I just finished it and am interested in other peoples’ take on the book.
What’s your take on it?
I read it but wasn’t very impressed. I did like parts of it (the revisitation of old characters), and I enjoyed speculating on some of the books discovered toward the end, but as a whole, WotC (interesting abbreviation) wasn’t very interesting.
I wonder who else’ll show up.
-David
Haven’t read much of it yet, but the appearance of characters from King’s other books has IMHO really dragged the series down. It’s all too nudge-nudge-wink-wink for me, and breaks the suspension of disbelief I need to immerse myself in a good story by reminding me that I’m reading a book.
Self-cannibalization made for an entertaining short story but King shouldn’t adopt it as a method of writing.
Well, after all, King is a survivor type.
Try this thread (or one of the other 10 or 20 that are in the Cafe). This one is old, but I’m sure DR won’t mind its ressurection.
Mods? Can we get a merge?
Nah. Just let him post there, and this one will sink like a bathysphere.
– Uke, that lazy-assed CS mod
I’m glad to see a new thread on this. I just finished this book yesterday and hunted down the earlier thread. Decided not to resurrect it. I liked some of the book quite a bit, mainly the story line following Jake and Oy. I didn’t mind King including elements from other books either. What did bother me was the A.A. rhetoric. I understand some of it was helpful in understanding the place Callahan was at, but it started getting old after a bit. Some of the rhetoric showed up in places that had nothing to do with Callahan and that’s when I had a hard time staying in the story. FEAR - False Evidence Appearing Real, nice, now can I hear about the Dark Tower and see this story move forward? There were times I felt I was reading the Big Book and not Wolves Of The Calla.
Glad to see this thread revised.
The book was underwhelming. I thought that the plot was largely useless, none of the characters from the small town were memorable, and I was just waiting for the adventure to continue. King is usually really good at small towns, too. If any of you read the Castle Rock books like Needful Things, it shows. But here it was like the town was a throwaway or a device. Either way I wasn’t impressed. The previous four books are absolutely awesome too. Also - I feel rather bad that King is revising the older editions. I heard the first DT is just strewn with flashbacks. I personally liked the existential feel and if it draws readers away so be it because they miss out on the subsequent books.
Not sure about the etiquette on spoilers (it’s been out a few months, but I got it for christmas and finished it not too long ago) but this doesn’t give much away anyway.
When Roland was thumbing through Calvin’s books and reading one containing “familiar names”, who else half-thought that book would start “The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed”? The actual book was almost as interesting, but my idea would’ve meant the Tower was getting really messed up. 
In all, a few good scenes, a bit of backstory, and the ka-tet made as little progress in this book as they did in “Wizard and Glass” (where 99% was them listening to Roland’s childhood story). The ending was a little obvious, but maybe only because I remembered the title of DTVI. It didn’t have quite the impact on me the first three did, but at least this time I don’t have to wait for 5 years for the next one.