Just Finished Rereading Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

I first read Stephen King's novel Wolves of the Calla, the fifth installment of his seven-part The Dark Tower fantasy/sci-fi series, around 2008 if memory serves me correctly.  A pretty long book, it was published in 2003...with the series' last two volumes, also fat, released just the following year.  It shows how an accomplished writer like Stephen King could sit down and get stuff done, including finishing a long, drawn-out series, if he is really serious about it: understand, George R.R. Martin?  Wolves of the Calla, unlike the previous book Wizard and Glass, has several stories running concurrently and hops back and forth between them.  The main story, reflecting the book's title, is set on an alternate Earth and the town of Calla Bryn Sturgis, in which every generation or so is beset by what it calls "wolves" invading it and abducting one of every twin pair of children...twins for some reason predominate there.  The taken children are gone for some months and then return with their intelligence mostly gone, to live out the rest of their short existence as "roon".  One of the townsmen, his own children threatened as the robot Andy has forecast the wolves to be coming again soon, rallies the others to finally stand up and fight the wolves...the "priest", a Father Callahan, helps him by saying that there is a group of gunslingers approaching that may be able to help.  The group, or "ka-tet", is none other than series protagonists Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy.  What happens between them and the townsfolk and the eventual encounter with the so-called "wolves" form the basic skeleton of the book, but there are other important subplots including Father Callahan's story and his origin in an earlier Stephen King novel, Susannah's pregnancy and a new multiple personality, and the heroes' attempts to save a cryptic empty Manhattan lot from being bought by nefarious interests...this last story goes to the heart of their quest to find and rescue the Dark Tower, which holds all of reality together through beams that are being destroyed through the efforts of the villainous Crimson King.  Well written and easy to follow, I enjoyed going through this book once again and look forward to the next one, which I'll start reading as soon as I check it out from my library...