Wolves of the Calla - A Book Review

Before I get started, let me give the heaviest of spoiler warnings. I’m still on my journey to the Tower, so I am extremely vigilant about these things.

If you haven’t read the first five books of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, do not read this post - for one thing, you won’t know what the hell I’m talking about half the time.

With that out of the way, it is time to reflect on one of the best novels I’ve ever picked up.

Wolves of the Calla follows the trend of the series by keeping to a Wild West aesthetic and tone. The plot is a classic one - a handful of straight-laced gunslingers protecting a rural town of innocents from a strange and dangerous threat. Only this time, it’s not a band of outlaws riding in, it’s fucking robots with lightsabres and drones. Yeah. Nutty stuff.

Where to start with this book? There’s tons of new information that King drops on you, all of which raises a dozen questions. You’re left constantly scrabbling to recontextualize past clues, or else scraping through the rich (and often bizarre) dialogue to figure out what insane twist might spring up next.

The worldbuilding is beyond thorough, despite all the mystery. People talk differently to what we’ve seen before in Midworld, there are a host of memorable side-characters, and though we mostly stick to a handful of settings, each feels almost real. You really feel like you are there, whether it’s in the out-of-place technological nightmare of the Dogan, or in the heart of Calla Bryn Sturgis.

The jumping between the world where everything is strange and new and the world where the fantastic hides beneath the surface of the mundane works beautifully. New York is tense and brutal, just as it was in the second and third Dark Tower novels. Midworld is, as usual, utterly bizarre and just crazy charming. You just never know what to expect.

I will say, I adored Mejis in Wizard and Glass (1997) and Lud in The Wastelands (1991) and do prefer these two locations to the Calla, but it still sticks out as a banger for me. Doorway Cave is creepy as hell.

The character work is, as usual, superb. King creates serious tension in the Ka-Tet, and with each new secret harboured you step closer to an emotional breakdown. Characters come into their own, each going down a long and difficult journey, and ending things just as confused and exhausted as they began, if not more so. The addition of Callahan is, firstly, fucking crazy, and secondly, pretty sick. While he becomes pretty unlikeable as the narrative progresses you still get caught up in his wild backstory, and all the more so if you’ve read ‘Salem’s Lot (1975). Speaking of, all that stuff at the end with ‘Salem’s Lot is fucking BARMY. This book is just shock after shock.

The horror, while dialled down somewhat from the earlier instalments in the series, is still vivid and effective here. From the slurping up of frog guts and leeches by a hungry pregnant lady to the frightfully unnerving antics of Andy - Messenger Robot (Many Other Functions), you’re never left wanting when it comes to the art of fear and unease. Black Thirteen is a perfect Strange Object™ - you always wonder what it can do, and it becomes instantly essential to the story, even before we get to see it.

Author’s Note - I could really write for hours about this novel. I’ve not even made a structure for this post. Just going off the dome here.

The violence comes in small doses in this story, but still makes for fun reading. The final climactic fight with the eponymous Wolves is over fast, and isn’t quite as exciting as some of the combat we’ve had so far on this journey, but it’s still damn cool. And gnarly too - with a beheading and a kid getting turned into, as King puts it, stew. You get sucked in, especially after old man Jamie tells his tale.

Eddie’s gunslinger moments in the back of the bookstore are intense too. He’s a serious action hero, and it’s fucking awesome to see how far he’s come, especially when you remember that he’s effectively a modern man when The Drawing of the Three (1987) came out. I expect exciting and frightening things from him, and from the rest of the Ka-Tet before this is all over.

King is masterful in how he reveals and keeps secrets in this text. A tight-fisted bastard, dragging you along by the scruff of your shirt, but all the while dropping little nuggets of gold along the way. There are so many brilliant reveals and not-quite reveals. I particularly enjoy when we are temporarily left out of Khef, as we aren’t part of the group, and aren’t privy to their secret dealings. It makes for powerful revelations, as well as a satisfying level of frustration that pushes you to read one more chapter per sitting.

I was lucky enough to read the last few hundred pages of this with my girlfriend - her first proper taste of King - and enjoy her reactions in real time (I had been regaling her with plot details from the series for months). She got fully into the swing of things fast, picking up the strange dialogue and turns-of-phrase, and even doing a really excellent robot voice when required. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, read with your partner. Or hell, with your friends and family. Books are sometimes even better read collaboratively. Especially when they’re as SICK as this one. I definitely found the emotional punches hitting harder reading aloud (or hearing them read aloud to me).

At this stage of the post, it’s time for a list of SOME of the things I liked in this story:

• Moving cacti in the desert of despair.

• The Doombot reveal. What the ever-loving fuck?

• The mystery of Nineteen.

• Death frisbee, and the women that wield them.

• The unforgivable emotional disembowelling that was Jericho Hill.

• The anti-racist, pro-women views the story weaves quietly into the fabric of the narrative.

I’ll stop at six, though I was tempted to do 19. Or even 99. But for now, six will do.

As ever, say thank ya for reading,

Long days and pleasant nights,

H.E.

P.S. I know the photos are a bit random, but it felt right to include some gunslingers in this post. God knows I’m not risking looking up anything about The Dark Tower until I put down that last novel.