The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (5) (Packaging may vary)

This book is a masterpiece in so many ways. It is one of Steven King's best books, and by far the best book of the first 5 books in this series. This book has everything one could want in a book, time-travel, time & space dilation, evil "wolves" who prey on twins-destroying the brain of 1, good guys who come to the aid of the children, a talking robot in a primitive land, split-personalities, a traitor, as always a range of different characters, a woman-pregnant with a demon child, star-crossed lovers, a quest to save all worlds, and a big cliff-hanger leading into book 6. Other than the epilogue, I can't imagine anything I would have changed in this book to make it better. The book starts with the gunslinger & his party of 3 nearing the end of their journey to "Thunderclap", where they believe the Dark Tower and the future of all worlds lie. They are sought out by a party from a nearby town Calla Bryn Sturgis who seek their aid in protecting their children. Calla Bryn Sturgis is a subsistance level farming community, other than a walking/talking giant robot who will at times aid them in their physical work or in babysitting their children, and who warns them when the "wolves" are coming. For unknown reasons, almost all births in Calla Bryn Sturgis are of twins, and every few generations the town will be raided by unknown creatures wearing wolf masks who will kidnap one of every set of twins. The twins are then returned by train a few weeks later, but are severely brain-damaged. Efforts to hide the twins or fight the "wolves" in the past have been futile. Roland and group agree to help them. They also meet up with Father Callahan, a main character from another Steven King novel, 'Salem's Lot. We learn the history here, what happened to Father Callahan between the end of the book in Salem's Lot, and to when he ended up in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Father Callahan also has a present for them, Black 13 from the Wizard's Rainbow, which Roland believes can enable them to time/parallel world travel. Which will be definitely needed, because Roland and party have learned that the rose from previous books, located in NY is in great danger, none other then by Eddie's old drug boss, Ballazar. Roland also learns that Susannah is pregnant, and by all indications, the baby is from her encounter with the demon in Book 3, and not from Eddie. Unfortunately, nobody knows how long demon pregnancies last, so in addition to the intense work of figuring how to solve their 2 simultaneous problems of protecting the rose and the twins of Calla Bryn Sturgis, the group must also worry that Susannah will go into labor at an inopportune time. The storylines are thoughtfully interwoven, the ending unpredictable. The book was very hard to put down, as the story was so compelling. Then, the epilogue. It's not that the epilogue was bad, it wasn't. But the epilogue was a set-up for book 6, and I fear from the tone of the epilogue, that Book 6 may be crossing into "jump the shark" territory. Still King very seldom disappoints, so I have hope that my initial thoughts on the epilogue are wrong, and Book 6 will turn out to be every bit as entrancing as Book 5.

Best one yet!

While on their continuing quest for The Dark Tower, Roland and his ka-tet are waylaid by a village in crisis. The gunslingers - because they are all gunslingers in their own right, by now - have to decide whether they can help. And if they can help, they must, and are not allowed to accept any kind of payment, according to the Gunslinger Code.

This book mostly concerns that side quest, but there's a helluva lot of depth, and along the way, they discover much that will aid them in their main quest.

In my review of the last book (Wizard and Glass) in this series, I lamented the long, drawn-out, and somewhat inappropriate backstory. Well, this one ALSO has a significant chunk of backstory to share, but it's nothing like the one in Wizard and Glass. This one's entirely appropriate and perfectly paced, and we're constantly reminded that it is, in fact, a backstory.

In many ways, it forms somewhat of a sequel to 'Salem's Lot. I'll say no more than that, but if you haven't read that book, I strongly suggest you do so before reading Wolves of the Calla.

Back to the main story of this book: the village and its inhabitants are so richly detailed, none of them are "cardboard cutouts" by any means, and their own unique dialect is presented so beautifully, so consistently... I can only call it a literary masterpiece.

Around about 85% of the way through, I started noticing the odd typo here and here. These were clearly things that the editors missed (but in a book this long, who can blame them?). If you know me, you'd know that normally a single typo would be enough to destroy any book's chances of getting a five-star review from me. But in this case, I was so engrossed by the time I spotted the first one, and there are so comparatively few of them, that it didn't matter.

As the author himself advises in his introduction, I wouldn't recommend reading this book if you haven't read the first four (skip the "point fives", though - just read the main story), but if you've been struggling through, I promise you you won't regret sticking with it for this one!