two volumes will be released before year's end. Eileen Rieback
Rating: 
Summary: The Quest Continues - sidetracked to help the little folk
Review: Roland and his ka-tet move on after an encounter with Flagg, aka Farson, Marten, Richard Fannin and others. Along their journey they meet some residents of a nearby town, Calla Bryn Sturgis. One of these men is Father Callahan from "'Salem's Lot." They are asked by some of the residents to help save their children from the Wolves. The wolves come every generation or so and take one child from every set of twins. Nearly every child is born as a twin. The kidnapped children are returned but to a sad life of being "roont," feeble-minded and with odd physical characteristics causing an early and very painful death. This time the townsfolk intend to fight. Though some members of the town think it's better to leave things the way they are, it's better to give half of their children than to have all of them killed and their town destroyed. Meanwhile, Susannah is unaware that she is pregnant, not with Eddie's human child but with a demon child, spawn of the night she spent holding down an evil entity while Roland drew Jake into his world. The moment of birth is soon coming, but will this demon child allow Susannah or any of the others to survive? In addition to that crisis, Father Callahan shows Roland and Eddie something that he's had hidden under the boards of his church for years. Something with a powerful force and it's waking up. It is another piece of the "wizard's glass," this one is the black orb that allows one to travel through different worlds, otherwise known as todash. The ka-tet (mostly Jake and Eddie) travel back to New York where they check on the vacant lot and the rose growing there (this may be the Dark Tower). They learn that this lot is in danger, Flagg may be just about to get his hands on it. If Flagg wins this one, the Dark Tower is lost for sure. The ka-tet must buy this lot and protect it. The whole book brings together so many integral pieces of the mystery surrounding the Dark Tower and how Roland and ka-tet will come to save it (or will they?) as well as answers many of our questions about the series while it ties in "'Salem's Lot." We even have a fun little treat at the end, tying in Stephen King just like in some of his movies. The people of the calla are mostly lovable and it's tempting to speak in their dialect after spending hours reading the book. This book was definitely worth the wait.
Rating:
Summary: Well Worth the Wait
Review: 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!
Rating: 
Summary: The quest goes on... and on... and on...
Review: I never would have believed it, but King has finally done it -- he has written a book that is almost impossible to get through. King is usually the most readable of writers; he's a magnificent storyteller and he has a way with prose that makes his sentences zip along. But this far into The Dark Tower series, he's bogged down into a morass that makes reading this book seem like slogging through quicksand with jackboots on. King intends The Dark Tower to be a story of the quest for the nexus of all space and time, but in "Wolves of the Calla" he's gotten so hopelessly entangled in parallel worlds, we wonder where the heck he is going and if he ever intends to get there. We're in Calla Bryn Sturgis in some world beyond this one, who knows where; each birth in this community seems to bring forth twins, and every decade or so a posse of evil wolves sweep down on the hapless hamlet and carry off one of every set of twins between toddlerdom and teendom; the abductees come back "roont", semi-zombies doomed to a short, sad life. Into this community come Roland and his ka-tet, to help the villagers learn to stand up for themselves and defeat this plague. Okay, it's a pretty good plot. But King has to get sidetracked here, there and everywhere -- Susannah is pregnant with something too horrible to contemplate, Father Callahan emerges from his flight from 'Salem's Lot with an interminable tale of woe which takes up a good third of the book, and on and on it goes until we're left wondering where King is going with all this, or if he's just spinning his wheels going nowhere. If King had only kept it simple, it would have been a much better book, but he's given in to his fatal penchant for over-writing, which causes him to inject a lot of hot air while adding nothing of substance. It's not that he can't do it right when he sets his mind to it -- the first volume in the series, "The Gunslinger", was an excellent, tightly written novel that carried us along non-stop from beginning to end, with no unnecessary detours along the way. "Wolves" meanders in and out and roundabout, until we just want to get the whole thing over with. I always wondered what happened to Father Callahan after his flight from 'Salem's Lot (one of King's best books), but this was not the place to find out. And in what is surely the tackiest gambit this reviewer has ever come across, King has to inject his own self into the book near the end. For what purpose, since it adds absolutely nothing to the story? King says the sixth book in the series will be released in June, and the seventh and final volume near the end of this year. One can only hope that he will get back on track, before he gets so lost in one of his umpteen parallel worlds that he never manages to find his way back home, let alone find the Dark Tower.
Rating: 
Summary: Should have been rejected by the publisher
Review: Honestly I just can't understand how this book even made it to print. There are some great gems in here, like all King books, but it seems the older he gets the deeper the gems are buried. At least this time the good portions of the book are waiting near the end so the reader has something to look forward to as they slop through the excruciatingly plodding development of the story. For fans of the DT series (and if you're even bothering to read this you probably are one) I would recommend reading this book only in the hopes that some part of the story as it is told is crucial to the next two books. It certainly doesn't feel like it. This entry into the epic is so bad it's difficult to find specifics. The bottom-line is it's a bad book by itself and when compared to the amazing body of work in the rest of the series Wolves has to go down as one of the greatest failures in literary history. It's that bad. The best reviews here all qualify themselves by telling you to put the book in context of the other releases and that it's good simply because its part of a greater whole. I remember hearing similar arguments for The Phantom Menace. I can't put this thing into ANY context that makes it a worthwhile read regardless of the role it might play in the overall story. The other reviews below will spoil the plot (such as it is) for you if that's what you need. For me the only value here is it occupies a nice size slot on my bookshelf and thus makes it appear as if I've read more quality books, which I have not. One less than it appears in fact.
Rating: 
Summary: An Entertaining Chapter
Review: Wolves of Calla, the fifth book in King's personal Lord of the Rings, brings the overall story progression of the Dark Tower series to a relative halt, but is an entertaining read nonetheless. Without giving too much away, the gunslingers -- Roland, Jake, Eddie, Susanna and Oy -- attempt to rescue a small farm town from an approaching army of... something bad. To do this, the ka-tet's journey toward the Dark Tower stops; the group instead seeks to help the famers find a way to stay off and even conquer the coming enemy. There are some surprising and thrilling plot developments in this latest novel. The series -- which ventured unabashedly into the realm of sci-fi in the Wastelands -- returns itself to an Old West setting. King makes no effort to hide the fact that this story was wholly inspired by Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai and indeed draws other connections to real-life works and in very literal ways. The most shocking and satisfying story developments are, almost predictably, left for the end of the book -- and the reader left to wait for answers in the next. King has a way with words. He has a love for details. And it's this complementary combination that has made many of his books such intriguing reads over the years. But sometimes he gets carried away. There are points in Calla where the reader may hope for the next page to reveal a pivotal plot twist -- even some interesting dialogue between main characters, but it instead dwells on unimportant sidestory. These are the slow parts. Luckily, they are few. After reading Calla, one gets the idea that King is himself finally figuring out where he wants to take the Dark Tower series. He seems to have made up his mind and the hints are there, the themes in place; the worlds appear to be coming together, connected by comic books and Star Wars, strange as it sounds. The reader will still be left with lingering questions -- many, in fact. But when the book is done one will be more curious than ever for the answers. A worthy new installment to what is bound to be remembered King's crowning accomplishment as a writer.
Rating:
Summary: Readable.
Review: Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla (Grant, 2003) I have been of the tacit understanding, over the past two decades, that when Stephen King uncorked the typewriter for the first Dark Tower story, he had an idea of where he was going to go with the series. Granted, as we all know, this runs counter to everything King has ever said in interviews about how he writes, but this is an epic series, one he had no idea how long it would be when he started. You don't go into something like that without planning. Well, okay, maybe you do if you're Stephen King. Wolves of the Calla was definitely not in the cards when he wrote the first story. There's too much in here that smacks of obvious attempts to tie in things that have come in between (and hints of tying in other stuff, as well). Wolves of the Calla continues the adventures of Roland and co., slipping back and forth between Mid-World and our world at three different times. Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy are on the border between Mid-World and Out-World, about to cross over, when they're approached by a priest from the small town of Calla Bryn Sturgis. The Calla has a problem; every twenty-three years or so, it's raided by masked riders called Wolves, who take one child from every pair of twins between the ages of three and fourteen. (Giving birth to twins is the norm in Calla Bryn Sturgis.) The priest asks Roland and friends to help with the problem of the wolves, and thus a novel is born. Along with this come subplots involving pieces of the other books (Black Thirteen from Wizard and Glass, the vacant lot in New York containing the rose from The Drawing of the Three, etc.). King is beginning the long process of tying it all together. There are even hints of the Low Men in Yellow Coats, the brimstone-filled alternate world from Black House, and various other ties to the other books that touch on the series. (The "other works by" page at the beginning finally gives us the comprehensive list of which books are Tower-related and which aren't.) I had read all the reviews and knew all the spoilers beforehand, and honestly I walked into this expecting a major disappointment. What I had forgotten is the sheer delight in reading Stephen King's prose, which is as strong as always. When he's talking about nothing, which is often, or going off on a tangent, which is even more often, the prose itself is so simply readable that getting through the book's seven-hundred-plus pages is a pleasure. He never fails to tie in the more odd elements of life in Mid-World to something we earthbound humans can understand, giving us a much clearer picture of what's going on than we might have had otherwise. And yes, the ending is a pain. No surprise there, if you've read any spoilers about the novel. But there's enough there to keep going, especially if you've got twenty years invested in the Tower already, as most people reading this review already do. We'll keep following the Path of the Beam wherever it leads us till the bitter end. (Which, after twenty years, is finally in sight.) ***
Rating:
Summary: Worth the Wait!
Review: An excellent addition to a great series! I can't wait to read part VI.
Rating:
Summary: Dark Tower Addiction
Review: I wasn't sure about the Dark Tower series when I began reading it years ago. The first book, "The Gunslinger" seemed to be a little slow-paced and it took me a while to get into it. However, because it was Stephen King, I pushed on and finished that first book. After that, there was no looking back! The books that followed sucked me right in immediately. It's definitely a series that you will lose yourself in. I had a hard time picking up any other books after finishing "Wolves" because I didn't want it to end. I would highly suggest reading the series from the start before reading this book. You will be doing yourself a great disservice by starting with Wolves. The backstory on all the characters is important, and you will not regret doing it this way. This is Stephen King's masterpiece epic, and it could stand against any other famous series (Lord of the Rings anyone?). I'm convinced this will be required reading someday.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely worth the read!
Review: I absolutely love the Dark Tower series. Some of the books have been better than others, but after reading Wolves of the Calla, I've got to tell you, I can hardly wait for the next one! There's some great suspense building here!
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