Jesus, that was a monster to get through. But you know what, even though it was an ungodly amount of pages, it never really seemed to drag in my opinion. It follows various survivors (and includes many vignettes of people that did not survive) of a flu that wiped out most of the population. These people were then sent visions of The Dark Man and a woman named Mother Abigail, and had to pick whose side they’d choose (God vs. the devil). 

It felt like not much really happened in this book, even though it was 1.1k+ pages. And I’m not saying that as a criticism—I actually found it incredibly difficult to put the book down, even though the plot was almost non-existent. I mean it exists, but it can be summed up with “People had to unite under Abigail/God’s guidance, to try and find a way to defeat the evil man in the west”. Like, that was it! The actual big “battle” was barely even a part of the story. 

The real meat of the story, and the reason it was so compelling, was the character arcs of our main characters. Some good, some evil, some just products of their surroundings—but all of them were incredibly well-written, and I loved seeing how all these normal people reacted to such a big tragedy as Captain Tripps, as well as the theological questions that popped up as a result of all the God stuff. It was fantastic. Even the little stories of the random people that died, or the side characters, were all so well done. Stephen King really did it with this one.