So, a book ago, Roland and Co. were left on the path of the ray at the Wizard of Oz created by Man in the black castle. It is logical to assume that in the "Wolves of Calla" the heroes will continue their journey to the "Dark Tower", but it was not there: the residents of the town of Calla Brin Sturgin ask the shooters to help them, so all 760 pages of the novel are devoted to the episode of help, which took about a month of real time.
What is going on in the Calla? Every 23-24 years, "wolves" come to the town, who kidnap half of the children, the children return in a couple of weeks, but already barren vegetables with almost no intelligence, live to thirty kopecks and die. Events, of course, will unfold on the eve of the next appearance of the "wolves".
This is the second novel of the cycle, and even the third, if you count "The Wind ..." King scores well on the way of the shooters to the tower, offering instead branches of the plot or stories about the past. But, admittedly, "The Wolves of Calla" are not as drawn out as "The Sorcerer and the Crystal" due to several things: firstly, at least some answers to some questions finally appear, which the author threw to readers in the first two books, and secondly, the phrase "There are other worlds" dropped by Jake in Strelka, which was recently used by the creators of the painting "Gogol.
The beginning", thirdly, the heroes are trying to solve two more problems simultaneously with the residents of Calla, which add up to separate parallel storylines, and, fourthly, in addition to the continuation of the "Dark Tower", this novel is a kind of continuation of another novel by Stephen King - "Salem's Lot" (aka "The Lot, aka "The Lot of Salem", aka "The Vampires of Salem", aka "Salem's Lot", aka "The Fate of Jerusalem", I met him under different names, but read it as " Salems Lot", when a hundred thousand years ago it was published together with "Longoliers", "Fog" and two stories in one book).
Naturally, King does not forget about the description of life in the Calla itself, so at least it is not boring to read the book, although wolves come only on page 718, which personally made me wonder several times "isn't it time already?!".
Due to several heroes-staples, "The Wolves of Calla" are intertwined with several of King's works at once, but sometimes this attempt at connection looks like an advertising move to promote a new novel, in any case, the page dedicated to the idea of "going back to the past and saving John F. Kennedy", clearly referring to the novel "11/22/63", which, surprisingly, was written eight years after "Wolves", is somehow not particularly organically embedded in the overall plot.
Nevertheless, if you haven't read anything but "TB" from King, then you won't lose anything at the level of meaning: Easter eggs work exclusively for recognition, you can wave your hand at them and go on, then it's not necessary to rush after that to read what you haven't read at all.
Admittedly, the central plot of the "Wolves of the Calla" did not particularly interest me: what the wolves are, who is the traitor here and how it will end was obvious from the very beginning, there were no surprises at all, even King sewed a deception with white threads. That there will be a battle at the end and that the central characters will not die in it is also quite obvious.
But at the same time, the line of wolves turned out to be the only complete one, about rose and Susanna pregnant with someone demonic, one could only say that to be continued. Here, perhaps, is the main bummer of the work: which reader will like it when the book ends at the most interesting place and two of the three plots will not see their denouement within this text?
And yes, it means that at least one more volume will revolve around familiar stories - New York, Rose, Susanna.
332.233 SRY