Wolves of the Calla, by Stephen King. My two favorite epics right now are Frank Herbert's Dune, and King's Dark Tower, I have to say; for a myriad of common and differing reasons, but the one that stands out is in how each story immediately affects my way of thinking as I read a part of each. In the case of Dune, it's mostly the segments where Bene Gesserit philosophy and teaching come into play; for example, I was impressed to learn in my thesis research how Herbert actually implemented some of the ideas from his last novel on his ranch in Washington, and it became a well-known model of ecologically-friendly self-suffecient living. In King's novel, it's the philosophy and behavior of the gunslingers that interests me the most, though I can't help but note how very, very similar it is at times to the Bene Gesserit of Dune.

Anyhoo, this novel lived up to the previous novels in the series admirably, natch. While at parts connecting to another of King's novels, interestingly creating an odd sort of shared setting, most of the novel plays out as a variant of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, an oft-covered yarn I was happy to see done-over by King. I still haven't figured out how I feel about the (admittedly quite original, at least in my experience) metafiction aspect King slipped into the story, but it's a good kind of indecisiveness, especially in how (as usual) I was left with goosebumps at the end.

The Hills Have Eyes, with a cute little deformed girl played by the annoying cheerleader in that T-Mobile commercial. Wouldn't it be weird if the hills actually had eyes? Or hidden away in the hills there was just a big eye set into the soil, and as you rounded a corner it would shift to stare at you? How freaky would that be? Anyhoo, while not particularly scary, I thought it was a well put-together film; the pacing kind of threw me a little, but I enjoyed the standard horror movie tables-turned segment.