“I wanted to say goodbye to someone, and have someone say goodbye to me. The goodbyes we speak and the goodbyes we hear are the goodbyes that tell us we’re still alive.”

I think its safe to say that I’m addicted to my Audible account. Driving around all day and meeting with demanding clients is hard, so the best thing I can do is lose myself in a great story and a great narrator. And I think that’s why I keep coming back to these Dark Tower books…the narration is great, the story always delivers something new for me, and it really doesn’t matter if I hear every single detail or not, because I’m stuck on Ka’s wheel and I know I’ll be returning to this story before long.

Wolves of the Calla is still my favorite of these books. I think. I like that it takes place in a certain amount of time, with a specific objective, instead of some of the more sprawling volumes of this story, which require a bit more brain power. This one is easier: good guys come to a good town to help defeat the bad guys and save the children. The end.

Of course, there’s more to it than that. We also have an alternate personality pregnancy…An obsession with the number 19…A fascinating new/old character who warns us of the dangers of vampires and low men…and the idea that maybe this story only exists as a fictional story within a fictional story so that Stephen King can save the world. Like I said, easy.

The more that I read (or, honestly, listen to) this volume of the Dark Tower, the more I appreciate the addition of Pere Donald Callahan. His addition to Roland’s group of questing gunslingers comes at exactly the right time. His heartbreaking story of his cowardly flight from Jerusalem’s Lot, his years of drinking on the road, his work at the shelter, and his eventual death and re-appearance in Mid-World (along with a mysterious black ball) are fascinating and gorgeously presented. This is a man of faith who is questioning his path in life, and who finds exactly what he is looking for when Roland and friends appear in the Calla.

My favorite Callahan bit:

“Your man Jesus seems to me a bit of a son of a bitch when it comes to women,´Roland said. ´Was He ever married?´
The corners of Callahan’s mouth quirked. ´No´ he said, ´but His girlfriend was a whore.´
´Well,´ Roland said, ´that’s a start.´”

But this book isn’t perfect. I love it, but there are a few details that bug me to no end:

• Suddenly everyone is obsessed with the number 19, which we only know because we are constantly told about it. I wish this had been presented a bit more organically. I fell like Uncle Stevie just decided it was important and then hit us over the head with it until we succumbed.
• Roland is always making a “familiar” finger twirling motion, that HE ALWAYS MAKES AND HAS ALWAYS MADE AND MAKES ALL THE TIME. But he never made it before. And the constant references to the fact that he has always done this bug me.
• The pregnancy stuff is really just gross. I don’t need to know about Susannah frolicking in a pond and eating live frogs. I know that’s really nit picking, but I couldn’t get past it.

But there’s so much more that I love in this book. I love the idea of saving the twins, no matter what. And I love the regular people that are willing to stand up to evil, even if it might cost them their lives, to save their town and its children. The action and excitement in this volume are exactly what the series needed after the talky Wizard and Glass.