Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, Book 5)

Stephen King

ISBN 10: 1880418568 / ISBN 13: 9781880418567

Published by Donald M. Grant/Scribner, 2003

About this Item

First Edition. First edition.

Seller Inventory # mon0003705946

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, Book 5)
• Publisher: Donald M. Grant/Scribner
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1880418568
• ISBN 13: 9781880418567
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Wrightson, Bernie
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Includes dust jacket.

About this title

Synopsis

A long-anticipated fifth installment of the series continues the adventures of gunslinger Roland, who with his companions endeavors to reach and hopefully save the Dark Tower, a quest that is challenged by the evil wolves of Thunderclap, who are abducting the children of the residents of a town in the tower's shadow. 500,000 first printing.

Review

In Wolves of the Calla, volume five of Stephen King's epic fantasy western The Dark Tower, coincidence has, as Eddie Dean observes, been cancelled. Everything the gunslinger Roland and his companions encounter has taken on symbolic significance. So when they come to Calla Bryn Sturgis, named after the director of The Magnificent Seven, its clear that King will follow the classic western archetype of a small band of heroes defending peaceable homesteaders. Here, the heroes resist masked raiders who abduct one of each pair of twins (and almost all children are twins), only to return them a month later horribly changed.

Father Callahan from King's Salem's Lot is resident in Calla Bryn Sturgis, and has his own tale of vampires, regulators and the secret highways though alternative Americas. Not coincidentally, the evil Glass Black 13 is hidden in his church. Meanwhile Susannah is again sporting a secondary personality, this time Mia, mother to the inhuman child that Susannah does not know she is carrying, while Roland realises their quest has become a race against the arthritis which will soon leave him crippled.

In this enormously ambitious book, King continues to weave together his back catalogue with the pop culture and literature of America itself, noting in his introduction that if you haven't read the previous Dark Tower volumes this isn't the place to begin. It is, though, a hugely entertaining adventure, rich in allusion; a passing aside to Thomas Wolfe might easily be dismissed, yet his title You Can't Go Home Again, encapsulates this entire spellbinding odyssey as well as five words ever will. --Gary S Dalkin