What did you think about this? I like it and The Dark Half the

>>9589768

I really love reading about Captain Trips laying waste to the world. Even after, the novel is pretty entertaining.

King is a faggot for using chocolate smudges from a Payday bar as a plot device, when Paydays aren't fucking chocolate.

>>9589768
Worth reading. It would have been the pinacle of post apocalypse fiction if it were not for the ending .

>>9589789
King can't write an ending to save his life.

That said it was pretty enjoyable.

>>9589768
I really didn't like it. Some of the characters were interesting but it felt like such a slog. The plot didn't even seem to start until page 200 (when I stopped).

I read the uncut version, which turned out to be a mistake because all it gave me was an extra 300 pages of people cleaning up bodies and trying to turn the power back on.

Still, the vast majority of it was good but the ending was one of the most anticlimactic things I have ever read. It's like an ending that they would have written if The Stand was a tv show or movie and they didn't have the budget for an ending battle.

>>9589768
I like the first half. His characters somehow become less realized as the story goes on.

>>9589768
>What did you think about this?
Too
Damn
Long

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Swan Song is better IMO.

There's 300-500 pages worth of really great material in there, and every word of it is in the right order too.

Unfortunately my copy was 1325 pages.

What pisses me off is the number of redundant perspectives. Having tonnes of viewpoint characters makes total sense if the story takes place in many different areas and the multiple perspectives let us see what's going across the bigger picture, but this book will have like 10 or 11 viewpoint characters living in the same small town, but gives them all entire chapters.

This not only leads to information getting repeated, it leads to King wasting time writing about the feelings and thoughts and daily chores of characters that are not important, or are only important with respect to how they relate to another character, meaning we should just be able to learn what's going on with them in that other character's chapter. It makes sense to have Harold chapters, they're great and his arc is really important to the book, and as boring as Stu is he does have some narrative purpouse, but Frannie is only important with respect to the effect she has on those two actually important characters. She doesn't need her own viewpoint chapters.

Imagine how much better it would be if it was streamlined and the only viewpoint characters were Larry, Harold, and Lloyd, and Trashcan man. Across the whole story, that's all you get. Reduce focus on almost every character not related closely to these. Make the book maybe 500 pages.

Between those 4 you not only get to see every event that matters, but you cover every perspective relevant to the themes of the book. The best thing about the Stand is that it manages to evoke the Old Testement in a modern setting. It made judaic and early Christian moral logic and cosmology feel startlingly relevant and potent and real in the present day. The Stand takes place in a world with a wrathful God who has a plan for you, and your failure or success as a person is contingent on you doing right by him, doing his work because you know it will leave the world better place and help defeat the kind of pure, primal evil that you used to naively think was a matter of primitive myth, but you can fall to that evil with so much ease, while fighting it is such a sacrifice.

Harold is someone who fights with the decision of siding with god and the forces of good or those of evil, and falls.

Lloyd is someone who does the same thing, but with no fight.

Larry is someone who wants to do right, but he needs to become stronger and a better man to do it, and he's laden with dread that he'll fail. He's tempted by the easy option, by temptation, but unlike Harold he manages to reject it and do what has to be done.

And Trashcan Man is just the wretched, one of those who is so lost and warped and broken that his fall doesn't even feel like a fall, it's like he's found the messiah. Flagg iis the prince of the outcasts and the lost and Trashcan man is exactly the kind of person he would most appeal to.

>>9592197
Incredible post. I wonder if you could read just those characters' chapters and the novel would still make sense, or if it would need some reworking to fit.

Found some articles on post apocalypse fiction if anyone is interested

End of the World Literature – Post-Apocalyptic Fiction on AbeBooks
https://www.abebooks.com/books/apocalypse-end-world-armageddon/post-apocalyptic-fiction.shtml

60 Years Of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction: A Chronological Curriculum Of The Ultimate Catastrophe | Science 2.0
http://www.science20.com/adaptive_complexity/60_years_postapocalyptic_fiction_chronological_curriculum_ultimate_catastrophe

The Post-Apocalyptic Present | Public Books
http://www.publicbooks.org/the-post-apocalyptic-present/

Does Post-Apocalyptic Literature Have A (Non-Dystopian) Future? : NPR
http://www.npr.org/2015/05/02/402852849/does-post-apocalyptic-literature-have-a-non-dystopian-future

Writing the end of the world: Charting trends in apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction | The Economist
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2017/04/writing-end-world

>>9589768
I read an old library copy with all the font really faded except the A, so I thought it was just called A until I felt the raised letters.

It was good for about the first 2/3, and then he did the usual thing where he mucked up the ending.

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>>9592197
>1325 pages
The absolute madman

I remember the early days of /lit/ when Stephen King would post here

I wish I could time-merge early /lit/ with modern /lit/ so modern /lit/ could criticize Stephen King to his face.

I think this is the only book I stopped reading because it was so fucking boring and strung out. Stopped somewhere where the main guy was wandering for like 100 pages.

I did like the doomed lady in the city though.

>>9596005
What did he post about?

>>9592063
That book somehow manages to be even campier and more ridiculous than The Stand.

>>9596176
he almost entirely just wanted to talk about himself and his books, if you asked him about a bad book he wrote he shrugged it off if you asked him about another book he would either tell you that
>you don't understand it
>he likes it and talks about how awesome he was writing it
>suggestive shilling ie. "you could read more of my books"

once somebody got him into an oldschool trolly 4chan autismo fest but it wasn't very fun because King was in the right and the troll was just a shithead instead of making an effective point

>>9596292
>campier and more ridiculous than The Stand
So is it any good? I'm usually down for something a little campy/pulpy.

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>>9589768
First half is vapid but entertaining, second half is vapid and boring, ending cements Stephen King's lack of vision

>>9594775
>>9594775
Print is quite small too.

Apparently it's 471,485, so not quite war and peace(587,287) but still absolutely taking the piss considering it's extremely slow paced and will spend dozens of pages at a time on completely pointless things.

If you want to see a true madman at work look up the chapter where Mother Abigail goes to a farm down the road to kill a chicken, gets attacked by weasels, gets there, sleeps, hallucinates the villain briefly, kills the chicken and returns home, none of it contributing to the actual story one iota.

It was 27 pages long.

I read the uncut version and enjoyed everything leading up to the point where they settle in Boulder. Shocking how I could spend so much time getting to know characters only to not give a single shit what happens to any of them by the end of the book.

IT and Misery are the best that I've read by King.

>>9597322
>471,485
So King basically wrote The Count of Monte Cristo.
Wordcount: 464,450 / 1321 pg
http://manybooks.net/titles/dumasalpetext98crsto12.html

>>9598556
Does anyone know of any post apocalyptic book that is (not unnecessarily) that huge ?

>>9589784
They used to have chocolate paydays I think

>>9589768
The first half detailing the decline into chaos and aftermath of Captain Trips was a good read. Then King literally nukes half the characters because he realized he can't do endings.

>>9592197
Thanks for this great post anon

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>>9598895
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Alas, Babylon
Cat’s Cradle
Childhood’s End
I Am Legend
The Road

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>>9592063
The Border is worth a read.

>>9596005
whoa, king used to post here?

>>9600778
I'm still here and I enjoy feedback from the fans as long as its contructive, and some of the raddest critiques I ever had were from guys and gals who hated my books but were able to articulate their feelings in a polite manner!

>>9592063
I came here just to express that very same hot opinion, high five.

>>9600792
faggot

>>9601066
You are repulsed by sincerity so deeply because you fear a sincere appraisal of your own worth.

>>9601430
faggot

>>9598248
Is IT the one with the child orgy?

>>9600792
Apt Pupil disturbed me to my core. Great work.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon has such heart and was a book my grampap actually enjoyed (he's not easy to please)

I've always felt Kings huge sprawling casts was one of his strengths. He's really good at getting into the heads of gross people, getting down on paper the little thoughts and phrases we repeat to ourselves, and the things people really worry about. As a downside to that though, you tend to see the same archetypes pop up over and over again in different books, and he doesn't always remember to give every person and chance to blossom. But I still love the novelty of how his casts are always varied, weird workaday people and give rise to strange unlikely friendships that usually defy age and race and gender in charming ways.

>>9603573
Yes it is

>>9603784
>The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
I see this pop up every once in a while on my suggested books in amazon, should I pick it up?

>>9600792
Why you gotta write people cheating on each other all the time?

I understand that a well-written character should never be perfect but why does it seem like whenever you want to flesh someone out (I don't know if this is your reason but I can't make a lot of sense of it) you make them cheat on their spouse?

I'm always chugging along enjoying a story of yours and then there it is. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

>>9604774
I liked it well enough. It's a fairly short book but if you are looking for a lost in the woods creepy story I'd recommend it. I always thought The Talisman was pretty underrated as well.

>>9604774
I say yes.

>>9604837
I like to write about what scares me, dear Constant Reader, and being cuckolded is one of those misfortunes that, while being seeming fairly mundane and commonplace when it's happening to someone else, is one of the most terrifying things in the world when it happens to you. In fact, there is an entire genre of pornography that revolves around cuckolding, whose home seems to be right square in the nexus of dread and arousal. As I've grown older I've found that, while I still enjoy playing in the sandbox of creeps and eldritch abominations, it's the grounded fears that send a shudder up my spine nowadays.

>>9605422
cuck

Hearts In Atlantis is great