Review of Stephen King’s Wolves of the Calla (Grant, Hardcover, $35)
Illustrated by Berni Wrightson
by
Michael O’Rourke
I know I’m not known for my reviews, but I’m hoping to change that, as long as what I’m reviewing is in my bailiwick.
So when the Prophet asked me to review Stephen King’s Wolves of the Calla, the fifth volume in the Dark Tower series, I jumped at the chance. Some of the other writers on this site have been reading this book as well, so I’m glad for the chance to trump them.
I’ve been a fan of King’s series since its first volume was published in the 80s. Roland the Gunslinger is quite the Byronic hero—lonely, tortured, so full of angst that we would feel sorry for him if he weren’t capable of such nasty things.
Like most fans of Roland and his gang, I’ve been anxiously awaiting this book. The last volume, Wizard and Glass, was quite enjoyable, what with its prolonged flashback into Roland’s past (speaking of nasty things he’s done) and its glimpse into the weird worlds that the gunslingers are traveling through. That book left me wanting more. While I really liked the long story of Roland and Susan’s romance and the first-hand experience with Alain and Cuthbert, I wanted to get back to Eddie and Susannah, Roland’s present-day companions.
Wolves of the Calla certainly succeeds in terms of throwing the reader back into the ongoing story of the Tower. In this book, Roland and company finally reach the border between Mid-World and End-World, the realm in which the Tower (and all the attendant dangers) stands at the nexus of all realities. There they find a rural community called a “Calla,” a loose collection of farms connected by a central village. As with many communities in King’s post-apocalyptic world, the Calla has its unusual properties: children are almost always born in pairs.
The Calla also has its problems. Once a generation, a group of dark riders—humanoid, though the Calla folk call them wolves because of their lupine masks—comes from the dark realm called Thunderclap. These wolves take one child from each pair; the rare single child is safe. Longtime readers of this series and King’s other Tower-related fiction will recognize the reasons for these abductions; to anyone else, it would take too long to explain. Suffice it to say that everything is connected to the Tower, and to the so-called Crimson King’s efforts to destroy it.
Operating under their warrior code, which states that a gunslinger must give aid to anyone who asks, Roland’s “ka-tet” tarries in the Calla, determined to rid the community of this scourge and, at the same time, to help keep the Tower safe.
These quests are getting more and more complicated, however. For one thing, Susannah’s multiple personality disorder is resurfacing, manifesting itself through a completely new persona—Mia, “daughter of none,” mother to the demon Susannah encountered a few books back. Another complication is that Roland’s health isn’t what it used to be; we can see that this problem is only going to worsen over the course of the last two books. Finally there’s Jake, the adolescent member of the ka-tet, the boy who has already died twice. He makes a huge mistake: he makes friends with a boy near his own age, even though he’s been taught that gunslingers’ friends never live all that long. Furthermore, we now have a potential new member of the ka-tet: Father Callahan, late of ‘Salem’s Lot.
While King is creating his atmosphere and building up the suspense and dread necessary to hook his readers into such a complicated world, he’s at his best. His method of focusing on different characters in different chapters allows us to see the coming crises from several points of view; yet all these different viewpoints contribute to the development of the plot (none seem extraneous, in other words) and to the effect on the reader. Many critics have called King a modern-day Poe, an author more concerned with effect than with meaning or cultural relevance. Whether or not that’s a fair assessment, King is certainly a master of effect, and that mastery is in evidence here.
The main problem I have, though, concerns the ending. Much like the disappointing Black House, Wolves of the Calla starts off well, builds up to an exciting climax, and then fizzles. Black House—a dark, nasty book that created expectations of a dark, nasty ending—fell apart in the last act. Wolves isn’t that bad; in fact, King sets up the too-quick ending by having Roland reflect on the “five minutes of blood and stupidity” that all gunfights boil down to in the end. Still and all, the “five minutes” that the characters live through shouldn’t take only five minutes to read; I would rather have seen a more fully developed climactic scene.
It’s odd that King has only recently succumbed to this tendency. I recently re-read Scorpion’s review of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and I have to say I agree with him, particularly regarding the ending. Then came Black House’s dissatisfying and just plain stupid ending. And now, Wolves of the Calla ends in a way that is neither stupid nor dissatisfying but simply too quick. Perhaps this trend can be explained by the fact that King is nearing the end of this tale he’s been telling for thirty years or so; he may be anxious to get to the end. I’d simply hope that from now on he doesn’t let the readers suffer because of his own eagerness.
I’m also a bit nervous about where this series is going. Without giving away too much, I’ll simply say that I’m afraid King has gotten too ambitious, that he may be trying to make some grand metatextual statement about how all stories are connected. I like it better when he simply tells his own tale. The latter seems more in keeping with what an author does; the former reminds me of an academic critical work.
But that simply reflects my own tastes. Even if he goes that route, he can pull it off. Wolves of the Calla isn’t the best of the Tower series, nor is it the best book he’s written in the last few years. Not as terrible as From a Buick 8, Wolves probably falls somewhere between the so-so Tom Gordon and the positively excellent collection Everything’s Eventual. Put another way, if Black House is two-thirds of a good book, Wolves is more like seven-eighths good. Even at thirty-five bucks, it’s worth the money.
Let’s just hope the end to the series—and, reportedly, King’s career—isn’t as rushed.
B+