A Sprawling, Western Epic as The Tower Gets Closer (Dark Tower 5: Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Dark Tower 5: Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King
Date:	14/01/06 (461 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great story, nifty cross-referencing of other King works

Disadvantages: Still too long!

Let me start by saying that it’s a while since I read anything by Stephen King. I’ve always been a fan of earlier books like “It” and “Pet Cemetery”. These were seminal works for me as I grew up with the omnipresent horror/fantasy author. I’d gone off King’s stuff in recent years as I just found that meandering style hard to live with. However, I had started the Dark Tower series a number of years ago and when I saw that “Wolves of the Calla” was available in my local library then I felt compelled to read on in what is the fifth book in a series of seven. You will need to note that the Dark Tower/Gunslinger series of books is meant to be King’s life works or magnum opus if you will, in very much the same way that the "Lord of the Rings" sequence was Tolkien’s literary obsession. Having first published “The Gunslinger” in 1982, the series has now ended with the final instalment, “The Dark Tower”, published in 2004.

The book starts with a handy resume of the previous four books although, in my view at least, this volume can be read as a stand-alone experience. Notwithstanding, it’s worth a quick recap and, of course, the reader will get so much more by reading all of the books in the sequence and in the order that they were intended. The quest for the Dark Tower begins with volume one: “The Gunslinger”. Roland Deschain is the gunslinger of the title. From the noble line of Gilead, Roland pursues the evil Walter, the man in black, as a means to stop the quickening destruction of Mid-world and the slow death of the Beams that meet at the tower. We get to know that the destruction of the far off tower may mean the end of the world and even the Universe.

Through the first four books, Roland brings together his ka-tet (a group of individuals bound together to serve a common goal (or ka). Each member of a ka-tet is like a puzzle, appearing to be a mystery on his or her own, but when together, creating a picture, or at least part of one.) of fledgling gunslingers in the shape of Eddie Dean, Susannah Holmes and Jake Chambers. This strange combination of former drug addict, legless and now wheelchair-bound, black woman and young boy are brought together in the second volume “The Drawing of the Three” to help Roland in his quest to save the Dark Tower.

As you’d expect, book five leads on from book four with the ka-tet emerging from the forests of Mid-World on a path that leads them to a community of farmers and ranchers in the borderlands. The inhabitants of Calla Bryn Sturgis have a deadly secret; they are raided every 23 or 24 years by rampaging wolves who take their children and return them as gibbering wrecks or "roont" as referred to in the book. Not all the children are taken but most families are affected. Appealing for help, they ask Roland’s group to stop the horrific occurence due, once again, in a month or so. Meanwhile, in a parallel time and place, a sinister organisation is trying to force a bookseller to sell his New York store to them. Owned by Calvin Tower, the gunslingers know that they must stop this happening as it will accelerate the destruction of the Dark Tower. By travelling via a series of inter-dimensional doorways (which are literally doors in space), they can flit between the two worlds although the danger of being caught out by the chimes of the todash bells is never far away and the chance that they may be stranded in the wrong world forever very real.

I have to say that it was nice to read some Stephen King again with the author back to close to something like his most compelling. Back in the 80’s and 90’s, SK was very much at the vanguard of all things supernatural but as time wore on, many readers became frustrated by King’s procrastination and insistence on putting into a thousand words what could have been expressed in a few hundred. It was kind of masochistic to see that things hadn’t changed that much. However, before I'm tempted to launch into an unfair, anti-King rant, let me cover what was good in the book.

Firstly, the central characters are developed further still from previous books. Roland remains as moody as ever with an obvious comparison with the Clint Eastwood “man with no name” anti-hero from the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns of the 1960’s. Moreover, the influences behind the book including those western heroes of the silver screen, Baum’s “Wizard of Oz” and as mentioned earlier, the sprawling odyssey of the Lord of the Rings sequence, are as evident in this fifth book as any of the others. Susannah Dean (having married Eddie) is pregnant but with a strong possibility that the child will be born a demon and mothered by the emerging Mia who is an alternate being contained inside Susannah’s body. Jake’s ascent into a grown man is neatly marked against the ongoing events as the finale approaches (accompanied by Oy, a cross between a badger, racoon and dog known as a billy-bumbler). Eddie provides the comic one-liners with his rye approach to life and a sense of grateful relief that he hasn’t suffered the same fate as his one-time, drug addicted friend, Henry. The gradual emergence of each of them of as gunslingers in their own right is painstakingly observed by King as each becomes more in tune with their own and each other's fortunes.

The author also manages to become self-referential by weaving in large elements from other stories that he has written. These include “The Low Men” from the larger work “Hearts in Atlantis” and “Salem’s Lot”. There’s also a big nod to “The Magnificent Seven” and/or Akira Kurosawa’s original work “The Seven Samurai”. You can almost see the bald, heroic Yul Brynner agreeing to help the poor, Mexican peasants defend themselves against the evil bandits and King’s fantasy re-working is typically more hi-tech and imaginative although still born from the original notion of the Japanese tale.

We even get some Harry Potter thrown in, much to the consternation of the group who are unfamiliar with the teen wizard’s exploits. You could applaud King for being so adept as to use this cross-referencing or you could damn him for being arguably arrogant. To be honest, in the main, I thought that this added to the quality of the tale and I particularly liked the Father/Pere Callahan character (the local, parish priest of the Calla) who had suffered at the hands of the head vampire, Barlow, in Salem’s Lot. His flashbacks into an alternative world of types one, two and three vampires and his clash with the thug-like Hitler brothers was one of the high points of the book. I also tip my cap to King’s ongoing use of italics and the present tense where he does revert to flashback which transports the reader to a different time and place in a way that adds a different dimension to the chapter concerned. I also liked Andy the Messenger robot who turns out to be a more complicated character than he first appears when doing routine tasks for the folk of Calla Bryn Sturgis.

Probably the hardest aspect to follow if you haven’t read any of the other books are the events in the alternate, 1970’s New York although the finale and the link with the western setting of Calla Bryn Sturgis is nicely done and wonderfully written. I suppose the most obvious debate is whether to risk reading this as a stand alone affair or not. After all, this took me several weeks to get through and to start at the beginning of the whole series would be a challenge for even the most dedicated of readers. The level of detail, complexity and cross-referencing to previous tomes could run the risk of confusing the reader at times but, ultimately, it is down to you as to which reading route you take.

There are aspects of the book that niggle. As I said, it took me quite a while too finally make it to the end and I still find that King gets bogged down in unnecessary detail at times. Almost everything has a precursor and the author keenly outlines everything leading up to either an event or a character’s emergence. This means that the actual appearance of the wolves isn’t until page 578 with everything that has gone before building to that event. There were times where I felt that the story plodded in places but then if you wanted to immerse yourself in the world of the Calla and its inhabitants then there is more than enough character development to identify with the heroes and villains, the pure of heart and the traitors to imagine yourself in the sleepy homestead so close to Americana hearts. For me, the final chapters make the book a success. The closing sequences would do justice to anything that Leone could have envisaged for his watershed westerns of the 60’s and the upgrading to include a large slice of sci-fi works nicely. Needless to say, there is the obligatory cliff-hanger that leads the reader like a latter-day, computer game addict to the sixth in the series, “Song of Susannah” and ultimately to the final instalment.

Whilst this opinion is a lengthy one, the story is sufficiently complex and interwoven to make it difficult, nay impossible, to review in any less detail without giving the book due justice. I did enjoy it and I will be reading the final two books. In fact, I'm about to start "Song of Susannah" at the time of writing.

For Stephen King fans, this is a return to form if you can forgive that ongoing meandering that is stamped indelibly on his writing style these days. For fans of horror/fantasy then this is definitely worth a look although you’ll have to decide as to whether you try this as stand-alone or start at the beginning with “The Gunslinger” (I won't be drawn from my metaphorical fence-sitting).

The embryonic inspiration for the Dark Tower series comes from Robert Browning’s narrative poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” and maybe it’s fitting for the poem to have the final word:

“There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew.”

Thanks for reading

Marandina

Notes
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ISBN: 0-340-82716-5

Pages: 616 (hardback)

The hardback version does come with colour illustrations depicting scenes from the book and pictures of the main characters.

Published by Hodder & Stoughton

Available in paperback for £4.79 at Tesco. Also available through the usual channels like Amazon who are advertising the paperback for £3.99.

Summary: Review of book 5 in a sequence of 7