

And after spending so much time - and countless pages - with each one, I started to feel like I actually knew each of them. King really did an impressive job of making the majority of characters feel real.

But that didn’t matter much to me because the good versus evil plot felt secondary to the best part of the book: the characters! The strong character development is easily what stood out the most. However, the battle between “good” (Mother Abagail and the Free Zone) and “evil” (Randall Flagg and New Vegas) sometimes felt too simple, too black-and-white. It truly felt like I was along for the ride as each character navigated virus-ravaged America, found other survivors, and finally came together to eventually settle in Boulder.
