SPOILERS BELOW
The back-half of the quest begins with a riff on a classic western. Yeah, King is pretty upfront and blatant about this book, the fifth in the series, being a post-apocalyptic sci-fi version of The Magnificent Seven. But I don't begrudge him. The whole series has been built on Western archetypes and iconography. Plus, enough new plot threads are introduced and spread throughout to build a much richer experience as the Tower itself starts to come into view...
Okay, so maybe the Tower hasn't shown up literally, in the narrative, just yet. But by the time Wolves of the Calla ends, we readers do really have a sense that the quest's end is coming up. I mentioned last time that Wizard and Glass felt like a midpoint in the series. Like the first half of the story had come to a close, especially in regards to our main character Roland's emotional arc. That made sense as that was the last Dark Tower book for seven years, and it was in between that time that Stephen King was almost fatally struck by a car. So perhaps it was the accident that spurred the decision or perhaps it was always the plan, but Wolves of the Calla continues this feeling. Excepting that this feels like the beginning of the second half of the story. The characters, the stakes, and the world have all been established. Time for things to get complicated. I must commend King on that account, because even with the time between books and recovering from his accident, the book picks up the beat like there was no hiatus at all.
It's the introduction of many new plot threads that really gives this feeling of hitting the second half. Wizard and Glass resolved most of the initial drama amongst our ka-tet and plot lines (the mystery of Roland's past, the gathering of the ka-tet, finding the path of the Beam, crossing out of Mid-World) leaving only the over-arching plot thread of the Quest for the Tower. It makes sense King would throw a wrench into things at this point. But he would have done that anyway just to keep things interesting. It's the fact that the new plot threads & complications arise from previously mentioned events and seemingly unconnected or unimportant story points that gives the sense of nearing completion. We're getting closer to the Tower, so everything's starting to tie together.
That's all interesting structurally, of course, but what makes it engaging to read is how King brings it back to the characters. Each of the ka-tet gets their own little mini-story this outing, each dealing with one of the new complications in the Quest. Susannah's is probably the biggest though, and the one that will have the biggest effect on the following books I think. After raping an invisible demon back in The Waste Lands (long story), she's gotten pregnant with a possible demon baby and has developed another split personality threatening to take over her body. I was disappointed with how easily King resolved the matter of Susannah's split personality in The Drawing of the Three, but this development seems promising and will hopefully make up for some of that lost potential. I am a bit wary of giving the one female character in the main cast a storyline focused on pregnancy, especially since Susannah hasn't been defined by her femininity so far, but this thread leads into the book's cliffhanger so I'll wait until it's resolved for final judgement.
But what about the main plot of the book, where the ka-tet have to protect a small farm town from a group of armored marauders in wolf masks? It's interesting enough and helped out by King flexing his horror chops again to give the titular wolves a real aura of menace and dread. What I really enjoyed about it though was that it finally gave me what I've been asking for in terms of villains, if indirectly. Just having the Wolves as an actual, physical threat for the ka-tet to face off against is nice but King makes no bones about them being servants of greater threats just beyond the horizon. He also drops hints about tons of other villains. The Crimson King, chief of the Tower's infection, comes to the forefront and his lieutenants make themselves known through the ka-tet's newest member, Father Callahan from King's earlier novel 'Salem's Lot. The Man in Black puts in another appearance as well, getting explicitly tied to the Crimson King. That the villains are coming out of the shadows and acting against our heroes directly is another thing that makes it feel like we've reached the second half of the story.
Wolves of the Calla also follows on from Wizard and Glass in not having shit pacing. King cuts it close, but the ending doesn't feel rushed and the readers aren't force-fed a ton of new information in the last fifteen pages. The main action revolving around the wolves is settled excellently after King's usual effective build-up, and all the plot lines that will carry over into the next book are given the attention they're needed. By King's own admission in the introduction to the revised Gunslinger, we have his near-death experience to thank for this. After almost getting killed, he became aware of how the Dark Tower series needed to be finished before he passed on and set out to do just that. Meaning that unlike the first four books, which were written over the course of decades in fits and bursts, these last three were written closer together and King was able to plan them out a little more thoroughly. That planning means he has a better grasp of how long to linger on something and how much focus he should give it knowing it will come up later. I hate to thank near manslaughter for this, but it's just another tick on the series overall climb in quality.
My only worry going forward has to do with Father Callahan and the big reveal at the cliffhanger. Last warning, here comes the spoiler. *SPOILER* Specifically, it has to do with the fact that Callahan finds a copy of 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King, the book that he is a character from, brought over from Jake, Eddie, & Susannah's New York *END SPOILER*. On the one hand, I'm okay with this. The Multiverse has been a background element of the series since almost the beginning so multiple realities, including ones that would be fiction in others, would not be out of place. I've read Grant Morrison comics, this is a concept I'm both familiar and comfortable with. My concern is the choice of fiction. Turning yourself or at least your work into a part of the story you're telling is a risky gambit. Sometimes it can be used to raise interesting commentary and critique your own work and medium. Again, Grant Morrison. But more often it leads into plodding meta observations and at worst will turn into an ouroboros of head in ass. Much like Susannah's baby, this is a wait and see, but with far more potential to go wrong.
Come back next time to see if the whole story and quest implodes right before the end.
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