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Narrated by George Guidall
Stephen KingUnabridged — 25 hours, 49 minutes
Narrated by George Guidall
Stephen KingUnabridged — 25 hours, 49 minutes
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Roland Deschain and his ka-tet are bearing southeast through the forests of Mid-World, the almost timeless landscape that seems to stretch from the wreckage of civility that defined Roland's youth to the crimson chaos that seems the future's only promise. Followers of Stephen King's epic series know Roland well, or as well as this enigmatic hero can be known. They also know the companions who have been drawn to his quest for the Dark Tower: Eddie Dean and his wife, Susannah; Jake Chambers, the boy who has come twice through the doorway of death into Roland's world; and Oy, the Billy Bumbler.
In this long-awaited fifth novel in the saga, 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 towards the hulking darkness of Thunderclap, the source of a terrible affliction that is slowly stealing the community's soul. One of the town's residents is Pere Callahan, a ruined priest who, like Susannah, Eddie and Jake, passed through one of the portals that lead both into and out of Roland's world.
As Father Callahan tells the ka-tet the astonishing story of what happened following his shamed departure from Maine in 1977, his connection to the Dark Tower becomes clear, as does the danger facing a single red rose in a vacant lot off Second Avenue in midtown Manhattan. For Calla Bryn Sturgis, danger gathers in the east like a storm cloud. 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.
The Dark Tower is nothing if not ambitious: it seeks to blend disparate styles of popular narrative, from Arthurian legend to Sergio Leone western to apocalyptic science fiction. More than that, it tries to knit the bulk of King's fiction together into a single universe (or a set of interlocking universes), and on some level even to accommodate all stories, known and unknown, into a master narrative that encompasses the whole of creation. — Andrew O'Hehir
The man can spin a yarn, and a great one at that.
The master of the macabre....[King] is still quite the entertainer
One gets the feeling that this colossal story means a lot to King, that he's telling it because he has to....he's giving "The Dark Tower" everything he's got.
[A] hypnotic blend of suspense and sentimentality...sprawling, eventful tale of demons, monsters, narrow escapes and magic portals.
Wolves of the Calla is one of the strongest entries yet in what will surely be a master storyteller's magnum opus.
"Time is a face on the water," stretching and contorting reality as gunslingers Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and their talking pet "billy-bumbler" Oy continue their quest to prevent the destruction of the Dark Tower and, consequently, save all worlds from Chaos and the Crimson King's evil, red-eyed glare. Roland-the primary hero of King's epic tale, the first volume of which appeared in 1982-and company momentarily fall off the "Path of The Beam" to help the residents of Calla Bryn Sturgis, a farm town. But as Dark Tower fans know, everything follows The Beam, so what looks like a detour may really serve the will of "ka" (destiny). Roland and his posse learn that every 20-odd years the "Wolves" kidnap one child from each set of the Calla's twins, bring them to the Tower and, weeks later, send them back mentally and physically impaired. Meanwhile, back in 1977 New York City (the alternate world of Roland's surrogate son, Jake), bookstore owner Calvin Tower is being threatened by a group of thugs (readers will recognize them from The Drawing of the Three, 1987) to sell them a vacant lot in midtown Manhattan. In the lot stands a rose, or rather the Rose, which is our world's manifestation of the Dark Tower. With the help of the Old Fella (also known to `Salem's Lot readers as Father Callahan), the gunslingers must devise a plan against evil in both worlds. The task, however, is further complicated as Roland and his gang start noticing behavioral changes in wheelchair-bound, recovered schizophrenic Susannah. As the players near the Tower, readers will keep finding exciting ties between the Dark Tower universe and King's other books, with links to Black House, Insomnia, The Eyes of the Dragon, The Stand, `Salem's Lot and Hearts in Atlantis. The high suspense and extensive character development here (especially concerning Jake's coming-of-age), plus the enormity of King's ever-expanding universe, will surely keep his "Constant Readers" in awe. (Nov. 4) Forecast: This fifth installment of the series (after 1998's Wizard and Glass) precedes two more novels about the Dark Tower, reported to be King's last published works before retirement-so expect massive publicity and sky-high sales. Viking has just published a revised edition of the Dark Tower series' first book, The Gunslinger, which could attract new fans to the series, and Scribner recently released Stephen King's The Dark Tower: A Concordance, Volume I, by Robin Furth, to give series readers a thorough refresher course of who's who in books I-IV. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Fans of King's long-running "Dark Tower" series have been waiting over five years for the book to succeed 1997's Wizard and Glass. In Wolves, our band of gunslingers (Roland Deschain; Eddie Dean and his wife, Susannah; Jake Chambers; and the Billy Bumbler, Oy) continue their journey toward the Dark Tower along the Path of the Beam but pause to assist the small farming community of Calla Bryn Sturgis, which falls prey once every generation to the fearsome "wolves," stealing away one child from each pair of twins. While preparing for this fight, Roland's posse finds a door to 1977 Manhattan, where a vacant lot on the corner of Second Avenue fosters a very special red rose. As listeners, we can appreciate the skillful reading by George Guidall, while at the same time mourning the loss of Frank Muller as narrator-Muller's enlivening and energetic readings of the previous volumes of the series continue to resonate. Highly recommended and essential for all collections holding the earlier "Dark Tower" books.-Kristen L. Smith, Loras Coll. Lib., Dubuque, IA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Brilliant in technique and ability...Feed your head! Now dig in, 'cause King's latest in this seven-course banquet...is a lip-smacking, brain-filling repast.
[A] hypnotic blend of suspense and sentimentality...a sprawling, eventful tale of demons, monsters, narrow escapes, and magic portals.
Wolves of the Calla is one of the strongest entries yet in what will surely be a master storyteller's magnum opus.
It works because King, despite his long resume, keeps insisting on surprising himself and, in so doing, surprising us.
"The Dark Tower" is King's masterpiece....Wolves of the Calla succeeds as a standalone work.
The man can spin a yarn, and a great one at that.
One gets the feeling that this colossal story means a lot to King, that he's telling it because he has to....he's giving The Dark Tower everything he's got.
An impressive work of mythic magnitude. May turn out to be Stephen King's greatest literary achievement.
The New York Times Book Review [A] hypnotic blend of suspense and sentimentality...sprawling, eventful tale of demons, monsters, narrow escapes and magic portals.
LOCUS Wolves of the Calla is one of the strongest entries yet in what will surely be a master storyteller's magnum opus.
The San Francisco Chronicle One gets the feeling that this colossal story means a lot to King, that he's telling it because he has to....he's giving "The Dark Tower" everything he's got.
The Philadelphia Inquirer The man can spin a yarn, and a great one at that.
People The master of the macabre....[King] is still quite the entertainer
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution An impressive work of mythic magnitude. May turn out to be Stephen King's greatest literary achievement.
The Kansas City Star It works because King, despite his long resume, keeps insisting on surprising himself and, in so doing, surprising us.
The Denver Post Brilliant in technique and ability...Feed your head! Now dig in, 'cause King's latest in this seven-course banquet...is a lip-smacking, brain-filling repast.
Bangor Daily News "The Dark Tower" is King's masterpiece....Wolves of the Calla succeeds as a standalone work.
Publishers Weekly The high suspense and extensive character development here...plus the enormity of King's ever-expanding universe, will surely keep his "Constant Readers" in awe.
In their continuing journey toward the Dark Tower, Roland and his KA-TET--three twentieth-century New Yorkers, now gunslingers--encounter a peaceful village, Calla Bryn Sturgis, which is suffering attacks on its children by violent robotic wolves. Through sinister understatement, George Guidall conveys the horror of the wolves and the growing tension of the group’s arrival at their destination. Guidall shows startling ineptitude for the protagonist’s Maine accent but invests the Calla people with a language all their own, identifiable and consistent throughout the production. His characterization of series character Susannah Dean somewhat reprises Frank Muller’s excellent portrayal, but, for the most part, Guidall underplays vocal distinctions among the characters. R.P.L. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
| BN ID: | 2940171090975 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 11/04/2003 |
| Series: | Dark Tower Series |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 404,351 |
ONE
Tian was blessed (though few farmers would have used such a word) with three patches: River Field, where his family had grown rice since time out of mind; Roadside Field, where ka-Jaffords had grown sharproot, pumpkin, and corn for those same long years and generations; and Son of a Bitch, a thankless tract which mostly grew rocks, blisters, and busted hopes. Tian wasn't the first Jaffords determined to make something of the twenty acres behind the home place; his Gran-pere, perfectly sane in most other respects, had been convinced there was gold there. Tian's Ma had been equally positive it would grow porin, a spice of great worth. Tian's particular insanity was madrigal. Of course madrigal would grow in Son of a Bitch. Must grow there. He'd gotten hold of a thousand seeds (and a dear penny they had cost him) that were now hidden beneath the floorboards of his bedroom. All that remained before planting next year was to break ground in Son of a Bitch. This chore was easier spoken of than accomplished.
Clan Jaffords was blessed with livestock, including three mules, but a man would be mad to try using a mule out in Son of a Bitch; the beast unlucky enough to draw such duty would likely be lying legbrokeor stung to death by noon of the first day. One of Tian's uncles had almost met this latter fate some years before. He had come running back to the home place, screaming at the top of his lungs and pursued by huge mutie wasps with stingers the size of nails.
They had found the nest (well, Andy had found it; Andy wasn't bothered by wasps no matter how big they were) and burned it with kerosene, but there might be others. And there were holes. Yer-bugger, plenty o' them, and you couldn't burn holes, could you? No. Son of a Bitch sat on what the old folks called "loose ground." It was consequently possessed of almost as many holes as rocks, not to mention at least one cave that puffed out draughts of nasty, decay-smelling air. Who knew what boggarts and speakies might lurk down its dark throat?
And the worst holes weren't out where a man (or a mule) could see them. Not at all, sir, never think so. The leg-breakers were always concealed in innocent-seeming nestles of weeds and high grass. Your mule would step in, there would come a bitter crack like a snapping branch, and then the damned thing would be lying there on the ground, teeth bared, eyes rolling, braying its agony at the sky. Until you put it out of its misery, that was, and stock was valuable in Calla Bryn Sturgis, even stock that wasn't precisely threaded.
Tian therefore plowed with his sister in the traces. No reason not to. Tia was roont, hence good for little else. She was a big girl - the roont ones often grew to prodigious size - and she was willing, Man Jesus love her. The Old Fella had made her a Jesus-tree, what he called a crusie-fix, and she wore it everywhere. It swung back and forth now, thumping against her sweating skin as she pulled.
The plow was attached to her shoulders by a rawhide harness. Behind her, alternately guiding the plow by its old ironwood handles and his sister by the hame-traces, Tian grunted and yanked and pushed when the blade of the plow dropped down and verged on becoming stuck. It was the end of Full Earth but as hot as midsummer here in Son of a Bitch; Tia's overalls were dark and damp and stuck to her long and meaty thighs. Each time Tian tossed his head to get his hair out of his eyes, sweat flew out of the mop in a spray.
"Gee, ye bitch!" he cried. "Yon rock's a plow-breaker, are ye blind?"
Not blind; not deaf, either; just roont. She heaved to the left, and hard. Behind her, Tian stumbled forward with a neck-snapping jerk and barked his shin on another rock, one he hadn't seen and the plow had, for a wonder, missed. As he felt the first warm trickles of blood running down to his ankle, he wondered (and not for the first time) what madness it was that always got the Jaffordses out here. In his deepest heart he had an idea that madrigal would sow no more than the porin had before it, although you could grow devil-grass; yar, he could've bloomed all twenty acres with that shit, had he wanted. The trick was to keep it out, and it was always New Earth's first chore. It -
The plow rocked to the right and then jerked forward, almost pulling his arms out of their sockets. "Arr!" he cried. "Go easy, girl! I can't grow em back if you pull em out, can I?"
Tia turned her broad, sweaty, empty face up to a sky full of low-hanging clouds and honked laughter. Man Jesus, but she even sounded like a donkey. Yet it was laughter, human laughter. Tian wondered, as he sometimes couldn't help doing, if that laughter meant anything. Did she understand some of what he was saying, or did she only respond to his tone of voice? Did any of the roont ones -
"Good day, sai," said a loud and almost completely toneless voice from behind him. The owner of the voice ignored Tian's scream of surprise. "Pleasant days, and may they be long upon the earth. I am here from a goodish wander and at your service."
Tian whirled around, saw Andy standing there - all seven feet of him - and was then almost jerked flat as his sister took another of her large lurching steps forward. The plow's hame-traces were pulled from his hands and flew around his throat with an audible snap. Tia, unaware of this potential disaster, took another sturdy step forward. When she did, Tian's wind was cut off. He gave a whooping, gagging gasp and clawed at the straps. All of this Andy watched with his usual large and meaningless smile.
Tia jerked forward again and Tian was pulled off his feet. He landed on a rock that dug savagely into the cleft of his buttocks, but at least he could breathe again. For the moment, anyway. Damned unlucky field! Always had been! Always would be!
Tian snatched hold of the leather strap before it could pull tight around his throat again and yelled, "Hold, ye bitch! Whoa up if you don't want me to twist yer great and useless tits right off the front of yer!"
Tia halted agreeably enough and looked back to see what was what. Her smile broadened. She lifted one heavily muscled arm - it glowed with sweat - and pointed. "Andy!" she said. "Andy's come!"
"I ain't blind," Tian said and got to his feet, rubbing his bottom. Was that part of him also bleeding? Good Man Jesus, he had an idea it was.
"Good day, sai," Andy said to her, and tapped his metal throat three times with his three metal fingers. "Long days and pleasant nights."
Although Tia had surely heard the standard response to this - And may you have twice the number - a thousand times or more, all she could do was once more raise her broad idiot's face to the sky and honk her donkey laugh. Tian felt a surprising moment of pain, not in his arms or throat or outraged ass but in his heart. He vaguely remembered her as a little girl: as pretty and quick as a dragonfly, as smart as ever you could wish. Then -
But before he could finish the thought, a premonition came. He felt a sinking in his heart. The news would come while I'm out here, he thought. Out in this godforsaken patch where nothing is well and all luck is bad. It was time, wasn't it? Overtime.
"Andy," he said.
"Yes!" Andy said, smiling. "Andy, your friend! Back from a goodish wander and at your service. Would you like your horoscope, sai Tian? It is Full Earth. The moon is red, what is called the Huntress Moon in Mid-World that was. A friend will call! Business affairs prosper! You will have two ideas, one good and one bad -"
"The bad one was coming out here to turn this field," Tian said. "Never mind my goddam horoscope, Andy. Why are you here?"
Andy's smile probably could not become troubled - he was a robot, after all, the last one in Calla Bryn Sturgis or for miles and wheels around - but to Tian it seemed to grow troubled, just the same. The robot looked like a young child's stick-figure of an adult, impossibly tall and impossibly thin. His legs and arms were silvery. His head was a stainless-steel barrel with electric eyes. His body, no more than a cylinder, was gold. Stamped in the middle - what would have been a man's chest - was this legend:
NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD. in association with LaMERK INDUSTRIES presents
ANDY
Design: MESSENGER (Many Other Functions) Serial # DNF-44821-V63
Why or how this silly thing had survived when all the rest of the robots were gone - gone for generations - Tian neither knew nor cared. You were apt to see him anywhere in the Calla (he would not venture beyond its borders) striding on his impossibly thin silver legs, looking everywhere, occasionally clicking to himself as he stored (or perhaps purged - who knew?) information. He sang songs, passed on gossip and rumor from one end of 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 in the village that they meant little.
He had one other function, however, and that meant much.
"Why are ye here, ye bag of bolts and beams? Answer me! Is it the Wolves? Are they coming from Thunderclap?"
Tian stood there looking up into Andy's stupid smiling metal face, the sweat growing cold on his skin, praying with all his might that the foolish thing would say no, then offer to tell his horoscope again, or perhaps to sing "The Green Corn A-Dayo," all twenty or thirty verses.
But all Andy said, still smiling, was: "Yes, sai."
"Christ and the Man Jesus," Tian said (he'd gotten an idea from the Old Fella that those were two names for the same thing, but had never bothered pursuing the question). "How long?"
"One moon of days before they arrive," Andy replied, still smiling.
"From full to full?"
"Close enough, sai."
Thirty days, then, give or take one. Thirty days to the Wolves. And there was no sense hoping Andy was wrong. No one kenned how the robot could know they were coming out of Thunderclap so far in advance of their arrival, but he did know. And he was never wrong.
"Fuck you for your bad news!" Tian cried, and was furious at the waver he heard in his own voice. "What use are you?"
"I'm sorry that the news is bad," Andy said. His guts clicked audibly, his eyes flashed a brighter blue, and he took a step backward. "Would you not like me to tell your horoscope? This is the end of Full Earth, a time particularly propitious for finishing old business and meeting new people -"
"And fuck your false prophecy, too!" Tian bent, picked up a clod of earth, and threw it at the robot. A pebble buried in the clod clanged off Andy's metal hide. Tia gasped, then began to cry. Andy backed off another step, his shadow trailing out long in Son of a Bitch field. But his hateful, stupid smile remained.
"What about a song? I have learned an amusing one from the Manni far north of town; it is called 'In Time of Loss, Make God Your Boss.'" From somewhere deep in Andy's guts came the wavering honk of a pitch-pipe, followed by a ripple of piano keys. "It goes -"
Sweat rolling down his cheeks and sticking his itchy balls to his thighs. The stink-smell of his own foolish obsession. Tia blatting her stupid face at the sky. And this idiotic, bad-news-bearing robot getting ready to sing him some sort of Manni hymn.
"Be quiet, Andy." He spoke reasonably enough, but through clamped teeth.
"Sai," the robot agreed, then fell mercifully silent.
Tian went to his bawling sister, put his arm around her, smelled the large (but not entirely unpleasant) smell of her. No obsession there, just the smell of work and obedience. He sighed, then began to stroke her trembling arm.
"Quit it, ye great bawling cunt," he said. The words might have been ugly but the tone was kind in the extreme, and it was tone she responded to. She began to quiet. Her brother stood with the flare of her hip pushing into him just below his ribcage (she was a full foot taller), and any passing stranger would likely have stopped to look at them, amazed by the similarity of face and the great dissimilarity of size. The resemblance, at least, was honestly come by: they were twins.
He soothed his sister with a mixture of endearments and profanities - in the years since she had come back roont from the east, the two modes of expression were much the same to Tian Jaffords - and at last she ceased her weeping. And when a rustie flew across the sky, doing loops and giving out the usual series of ugly blats, she pointed and laughed.
A feeling was rising in Tian, one so foreign to his nature that he didn't even recognize it. "Isn't right," he said. "Nossir. By the Man Jesus and all the gods that be, it isn't." He looked to the east, where the hills rolled away into a rising membranous darkness that might have been clouds but wasn't. It was the edge of Thunderclap.
"Isn't right what they do to us."
"Sure you wouldn't like to hear your horoscope, sai? I see bright coins and a beautiful dark lady."
"The dark ladies will have to do without me," Tian said, and began pulling the harness off his sister's broad shoulders. "I'm married, as I'm sure ye very well know."
"Many a married man has had his jilly," Andy observed. To Tian he sounded almost smug.
"Not those who love their wives." Tian shouldered the harness (he'd made it himself, there being a marked shortage of tack for human beings in most livery barns) and turned toward the home place. "And not farmers, in any case. Show me a farmer who can afford a jilly and I'll kiss your shiny ass. Garn, Tia. Lift em up and put em down."
"Home place?" she asked.
"That's right."
"Lunch at home place?" She looked at him in a muddled, hopeful way. "Taters?" A pause. "Gravy?"
"Shore," Tian said. "Why the hell not?"
Tia let out a whoop and began running toward the house. There was something almost awe-inspiring about her when she ran. As their father had once observed, not long before the fall that carried him off, "Bright or dim, that's a lot of meat in motion."
Tian walked slowly after her, head down, watching for the holes which his sister seemed to avoid without even looking, as if some deep part of her had mapped the location of each one. That strange new feeling kept growing and growing. He knew about anger - any farmer who'd ever lost cows to the milk-sick or watched a summer hailstorm beat his corn flat knew plenty about that - but this was deeper. This was rage, and it was a new thing. He walked slowly, head down, fists clenched.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Dark Tower V by Stephen King Copyright © 2005 by Stephen King. Excerpted by permission.
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