Wake Up to the King Baby

No, not that one. The other one.


You may or may not know this but I'm a huge Stephen King fan. In the 6th grade I picked up a copy of Misery and couldn't put it down. I spent two late nights consuming pages until I had finished it. I was hooked and began reading more.

At some point I picked up a copy of the unabridged version of "The Stand." This daunting piece of literature weighed in at over 1100 pages. For some reason I got about 500 pages into it and then stopped. I don't remember if there was a new video game that stole my interest or a school project or what but I never ended up finishing that book.

From time to time I think about picking it up again. On Friday I did just that and I've spent much of the weekend drinking coffee and reading this masterpiece. Stephen King's ability to set a mood and describe in great detail events and characters is nothing short of brilliant and this book showcases his abilities.


The basic premise of the book involves the accidental release of a weaponized flu virus that quickly spreads across the country decimating the population. Those lucky few with immunity are left struggling to survive in this dangerous new world devoid of structure and authority. Most are lonely. Some go mad. But slowly people begin to find one another again and begin to build new societies.

I haven't gotten much further than that but I am somewhat familiar with the later plot details. Two groups of survivors develop. The good group forms an idealized democratic commune and plans to rebuild society learning from the mistakes of the former civilization. The other group is lead by a being of pure evil (a man named Randal Flagg who appears in many of King's novels) and wants to herald in an era of chaos, hedonism, and death to all who oppose them. The rest of the book deals with the conflict between these opposing groups.

Anyways, the book is great and if you are a King fan or have never read a book by the author I would highly suggest picking it up. If you like the book, I would recommend moving on to King's mangum opus: the Dark Tower series. The seven books are the greatest I've ever read and the story is both epic and haunting.


The amazing things about the series is that it encompasses the entire Stephen King megaverse. Characters who have died in other books reappear in Mid-World (the setting for this set of novels) and strange "thin" spots allow the characters to travel between Stephen King novels. During the later books, the characters actually enter our world and confront King himself. The plot is nothing short of genius.

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."