Over the Dither and Through the Words
“You aren’t really liking this book, are you?” asked my husband. You see, I hadn’t quite yet finished it. What was interesting was that it laid around with just a little over a hundred pages to go for well over a week. That is the climactic end that is supposed to be the part where you can’t get to sleep until you finally finish the book.
“The Stand” just didn’t do it for me. Sorry. I tried. Because I believe that authors who have such a wide audience must be good.
And I LIKE Stephen King, the guy who writes. I like the writing, even. I really wanted to appreciate his works.
But his character development fell flat for me.
Spoiler Alert
In the end, the only strong female character (other than the old wise archtype Mother Abigail) ends up staying behind because she is pregnant. In the end, we find out that all along, for all of her feminist ideals, her only role was to be an incubator to the first kid to survive. The other women? The only chaste woman is that way only because she has been magically reserved for the demon guy to be a virgin sacrifice incubator. Another stay behind incubator girl who loves a main character who gets killed in the end. Lesbian/bi girl who uses her sexuality to spy on the bad guys.
Yes, the world needed to be repopulated. But the women just made food and babies while the men did the real work.
The magic wasn’t very well developed either.
So, I’m sorry Mr. King. I guess I’m just not in your natural audience.
I’m flabbergasted. Truly. People have disagreed with my recommendations before, but nothing like this. His characters lacked development? They were, like, totally real! I mean, real! I mean, I can understand (even if I didn’t see it myself) you take umbrage with a certain sexist portrayal, but as sexist as they were, those characters were developed.
The end, for what it’s worth, wasn’t my favorite part either. It was everything up until the end that I was so stunned by.
Anyway, you’re not required to like it (obviously). You’ve got your own audience to tap into.