Wolves of the Calla

Stephen King

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.)