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The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
Audiobook25 hours

The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla

Written by Stephen King

Narrated by George Guidall

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

()

About this audiobook

Wolves of the Calla is the thrilling fifth book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series—a unique bestselling epic fantasy quest inspired many years ago by The Lord of the Rings.

In the extraordinary fifth novel in Stephen King’s remarkable fantasy epic, Roland Deschain and his ka-tet are bearing southeast through the forests of Mid-World. Their path takes them to the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis, a tranquil valley community of farmers and ranchers on Mid-World’s borderlands.

Beyond the town, the rocky ground rises toward the hulking darkness of Thunderclap, the source of a terrible affliction that is slowly stealing the community’s soul. The Wolves of Thunderclap and their unspeakable depredation are coming. To resist them is to risk all, but these are odds the gunslingers are used to, and they can give the Calla-folken both courage and cunning. Their guns, however, will not be enough.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 4, 2003
ISBN9780743561693
Author

Stephen King

Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes the short story collection You Like It Darker, Holly, Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. 

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Reviews for The Dark Tower V

Rating: 4.654919236417034 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

681 ratings84 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I'll admit I never thought the Dark Tower Series would turn into vampire book, I still have no idea where this story is going.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A beautiful and heart pounding addition to the series. The audio was different due to a different reader but the feeling was still captured and after a few chapters it felt seamless. I recommend if you've listened to the other books to make sure to listen to the afterword by Mr. King.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Easily my favorite of the series! I’m on my 2nd journey to the Tower and reading along with the audiobook adds so much more depth. Didn’t realize how much I missed the first time!

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Great story, but the audio kept cutting out, while the counter kept going, making you lose bits and pieces…

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Loved the book but the recording kept skipping around! Very difficult

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It wasn’t as good as the other books. And I wasn’t wowed by the new narrator like I was with Frank Mueller.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I adore this book, my review is for the audio. It keeps jumping full 30 min blocks at random intervals.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    incredible

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very slow but rewarding. Perhaps the best (so far) action scenes in the series.Perhaps the most straight-forward of the 8 books.Callahan's tales save the midsection from pure boredom.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I can't believe that I didn't finish this years ago! Wolves of the Calla was gripping and mesmerizing and frickin' awesome. I love Stephen King's use of his own previous works in the Dark Tower series. His stories within stories are fascinating and entertaining. Stephen King is a true master of the word and I hope he never stops.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This opinion could be a sin against the King universe, but I could not escape Calla Bryn Sturgis fast enough.

    There is no question of Stephen King's genius. His creation of an older language, memorable characters, tangible places. But Wolves of the Calla is a dense tome with too many events, too much plot, both in which go basically nowhere. You find yourself with too many competing emotions, mostly frustration and fleeting awe.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A vast improvement over volumes 3 and 4. Volume 4 was so bad that I considered abandoning the series. If volume 5 hadn't been bookcrossed to me I would have done. My advice to other readers would be to skip volume 4. Everything you need to know is summed up in the argument at the beginning of volume 5.There are still problems with the series. Wolves is a strange mixture of good and bad writing and the whole thing is bloated, baggy, very silly, far longer that it needs to be and rather overdone in places.That said, there are some good sequences and spine-chills. He also picks up on some of the themes we haven't really seen since volume 2. The tower is still there: a big black cock that everyone seems to be looking for, and to that is added the rose which seems to represent the vagina. Impotence shifts to infertility and there's a lot going on with the theme of families and children. I get the impression for the first time that King knows where he's going and I have some faith that it won't be too dire.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Come-come-commala, I really liked "Wolves of the Calla"! Say thankee big-big Mr. King! The ka-tet defends a town, adds a new member, and hears a tale that is from another King novel! The Sisters of Oriza use a forespecial weapon, Black Thirteen is here, and Roland dances! It's a heck of a tale! And to be continued in Part 6 (or is it 19)? "Someone saved, someone saved, someone saved my life tonight." And for that, I say thankee!

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Long and drawn out. The weakest book in the series so far. There were quite a few good moments, and the story was moved forward a bit but there was a real lack of impetus. After the digression into back-story of the previous volume, I had hoped Wolves of the Calla might provide more progress toward the tower. Instead, we have a very long setup to the final confrontation with the wolves. Along the way, Roland's ka-tet undergoes some changes.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    As I get deeper and deeper into the Dark Tower, I wonder what will happen--will they prevail? I know there are more books in the series, but that hardly means that the characters I have come to know will be there all standing and unscathed at the end.

    Great read!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The fifth installment in the Dark Tower series is full of cross-references to other King works that I love, further unifying the Stephen King universe, which even in this one novel has an infinite number of connected worlds. It begins by bringing in a familiar character from our world: Father Callahan of ?Salem?s Lot, who after that fateful encounter with vampires began to walk the hidden roads of America, finally winding up in a rice-growing village in Roland?s world. There Roland and crew meet him and make him a part of their ka-tet. Father Callahan also has another piece of the Wizard?s Glass: the black eye of the Crimson King himself, which our heroes can use to get back to New York to do important things.There?s a lot going on in this long novel. We learn more of the rose first glimpsed by Jake in The Wastelands (Volume III) and find out what kind of danger it is in. There is news of the Beams and the Breakers, and even the Low Men make an appearance. There is the small matter of Susannah?s demon pregnancy. And there is a spaghetti Western-style plot in which Roland and the others have to save a town from marauding wolves who steal one-half of all the town?s twins (and the kids are mostly twins), only to return them retarded and doomed ? ?roont,? as the townsfolk of the Calla say.The cross-references abound, and King even manages to gleefully introduce elements from Marvel comics, Star Wars and the Harry Potter series. But the climactic reference in thrillingly audacious, even for King. I won?t give it away; suffice it to say, you won?t be able to wait to start reading Part 6.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There are a lot of things that are great about the Dark Tower series, and a lot of things that are not so great, and some things that are downright awful. One of the bad things is that King wrote it over a very long period of time, beginning in the 70?s and ending in 2004. It?s impossible for an iteration late in a series to be anything like an iteration early in a series, and it?s usually for the worse. Example: the first Die Hard movie and the fourth Die Hard movie, the first Indiana Jones movie and the fourth Indiana Jones movie, and so on. With Wolves of the Calla, I?m entering the stretch of the series that King wrote in a frenzy after a near-fatal car accident in 2001.Fortunately it?s not as bad as it could have been, although it has its fair share of bullshit. The basic premise for the novel is excellent: Roland and his gunslingers come across a town called Calla Bryn Sturgis, located at the very edge of the world, near the roiling darkness of ?Thunderclap,? where evil things reside. The Calla is also peculiar in that nearly every human birth is that of twins. Every generation or so, masked riders known as Wolves emerge from Thunderclap, ride into town wielding futuristic weapons that make them nigh invincible, and abduct one child from every set of twins below puberty age. A few days later the children are sent back across the desert from Thunderclap on flatbeds behind an unmanned train, crying and sunburnt, and rendered mental retards by whatever the Wolves did to them ? they have become what the folks of the Calla call ?roont.? As they age, they grow to a huge size, disfigured and in pain, and generally die young.The way King gradually introduces this concept is excellent, and while it leads to a fairly predictable story (the townsfolk recruit the gunslingers to protect them against an upcoming attack by the Wolves, and they obviously prevail) there?s enough interesting stuff along the way to make it enjoyable. As well as roont children and the mystery of the Wolves themselves, the robots of Roland?s world ? always its most fascinating aspect ? are represented in the Calla by Andy, a spindly metal robot whose North Central Positronics chest-plate reads ?Design: Messenger (Many Other Functions).? Andy is a relic of more advanced times who acts as a sort of servant around the village: He sang songs, passed on gossip and rumour from one end of the town to the other ? a tireless walker was Andy the Messenger Robot ? and seemed to enjoy the giving of horoscopes above all things, although there was general agreement that they meant little. He had one other function, however, and that meant much.That other function is to warn the townsfolk a month in advance before each attack of the Wolves. He seems to be a cheerful and stupid thing to the townsfolk, and a convenient plot device for the author, but in actual fact he is much more than that, and is probably the novel?s strongest element ? particularly his conversations and encounters with Eddie. ?Tell me about the Wolves,? Eddie said. ?What would you know, sai Eddie?? ?Where they come from, for a start. The place where they feel they can put their feet up and fart right out loud. Who they work for. Why they take the kids. And why the ones they take come back ruined.? Then another question struck him. Perhaps the most obvious. ?Also, how do you know when they?re coming?? Clicks from inside Andy. A lot of them this time; maybe a full minute?s worth? ?What?s your password, sai Eddie?? ?Huh?? ?Password. You have ten seconds. Nine? eight?seven?? Eddie thought of spy movies he?d seen. ?You mean I say something like ?The roses are blooming in Cairo? and you say ?Only in Mr. Wilson?s garden? and then I say-? ?Incorrect password, sai Eddie? two? one? zero.? From within Andy came a low thudding sound which Eddie found singularly unpleasant. It sounded like the blade of a sharp cleaver passing through meat and into the wood of the chopping block beneath. ?You may retry once,? said the cold voice. It bore a resemblance to the one that had asked Eddie if he would like his horoscope told, but that was the best you could call it ? a resemblance. ?Would you retry, Eddie of New York?? Eddie thought fast. ?No,? he said, ?that?s all right. That info?s restricted, huh?? Several clicks. Then: ?Restricted: confined, kept within certain set limits, as information in a given document or q-disc; limited to those authorised to use that information; those authorised announce themselves by giving the password.? Another pause to think and then Andy said, ?Yes, Eddie. That info?s restricted.?Another enjoyable part of the book was the ?Priest?s Tale? (deja vu, since I just read Hyperion by Dan Simmons), the story of Father Callahan, a character from King?s early novel Salem?s Lot (which I haven?t read) who has somehow found himself in Roland?s world. After a quick recap of his unfortunate experience with vampires in Salem?s Lot, Callahan regales the gunslingers with an extensive tale of what happened after he fled: his time killing vampires in New York, realising they were hunting him, discovering his ability to travel through alternate versions of America, being hunted by the ?low men? and eventually the event that brought him to the Calla. It?s pretty good, and probably deserved its own novel rather than being shoehorned into Wolves of the Calla.But now? the problems. What I love about the Dark Tower series is its fictional world: a post-apocalyptic land of ruined cities, ancient robots, machinery incongruously stamped with brands from our own world, demon circles and radioactive mutants and artificial intelligences run amok. It?s a great blend of science fiction and fantasy, and endlessly fascinating.What Stephen King loves about the Dark Tower series is quite different: rambling cosmology, fate, destiny, signs and portents, visions and hallucinations, Susannah?s irritating split personalities, representations of chaos and order, good and evil, a whole bunch of stuff I couldn?t give a flying fuck about and find very irritating to read. There?s a section early in the book where the characters (always certain that the mystical force of ka is driving their quest) are discussing the importance of the number 19 in all the omens they?ve been seeing. King then expects us to get excited about the eeeerie fact that many of the supporting characters have names with exactly nineteen letters! Coincidence? Fate? Or the fact that King himself is the one naming the goddamn characters?There?s also a few annoying interdimensional expeditions to New York City, where a rose that sits in a vacant lot ? somehow representing or containing the Dark Tower ? is under threat from developers, and Roland?s posse needs to protect it through exciting real estate acquisition adventure. This rose has pissed me off ever since it was introduced in The Wastelands. Unfortunately, like most things about the Dark Tower series that piss me off, it?s apparently pivotal to the story and shows no sign of going away.The last negative mark I want to jot down is the size of this book. King used to write very tight novels, like, say, The Gunslinger. These days they?re hundreds and hundreds of pages long, and the thing is, they don?t need to be. They?re not epic, just bloated. A good deal of Wolves of the Calla involves the characters sitting around testing weapons, talking to the townsfolk, and preparing for the attack itself (which is over in less than 50 pages). There?s a lot of redundancy, which Wizard and Glass suffered from quite a bit too. His writing style has gone from being sparse and concise, to dripping with detail and focusing on every character?s most inconsequential thoughts. It?s a real shame.Overall, Wolves of the Calla is appropriately representative of the Dark Tower series itself: it does a lot of things wrong, but there?s enough intriguing stuff to keep you reading. Unfortunately, I got the feeling towards the end of this book that the next installment will involve a lot more mystical destiny bullshit and a lot less of Roland?s awesome world. Including but not limited to an uber-meta meeting between Roland and Stephen King himself, which, if it really comes to pass, may cause me actual physical pain.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It feels more like a mere bridge between entries in the series than a solid novel, but King uses the downtime to full effect, allowing an opportunity for the reader to become even more familiar with the inner workings of his epic, dark fantasy characters and their world(s).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not the best of this series, but still very good. The series itself is not to be missed!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of the great books in the Dark Tower series. It continues the adventure of Roland and company, expanding on their characters greatly. This is the beginning of seeing into the multiple realms of the tower, in particular with the introduction of Father Callahan and the mingling of Stephen King's previous work. The book is quite long and it is a whole lot of lead up to a really short climax, but then it is only the 5th of 7 books in the series. So this is still just lead up to the climax of the series as whole. But it is definitely a great read!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Highly entertaining, could have used editing.
    I liked the casual "name dropping" of Pop culture at the time it was written :)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Dragged on a bit in the middle of the book, but excellently written. Starting the sixth in the series tonight.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I like the series but this is far from my favorite volume.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Loved the tie in from 'Salem's Lot and the continued adventures of ka-tet 19. I thought the epilogue where they start talking about Stephen King and Callahan being possibly fictional was a bit strange, but can't wait to press on in this amazing series.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent work. I have enjoyed all five so far and forward to the last two.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great reading and amazing story. Cannot wait until the next one.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great book. Can't wait to get to the next one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Five books in and I'm still hooked. At this point, I want to get to the Dark Tower as badly as Roland does. So at first I was a little frustrated with the direction of "Wolves of the Calla." It felt like a rabbit trail at first. But the deeper we go in, the more clues we get about the world Roland lives in. And by the end of the book, the spark of suspicion that I'd been having burst to full flames with one whopper of a clue.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    YOOOOO!! READ THIS SERIES.
    You know, I like Roland, but goddamn is the man a bit slow. I know, I know. Ka. Kaka I say, because you can still learn the ways you're gonna be skinned.

    But about the book as a whole, The Wolves of the Calla has been a WONDERFUL read. I am reinvested, after the almost-to-slow drag of the 4th installment, and I am itching to read the 6th installment. And truly, the other characters who are in the novel--but no spoilers--are just...I love them. They may fit archetypes (this whole business with Ka makes me giggle sometimes, as if King is using it as an excuse to make characters behave this way or that, but on the whole it is very subtle), but there is real character growth and development as well. And this installment, of course, has more excitement than the previous installment, although it takes as long to build up. I am starting to get anxious, too, because the incidents are getting more complex as the group gets closer to the 'top level'.

    I am definitely looking forward to the next installment.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Such an amazing book, I never knew King could write such great action scenes but the final battle kept me on the edge of my seat!