Wolves of the Calla (Dark Tower V) (First Edition)

Stephen King (author); Bernie Wrightson (illustrator)

ISBN 10: 1880418568 / ISBN 13: 9781880418567

Published by Donald M. Grant/Scribner (Hampton Falls/New York), 2003

About this Item

Donald M. Grant/Scribner, Hampton Falls/New York, 2003. First edition. First printing of the first trade edition (with full number line including the 1). A fine copy in a fine jacket. A clean copy with price ($35.00) intact on front flap. Comes with archival-quality jacket protector. Hardcover. Quarter black cloth over black paper-covered boards with gilt spine lettering. Octavo, 714 pages. Illustrated by Bernie Wrightson with full-page color plates and black-and-white chapter heads. The fifth volume in King's Dark Tower series, set in a gunslinger's mythic and apocalyptic landscape. The Dark Tower series spans eight books written between 1982 and 2012, blending fantasy, horror, and western genres in a sprawling multiverse centered on Roland Deschain s quest for the Tower; the series was loosely adapted into a 2017 feature film starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey and more faithfully reimagined in a shelved Amazon pilot directed by Stephen Hopkins.

Seller Inventory # FLAHIVE-3210

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Wolves of the Calla (Dark Tower V) (First Edition)
• Publisher: Donald M. Grant/Scribner (Hampton Falls/New York)
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1880418568
• ISBN 13: 9781880418567
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Wrightson, Bernie
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

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