The Stand

Good, but not as good as I hoped it would be. (I'd give it 3.5 stars if that were an option.) King does a remarkable job of handling so many characters spread out all over the US, but I was bothered by the fact that sometimes the narration is very much focused on the thoughts of one characters only to be interrupted by an outside narrative voice (which I would call King's voice, even though that wouldn't be entirely correct.) And some of the dialogue–I'm not sure if it's dated or just plain bad–but I had trouble believing it, which is disappointing considering the effort King put into realizing his characters. The parts that dealt with the spread of the superflu were great: scary with a nix mix of the major characters and smaller vignettes showing the effects elsewhere.