I'm aware that the crowd here is fairly rabid, so I'll get the obligatory positive points out of the way. I've read almost everything Mr. King has written up 'til the point, and I firmly believe that he will be lauded in retrospect (laudation always seems to occur in retrospect) as one of the preeminent writers of his generation. His prose is artful, his characters believable, and his stories spell-binding, and the Dark Tower is no exception. It is, as he has frequently said, the lynchpin around which his universe revolves.
In recent years, however, I've seen this as becoming more of a crutch than anything else. Mr. King has been inserting Dark Tower-isms into everything he's written as of late, and while I don't necessarily mind this particular conceit, it frequently comes off occasionally as something he simply cannot escape doing (like that legendary gag about how every William Shatner TV appearence includes the word "Klingons" somewhere). "Black House" disappointed me by turning the vibrant and original world of the "Territories" that he and Peter Straub created in "The Talisman" into just another adjunct of the Dark Tower universe. I was hoping, then, that the actual followup to the series would solve the problem a bit, at the very least making all of these tie-ins worthwhile.
"Wolves of the Calla," then, is something of a mixed experience. For the first time, a Dark Tower book feels like it's being written long after previous installments. References to the previous books in the series feel forced, almost of a "hey, remember when *that* happened?" sort; if one follows Mr. King's advice and picks up this book after refreshing on the previous four, many of these references feel unnecesary and oddly out-of-character for our forward-looking troupe. Additionally, I lost count of the times exchanges of obligatory "casual reference to another world meets with confusion which is dispelled with a knowing 'never mind'" occured. King mostly avoids his tendency to "overforeshadow" this time around ("He walked down the street for what would be his last time as a human being with two arms"), which is a nice surprise.
So let's see. Two paragraphs of criticism...wow. The flaws of "Wolves of the Calla" are a shame, because King's written another excellent story. While parallels to the *other* grand epic in the current mindset are usually discouraged with regard to King's tale, I can't help but note that this is the "Two Towers" of his series. "Woves of the Calla" finds the main journey arc on pause as character development and exposition come to the fore, but King's talents at characterization and humanization mean that this is a welcome variation from the previous installments. Some have written justifiably on issues of pacing (the book's final showdown is left to the last fifty pages), but this is besides the point; "Wolves of the Calla" is less about the conflict of the villagers than it is about demonstrating how our protagonists have changed over the course of these five books. And at showing this King succeeds brilliantly.
The verdict? "Wolves of the Calla" is an excellent addition to the ongoing series, and its somewhat bizarre cliffhanger (which is no secret by now, finding King magnifying his joy of author-insertion to some previously-unrecognized levels) is sure to keep people looking forward to the next volume. "Wolves" feels a bit rusty at times--King has become so proficient at oblique references to the Dark Tower series that the book's *direct* references to the mythology feel forced--but at worst it feels like it was perhaps underedited. If you're a fan of the Dark Tower, you won't be disappointed. If you're a casual browser...well, you might want to start at the beginning.
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