gadiel_1's profile picture

gadiel_1 's review for:

The Stand by Stephen King
3.0
adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
 
Overview: In an American Security Facility a man wakes up his wife and kid for them to head across Nevada, he is sick and tells them they need to leave, he gets in his car, runs down a fence at the facility and heads toward Nevada coughing while doing so, and so it begins. The circle opens.  

Thoughts: I did it!!! I finally finished this thing!!!!! Ok so this book was long (obviously) and I think way too long especially at the second book: on the border, since that was about building their whole society at Mother Abigail`s place and making committees and work for everyone and even making the electricity work I get that that is needed especially in a book where most of the people are dead and you try to see what little of your old life you can hang onto while at the same time trying to make your present life good as well, that being said it was soooooo longgggg just too much man! But that is ok it finally ended with a great ending to head to the last book so overall I would rate the second book 2.5 stars, the first book 4.5 stars and the last book would be 5 stars if it weren't for the ending! Especially when he said that “The place where you made your stand never mattered” that puts me in the wrong way especially since the novel is called “The Stand” but oh well it's bad but oh well. I did love a lot of the characters, especially Tom Cullen and Nick Andros their dynamic was very good and I felt their friendship build throughout the book until Nick died later on because of Harold and Nadine`s bomb, Stu was a great main character decisive, cool and nice. Frannie at first I did not like her but she did grow on me especially towards the end, Larry Underwood was very annoying at first but at the end of the novel I did feel like his character had changed up until his death, Mother Abigail sucked! She was kinda dumb sending them over to die but oh well, Trashcan Man`s introduction was very sad and his conclusion was redeeming to the reader since he killed everyone “including Flagg” but Stephen King takes it back in the end by bringing Flagg back, Lloyd Henreid was cool at first and his chapter with the Poke guy was as funny as it was  violent idk the guy kept saying “whoop, whoop” after killing people I thought that was funny but Lloyd almost dying and Flagg rescuing him was a very good way to make the possibility of Lloyd betraying Flagg basically impossible, anyway I can't remember much of other characters but most of them were good except for The Kid he sucked Im glad he died and the Julie girl she died too so suck it! Thinking she could get Tom found out by Flagg, what a whistleblower. I did like most of the characters overall but I really hated Flagg. In this book he was more evil and conniving than in The Eyes of The Dragon but it was so cool to see him in this story as well even though I have no idea how he got here? Maybe through the dark tower possibly? Idk although I will give the last book in the dark tower a one star rating if Flagg is the main villain and King pulls this shitty ending again! But overall I did enjoy this book a lot even with the weird parts which there were (The kid and trashcan man, Flagg with Lloyd, and Flagg with that one guy who got his car for him) but overall I did like this story and journey the characters went through and the one me and my girlfriend went through together with them as well, reading this with her was definitely a huge help. I wish I would have reviewed every chapter not just the ones starting from 26 onward. The ending kind of made the entire plot later on worthless because Flagg survived but the story was still good and I enjoyed reading it also made Larry`s death useless too. Flagg sucks! I hope he dies somewhere else, on another stand.  Why do most of the covers for this book have nothing to do with the content of it? Like the man with the sword and the other guy with the scythe or the man on the horse holding a scythe none of that was on the book so idk why that was on the cover art of most copies of this book. Also Kojak was such a good dog! I loved Tom so much I'm so glad he lived!  

What I learned: No matter what, sometimes true evil just can't be beat. 

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars, the book would of been 5 stars without that horrible ending but on well, literally if he cut it at chapter 78 and than wrote the circle closes it would of been almost the perfect book but no so oh well. 

Favorite Quote: “Do you think…… do you think people ever learn anything?” pg 1415 idk there were a lot of good quotes as you can tell but I don't feel like looking around for them all so for now this one is pretty good by Stu near the very end of the novel referencing their new town and seeing wondering if even after EVERYTHING that happened if people really do change?

My updates: April 27, 2025 – page 71 
 5.0% "It’s been cool but chapter 5 was super long and honestly a bit boring"
May 2, 2025 – page 233  16.4% "I got to chapter 23!!!! What?!!!! Flagg!!!!! How?!!! Why?!!!! Man that's so cool how's he here?!!!! It must be related to the dark tower somehow babe! Cause I don't get it and he mentioned oswell the guy who killed JFK so he's the reason why so many bad things have happen and keep happening I think. But before this Frannies mom gets sick and also the singers too and we get to the guy who was under the"
May 11, 2025 – page 445 
"Well a lot and a lot has happened: Stu escaped the facility and is now walking down a road with an old man and his dog toward the south I think, having dreams about Flagg in the prices or the “dark man”, they also talk about how civilizations in the past have come to an end, scenarios of civilizations and other interesting stuff. Frann is leaving town with Harold and I’m low-key changing my mind about him."
And June 3, I finally finished it. 

Youtube video comment section discussion: 

Did we read the same book? I just finished it today, this morning and I read the extended cut and the explosion was there which I did not hate at all I actually liked it tbh, what else were they supposed to do? Keep talking to the crowd and hope they would revolt against Flagg? Nope that would of never happen. My concern is that after the bomb and we see Stu`s recovery of his leg and Tom helped him out they reach Boulder and stay there a while until Stu and Frannie decide to head to Maine and leave Boulder behind. That would of been a great ending.... BUT he decides to freaking RESSURECT Flagg!!!!! On a random island and give him new worshipers, also saying that their stand never mattered, what?!!!!!!! That is a horrible ending man!!!!! Just awful!!!! I know he is in the eyes of the dragon but man ending it like this is just dirty specially after Nick dying and Larry too it's basically saying their lives did not matter even though we have been following them for more than 1000 pages!!! How could they not matter?!!!! (Sigh) whatever I still liked the story but the ending sucked.

Just finished it this morning, man what a ride! I never thought I would reach the ending. It was so long, especially part 2. The ending sucked a lot but the story was good and I liked seeing the progress and the development of the main characters but especially Larry the way how I hated his character at the beginning but literally had to step back from the book when I thought he would be ripped apart was just wow! I did not see me caring that much caring that much for him but I did. Yeah the ending sucked, idk why he ended it that way, if he had stopped it at chapter 78 it would of been the perfect ending! Or at least pretty close to it or moving toward a new hope sort of ending but no it did not end that way, I don't know why he wrote that ending it literally made the actual stand meaningless, the original ending was so much better than the extended cut`s ending. I did love Tom! Literally I think my favorite character from the stand just an awesome person overall! What did you think about the ending to the extended cut? Thanks, love your channel Mike.

Book marks and Chapter Reviews (only for this book because it is so long):


Segments of time pg. 126


hurts a reason to change pg. 134


139


“Love is what moves the world” pg 261


“The last shall be” pg. 378 I literally thought about this so many years ago, but I guess King thought about it first lol😂😂😂. 


“The solid darkness “ pg. 394 


“Always remember, Kojak, that control” pg 420


“He was not crazy about the idea of dying,” pg 460


“The human thinking process” pg 497


“Never before in his life had he” pg 511


“Too many have died” pg 558


“Music hath charms” pg 562


“I know what he’s about” pg 636


“Bless you, Nick,” pg 638


“A person don’t hardly” pg 642


“The stuff in there isn’t labeled, you know” pg 665 pretty funny with context 


James D L study pg 676


“Not at all, Glen sez” pg 677


Who’s Edgar Cayce?” pg 679


“Society is the keystone” pg 688


“He called the dream-man “the hard case” and said” pg 690


“Oh, but what Harold will never see” oh 699


“The dark man had lifted” pg 718


“The beauty of religious mania” pg 763


“There is really nothing so comforting” pg 764


“Government is an idea, Stu” pg 799


“Our people here are very soon going to” pg 


800


“That’s what I meant” pg 800


“No, I can’t accept the idea” pg 802


“When you were a little boy,” pg 802


“The two were too” pg 805


“in the last few years” pg 819 which makes me wonder where is Nick even from?


“The books were free now” pg 819


“Authority. Organization.” Pg 822


“Yes - the right questions” pg 822


“But it’s funny the way your mind” pg 833


“But a person can’t change” pg 837


“For society it would be the old struggle” pg 843


“It is said that the two great human” pg 843


“If you can’t afford a movie” pg 848


“I wonder if she’ll bring back the ten”😂 pg 891


“Because nobody is as afraid of” pg 894


“What was she doing here, poised” pg 896


“The young reject the holy” pg 904


“Rationalism is the idea” pg 914-915


“I think only white magic will do that….” pg 916


“Even if they could defeat Randall Flagg” pg 934


“Proverbs 11: 1-3 and” pg 938


“She had gone away and the” pg 939


“The planchette is a tool” and “Scientists who study movement” pg 959


“Whatever can go wrong” pg 974


“But law enforcement” pg 975


“This reinventing the country” pg 976


“A boy does not need” pg 995


“There’s a devil for every god” oh 996


“But people who try” pg 998


“asking for too much is one” pg 1000


“If you could associate something” pg 1004


“What do you like to eat at that comes” pg 1004


“Tom, would you like to see an elephant?” 1006 Tom’s phrase to go into the mind control thing 


“Stu thought it was the voice” pg 1007 


“He looks like anybody” pg 1008


“I am God’s Tom” pg 1009 huh?!


“Magic, he said. How do you fight magic?” Pg 1012 


“They were a couple of outsiders” pg 1020


“Stu planted a soft kiss” pg 1040 that’s a bit odd Stu


“Because no one in the Zone ever saw” pg 1041 tuff luck 


“Nick? Will it still be my house when I get back?” pg 1042 awww don’t leave Tom! I hope he doesn’t die🥺


“he laughs at your committee” pg 1056


“It’s hard enough for a person to keep” pg 1058


“his sex fantasies” pg 1059 wtf Larry?


“I’ll tell you everything that’s been on” pg 1061


“My great pleasure this delightful” pg 1071


“(one of her college profs had been” pg 1072


“Wasn’t madness the final logical conclusion?” pg 1073


“The dark man entered her, and he was cold” pg 1075


“What was that guys name?” Why doesn’t Larry want anyone to know he song the song? Maybe to leave it behind? Pg 1082


“that behind the blazing headlights” pg 1092 jaw dropped!


“Glen was alive, and Larry” pg 1106


“some pretty convincing circumstancial evidence.” pg 1113 is he referring to Harold’s diary? If so that’s good enough evidence I think


“Stu was discovering:” pg 1118


“Harold had not just killed” pg 1120


“Electric lights ain’t the answer,” pg 1126


“God will dispose as he sees fit.” pg 1126


“God didn’t bring you folks” pg 1126


“But he is in Las Vegas, and you” pg 1128


“Maybe he’s just the last magician” pg 1129


“When the night has come” pg 1139 


“The cure for arthritis is a” pg 1154


“All he can take from me is what” pg 1174 


“Randall Flagg’s hair was dark” pg 1175


“There’s room for both of us” pg 1177 idk don’t buy his lies that are somehow making sense!


“Somewhere that strange Trashcan man” pg 1207


“Why had that voice waited until it was” pg 1210


“With her luck, pg 1211


“Call me Richard” pg 1213 probably a big lie 


“In Nam, the Cong” pg 1220


“Kissing cousins to those” pg 1225 huh?!


“Lloyd realized with something like” pg 1236


“Tom couldn’t wait to get back” pg 1244


“and in spite of himself, Flagg was afraid” pg 1247


“And bask in the love” 1249


“He gives me kung-fu in the face” pg 1250


“When you bit the hand that fed you,” pg 1255


“Plague didn’t care who it killed.” pg 1256


“There were still black discolorations under his neck,” pg 1258


“After fifty years of” pg 1275 good that you feel that way because I’m sure that sadly y’all will die 


“I will fear no evil” pg 1276 wow nice quote by Glen


“Mother Abigail wouldn’t send us” pg 1277 oh I’m sure she would since sadly y’all will die


“That they had better grab a little” pg 1278


“At first he thought about Harold” pg 1278 wow they found his dead body 


“They had found the Wolfman just east of the Eisenhower Tunnel” pg 1279 is the Kid! Im glad he is dead!


“He had discovered he wanted to” pg 1282 yes I want you guys to make Flagg pay but idk if you will be able too


“It made him him feel sad,” pg 1282


“We are in the west now” pg 1283


“A madman or a person on her deathbed is a human being with a drastically changed psyche.” pg 1284


“In other words, a healthy person might make a shitty prophet.” pg 1284


“A part of his accustomed life has been poured out, is it not so?” pg 1285


“Okay, the point is this: Everything you think, everything you do, it all has to run off the battery. Like the accessories in a car.” pg 1286


“A normal life—at least in what used to be Western civilization—was like running a car with power windows, power brakes, power seats, all the goodies. But the more goodies you have, the less the battery can charge. True?” pg 1286


““Anyhow, the capacity of the human mind is a lot bigger than the biggest Delco battery. I think it can take a charge almost to infinity. In certain cases, perhaps beyond infinity.”” pg 1286 idk how true this is but ok sure 


“And do you think people who” pg 1298


“No dreams,” Stu said” pg 1298


“But I will fear no evil, right?” “Right!” Glen said. pg 1299


“When you get to Vegas, keep your eyes open. Wait. It’ll come.” “What, Stu? What’ll come?” “I don’t know. Whatever we were sent for. Be ready. Know it when it comes.” pg 1300


“And they never saw Stu Redman again” pg 1300 yeah they will die. 


“Perhaps he had his own part to play.” pg 1302 yeah to die with them God Stu why do you still have hope?


“Tomorrow he thought. Whatever” pg 1305


“It took man and man’s best friends” pg 1306


“They made contact the following day.” pg 1307


“You know who I speak for” pg 1309


“You must have known it would end like this” pg 1311


“And the trip wasn’t quite over yet” pg 1315


“I once described him to a friend” pg 1318


“Don’t you touch me! he cried. I didn’t do it for you!” pg 1319 ok Lloyd you tell Flagg! Actually never mind you fell to his literally in the next page lol


“I am going to die. If there’s a God-“ pg 1322


 “I want you to know that this is not my idea.” “Nothing around here is, as far as I can see,” Larry said pages 1322 -1323


“There was a feeling in the air,” 1323 -1324


“Is that what we came all this way for?” pg 1324


“Larry was scared, but beyond the scary” pg 1324


“Larry ran his eyes over them,” pg 1325


“You people know this is wrong!” pg 1327


“Remember the way we die!” pg 1327


“Know you that the cohorts of these” pg 1329


“And the righteous and unrighteous” pg 1337


“You and the baby have to get on. That’s the most important thing now.”  pg 1339


“It made a gritty drink, but as his mother would have said, it was a whole lot grittier when there was none.” pg 1339


“For a moment or two he let” pg 1339 how did he get captain trips now?????!!!!


“The mushroom cloud stood out on the horizon like a clenched fist on the end of a long, dusty forearm.” pg 1342 the aftermath/fallout can still be seen interesting


“and there was nothing to do but wait” pg 1345


“Symptoms so much like the superflu. It was really quite funny.” pg 1348 again how did he get sick?!!!


“He’s okay, isn’t he?” pg 1348 oh Tom😢😭


“Tom lowered his head, and in the freshly built-up fire, Stu saw his tears fall into his lap.” pg 1349 ohhhh Tom I’m sorry buddy I hated that Nick died too🥺😭😢😭😭


“There were treasures in the desert, apparently.” pg 1350 I’m thinking this is Flagg


“Tom’s okay. O-and-K, that spells okay,” pg 1353 how does Tom know how to spell out “ok”? He has never spelled out anything else but moon so Flagg once again😭😔


“Why had the car’s owner, why had A. C. pulled over to walk when he could have driven?” pg 1356 idk good question, is either good luck for you guys or just useless hope again? 


“In his previous life” pg 1358 huh?


“An infection of the mind” pg 1361


““Yes, sir.” Nick began to put small bottles of pills in front of Tom. “This is penicillin. Very good for pneumonia. This is ampicillin, and this one’s amoxicillin. Also good stuff. And this is V-cillin, most commonly given to children, and it may work if the others don’t.” pg 1362 I thought it was interesting 


“Tom kept him clean. Tom dragged him around the lobby of the Utah Hotel.” pg 1364 good job Tom🥹🫂❤️😭


““Tom,” he whispered. “I’m alive.”” pg 1365 yes!!! Great job Tom!!!!


““How long before your go comes back, Stu?”” pg 1365 huh? What’s his go? 


“The feeling that he was being shown the future in this recurring dream of Fran’s delivery would not leave him.” pg 1368


“The point was simply that they had time to kill ... and some days it died goddamned hard.” pg 1370


“Because it was a wolf with a furious grinning human face, his face, it was Flagg, his time come round again, he was not dead, not dead yet, he still walked the world, Frannie had given birth to Randall Flagg—“ pg 1373 thanks for spoiling the ending I can’t believe it man that’s awful😦😐😢


“The baby was due sometime in early January. He wanted to be there when it came. He wanted to see with his own eyes that it was all right.” pg 1377 Flagg is going to pop out of Frannie’s vagaina dang I just can’t with this!!!!


“And from somewhere nearer, closing in, came the dark man’s howling laughter.” pg 1379 yeah he’s going to be Frannie’s baby and I don’t like that!!!! Not at all!!! And he’s back somehow.


““A tree,” Tom whispered, awed. “And presents. Those are presents, aren’t they, Stu?” pg 1380 awww got to love Tom🥹🫂❤️


“In his heart, Stu Redman cursed her and blessed her at the same time.” pg 1382


“It’s the best Christmas I ever had, Stu.” pg 1383 awww I love Tom so much!!!!🥹🫂❤️


“Tom’s face brightened.” pg 1384 dang no!!!!


“On the fourth of January” pg 1387 or maybe he won’t be her baby?!!! Idk man idk what to believe anymore!!!


“Captain Trips was a shifting-antigen flue” pg 1399


“With Captain Trips, the flue itself” pg 1399


“What happens after you give guns to the deputies?” pg 1413 interesting question it will be our current society all over again


“Do you think…… do you think people ever learn anything?” pg 1415 


““I don’t know,” she said at last”” pg 1415 interesting answer just proved his point/ gave him the sad answer. 


“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there…. and still on your feet” pg 1421


Pictured pages: 319, 1385, way more pictures than this but Im too lazy to go and look for them right now definitely later 


Chapter 26: mainly about the lies the government tell and how willing they are to kill innocent Americans for knowing too much than they should and also killing people that give them that information. We saw the rise of crazy people killing innocents and making gangs against anyone they want to go against. Pretty neat chapter. 


Chapter 27: we go to Larry as he reminisces on his life before captain trips and he talks about when he took his mom to the hospital but she died there basically in his arms and he wrote her name, address and birthday to her checkbook page and pinned it to her shirt as he left crying and a bunch of dead people and sick people around him. Outside he reminisces about a guy who he used to live with (I think in NYC but he ended up leaving with him to LA) and once at LA they both separated because Larry owned him 30 bucks which he now regrets ending that friendship over such a pitiful amount of money, he starts walking down New York and sees a crazy man shooting “the monster is coming” and another who said he would go to the yankee stadium and masturbate at home plate, he also thought of Yvonne a woman who he lived with but separated from because I think e hedor y too much time with his music group friends? I don’t know honestly I don’t think it was explained why she left him. As he moves there are also dead animals around him, I’m assuming from the Zoo but idk why they were freed in the first place. Then he met a new lady and talked to her about her jewelry and about each others lives for a bit and he took her to a steak house to cook her up a meal. This chapter has a pretty cool image too, of a man lying dead on a store Larry just happen to go into for food I believe.


Chapter 28: Fran reminisces on her dad and remembers how a few days ago before he died the town was closed off from outsiders and people who wanted to leave it won’t be able to return at this point everyone who is still at her town is either dead or sickly dying except for her and Harold the brother to one of her now deceased neighbor who is very odd and weird kept looking at her like he wanted to have her all for himself but they talk about her dad and where she will bury him when he asks her to come with him when he leaves town she told him if he decides where to go to come back and she will let him know what she thinks about it than he leaves (I’m worried about her and Harold I don’t trust that guy he is tall and fat but could easily out power her I hope he won’t decide to do so any time soon or at all, he is a very weird guy, masturbates oddly too she knows so because her neighbor Harold’s sister told her so). With Harold away, Fran gets her dad’s body from his room to the front lawn to bury him after doing so she sleeps and once she does she gets a dream of her going up the stairs to her fathers room unmasking the cloth on top of him while she feels like something is watching her and seeing  that under her dad’s body is a face she can’t recognize with a horrible smile and has an offering for her unborn baby: a hanger to offer her so she feels afraid and flees her dad’s room and than awakes up from it to a new day. 


Chapter 29: we come to Stu who is still being held captive at the government facility, Elder his new warden was about to tell him through some coughs (he is sick) that what he was going to hear was not pretty when Stu slams a chair against his arm making his gun fall off and Stu rams it 2 more times until he is unconscious and picks up the gun than he exits his room to a desk that has his old cloths there and leads to a hallway when Elder wakes up and tries to stop him but Stu shoots him dead than as he walks through corridors more and more bodies are laying dead on the ground one of his male nurses was still alive but extremely sick and told Stu to kill him but he left him to a bunch of more corridors until he finally finds an exit but right before he leaves someone grabs him by the ankle in the darkness of the stairs Stu kicks at the hand and the body falls through the stairs screaming in anger, Stu leaves the facility to a nice night with the crescent moon on the sky and he takes the road leading to the  town that was close to this facility.


Chapter 30: we get to see how “captain trips” has desimated the town the Texaco gas station sign is on the road in ruins, Norm’s house was destroyed in an explosion, dogs and military men lay dead on the gutters in the streets, cats can’t catch captain trips so they come out every now and again, aside from cats, a family of squirrels and normal sounds a silent town makes everything else is dead silent and once the sun drops in the horizon there drapes a cloud of complete darkness under the small town of Arnette. 


Chapter 31: so we open with this guy named Christopher Brandenton who is in bed sweating and having a bad dream of a stadium I believe and than he is outside the stadium and sees a girl who’s entire face is bloody and they both get scared because of a man with jeans on, cowboy boots and a holding a police truncheon is smiling at them with a literal fire smile. Than he wakes up and hears footsteps outside his room and than a face with a smile made out of knives comes into his room and starts saying very odd things to him and… uh…. acting very oddly as well around Christopher blocking his mouth from breathing while asking where he hid a car that he was supposed to have hid for the dark man aka Richard Fry aka RANDAL FLAGG! He is back from the last time we saw him walking down a road and he is here now acting very odd and questioning him about a car Christopher tells him where he hid the car and Flagg lays his back against Chris’s face (killing him I assume) than he goes to the station and I think the car is broken with all the parts not put together but with a hand over the hood of it the car just works now and something inside of it made diamonds idk why, he also sees the ghost of Christopher but than he disappears, than Flagg takes the car and starts heading south once again. Idk what this was all about it was very odd and gay in my opinion it feels like a different Flagg from the last chapter we saw and specially from The Eyes Of The Dragon Flagg but it’s still cool to see that he is still heading south idk what for but he’s on his way, to do anything he feels like and it most definitely won’t be good at all for our main characters down there.


Chapter 32: we get back to Lloyd in maximum security prison where he is still waiting for his trial but there are no judges to decide on his faith because they are sick, same with the guards and his cell neighbor. After a long time Lloyd is the only one left in maximum security who is still alive aside from a man who kept asking about his own mother and where she was, he also had a pet rabbit who he cared for a lot, Lloyd has a stash of food and added a dead rat (which he killed) onto that list, under the mattress where he keeps his food and he has been breaking his fingers in order to get a side of his bed for said rat. Idk where the heck this chapter is heading but interesting to see Lloyd is immune to captain trips.


Chapter 33:we get back to Nick and he is the only one in town still and he is still having nightmares (which are the same dark nightmares he keeps having of the dark man I believe) so once the sunlight reaches the horizon and the town is engulfed in darkness, not even the streetlights work anymore, he goes to the cop station in search of a candle while from behind him Ray Booth (the man who had originally beat up Nick with his asshole buddies) sneaks up behind him and starts strangling him, thinking that Nick thinks he owns the town because he is a sheriff now and that he would show him. A struggle ensues, Ray choking Nick from behind, Nick stamps on his foot and they both fall but Ray gets on top of Nick and brings his thumb up his right eye socket making Nick scream, Nick takes out his sheriff gun (to which he couldn’t do before since it was somehow stuck in its holster) and fires a shot to Ray’s stomach and he gets off him, laying face down Ray is unmoving, Nick kicks him multiple times cursing him out (I believe) and Nick ends up a one eyed mute and deaf sheriff on top of being alone once again. (I hope he is truely dead and won’t come back, and to think that I thought he would come back and he did I was hoping he wouldn’t but he did, also he was more crazy because of the dease which I’m not sure how he didn’t die before all this but it definitely didn’t make his situation his reasoning any better specially since he already hated Nick in the first place) 


Chapter 34: we meet a new character, Donald Mersin aka “Trashcan Man”, he had a difficult childhood, I believe his dad murdered his two siblings and almost killed his mom and him but the sherif of the town with the only cruiser shows up and guns down Donald’s dad even though his face was badly injured from his own gun which he bought in assuming for cheap since it blew up on his face and when he pointed his gun it didn’t matter since it was destroyed but he died anyways. Then Donald’s mom marries the sheriff and they try to raise Donald which obviously didn’t turn out so well. Donald was a delinquent burning places around town any time he had some gas and a match to do so and the opportunity to he basically goes to juvie once he comes back from it his step-father left because his mom told him that if he went to another juvie type thing she would divorce him and it so happened so sheriff Greely left town to work further up at a shop repairing cars or something like that in the present Donald the “trash can man” is getting ready and about to light up a huge container of gasoline which he does until he regrets it and tries to put it out jumping from the towers stairs breaking his wrist and scraping his elbow and to no avail since it blew up anyway once Donald was halfway across the road on a ditch, pieces of debris flying toward him he gets up and runs down the road a piece of metal cuts his right arm a bit leaving a cut behind, than from a fair enough distance from the explosion he sits and starts thinking of all the different places and explosions waiting for him gas stations, cars, reservoirs etc. He can’t wait to start another up soon grabbing hold of the great axel of his “destiny”. 


Chapter 35: we get back to Larry and Rita at their New York apartment, the talk about leaving the city while eating breakfast to which Rita is not feeling up to eating but does so anyway because she thinks is what Larry wants her to do and so she pukes and Larry is upset that she didn’t stop eating, so they talked about and got ready to head outside. Once outside, Larry breaks into a store with supplies and a 30-30 repeater with lots of ammo with stuff in their backpacks, Rita’s gun and Larry’s 30-30 they head out through the streets to exit the city. They see a man hanging by a pole with a sign hung over his neck reading “Looter” meaning some survivors are alive and hostile (which we already knew), later they keep moving but Rita (once again, I’m sure is some trauma she hasn’t talked about ye) doesn’t t tell Larry she had been bleeding for a while because of her shoes thinking it would slow them down to stop and take care of her feet and he obviously gets upset since they had to stop anyways and screams at Rita, now she is upset and shrieks at Larry making him leave her behind as he moves along the road towards the Lincoln Tunnel, he turns back but doesn’t see Rita there, above him the sky turns yellow and thunder breaks out with heavy rain and hail making Larry decide to enter the tunnel instead of heading back to a building. Once inside Larry is in complete darkness, he travels the tunnel through the railing as he does so there are bodies of soldiers and people laying dead who tried to escape the city, Larry takes up a lighter and travels the dark tunnel with it. As he moves along the rail, scraping can be heard behind him, footfalls echo through the tunnel’s marble walls making Larry stop to make sure it’s not his footsteps, he also hears a slight breathing around him but it could also just be his own, he reaches another body making him drop the lighter onto the hood of a car, as the same footfalls gets closer and closer, Larry remembers the 30-30 repeater and starts blasting all around him, bullets hitting the wall, ricocheting all around him, until only the clicking of his empty 30-30 reach his ears that he stops and hears his own name being called out a few ways down the back of the tunnel, Larry calls out too and runs back, and hits himself with Rita who lets him know that she came back after some men were nearing where she was hiding and when she heard him yelling her name she decided to follow after him into the tunnel, Larry is glad to see her with him here but a bit upset at the fact that she could of been shot by him, they decide to finish the tunnel and reach a few more dead soldier bodies, three men inside the two huge trucks blocking the tunnel’s exit, having tear gas, machine guns and a gatling gun at the trucks back in order to stop people from leaving the city. Once outside, Larry and Rita see that the two highways connected to the Lincoln tunnel have a bunch of cars blocking each way with dead bodies around most of them, Larry sees Rita’s face and tells her they will need to take care of her face as soon as they reach a pharmaceutical place, leaving the tunnel’s dark and terrifying atmosphere behind them for good. (That was a good chapter, at first I thought it was a bit boring specially since I started it at night which was a huge mistake but as it kept going it got better and once it reached the tunnel it was super creepy and such a horrifying scene/atmosphere for Larry and Rita alike very well done, it made me cry to see Rita and Larry needed each-other so much at such an alarming situation. Also because in this situation I wouldn’t want to go through that tunnel alone either specially once someone I cared about wasn’t with me and I didn’t know where they were at that moment, it would made me more scared and paranoid.)


Chapter 36: we get to Franne as she sits at the beach I think and remembers how she took care of her boss I think before he died, and how she thinks of different situations and adding but I’m pregnant to the mix since she is 3 weeks pregnant at this point, the whole neighborhood is so silent she can hear Harold’s “car” drive through it and she decides to check up on him a bit later, now he is mowing the loan with a blue tight suit on (for whatever reason) and he sees her looking at him and he runs inside the house (I just noticed that when we first met Harold, it happened the exact same way but this time he is on the grass and she is very near the house just how he was earlier in the book so interesting similarities) once inside he tells her how he misses his mom, and tells her how it was living with his family, his dad being a bit cruel to him, Fran comforts him while drinking horrible Kool-Aid that he made, than later they leave and go to a park I think or the beach and talk about something than Harold brings up the fact that their is a place a shelter where there might be people who aren’t dead to help them out so he convinces Fran to come with her to this place which is very far on another state, before they leave Harold leaves a message for anyone who sees a red barn telling them their plan to go to the shelter place while also Harold saying that they are a team and they need to arm up for the road trip ahead. Oh and Fran slightly kissed Harold, and he doesn’t know she is pregnant. (It’s interesting how when I first met Harold he was an asshole but now he at least seems more empathetic and nice overall and like he actually wants their friendship or whatever they have to work out and for them to survive as much as they can, try to get some sense in their lives again.) 


Chapter 37: we get back to Stu after escaping the facility, he walks down a road and hears the rustling of bushes and trees around him, not knowing what it is he starts to walk faster until a dog jumps in front of him being friendly than we hear a voice calling for Kojak the dog, it’s an older Gentleman with grey hair and a hat on named Glen Bateman, he tells him he used to be a professor at a university or a part of a chirstian church (either one) so both Stu and himself get acquainted over a meal and they talk about the downfall of society, hypotheticals of building two new societies and the complications of that, different plagues that have taken a lot of the civilization out before while at the same time painting and also about a dream of a dark man staring on top of a large building or cliff overlooking east toward him with large red eyes, he tells Stu that the dream terrifies him. After a while Bateman invites Stu to his house to stay and they can both go to the south I think together as each-other’s companions and Stu agrees. But once at his house, Stu has a nightmare of him being back at the facility leaving his “medical room” and seeing the signs of the place but also a room to which it’s windo has been broken and inside the people have been murdered with blood everywhere and their eyes expanding out of their sockets, but he finds the exit finally with the door to the outside open except this time as he gets closer he is blocked by a man in black with huge red eyes! He extends his bloody hands toward Stu while saying “Heaven and earth, all of heaven and earth”. Stu wakes up drenched in sweat and looks out of his bedroom toward Kojak seeing as the dog also has dreams, he tries to get back to sleep but it takes him a long time to do so. (It’s definitely Flagg who was in both of their dreams but what will the dreams mean? And I’m starting to think it was him too (maybe) who tried to stop Stu from escaping in the first place. I’m glad we saw a new person and an ally I hope for Stu hopefully this works out to whatever they end up doing, what a good boy Kojak is, so cute.)


Chapter 38: So for some reason we meet a bunch of different people and we see their lives before and after Captain Trips, the kid who lost his family and dropped down the well and died. The man who got bit by a rattlesnake and died. The man who plugged a one too many electric cords into an outlet trying to turn his air conditioner on and died. A woman who closed herself with the body of her dead son and hateful husband inside a freezer and died with them even-though she really didn’t want to do so, and you get the gist. (Idk what this chapter was about when I first read it I thought new character then the kid dies and the entire thing was like that so idk why or for what purpose this chapter is for? Maybe to show how some people met their deaths after Captain Trips? But why? What’s the point in that? There was no need to go all final destination on these characters lol. But at least it was a quick chapter, idk what else to say about it I don’t think it will be relevant later on at all.) 


Chapter 39: We get back to Lloyd, las we saw him he was in his cell scratching his fingers on a piece of metal from his cell bed to try and reach a cell mate across from his own cell but with it instead he killed a rat in his own cell. Now his cell mate is a few feet from Lloyd’s cell and at this point having eaten the rat he killed with the bed piece, a cockroach (that actually didn’t taste as bad as the rat) and pieces of his own bed to try to ease his eight day hunger just a bit, he reaches across the bars and takes a few bites off his cell mate across from him before than he was signing a tune while trying to get to the leg itself. Until he hears walking down the corridor, to which he thinks is his mind playing tricks on him, than he hears a voice calling out if anyone is there, at first he didn’t say anything until the voice threatened to leave it was by than that he sprang to the bars of his cell and banged on it as hard as he could with the bed piece he had previously removed, with a sound the electric doors open at the end of the corridor after being brought back on, the footsteps coming closer and closer to Lloyd’s cell, so close in fact he could see this person’s boots on the ground and also his jeans and jacket with a smilie face on one patch of it and a pork on the other with the words “How’s your pork” on it. Than this man scares him for fun, Lloyd falls and a lands a bit far back, the dark man introduces himself as Flagg, he plays with Lloyd for a bit before doing so alluding to the fact that he knows he ate his cell mate outside judging by the difference between the body’s both legs his left looking less heavy than his right. Flagg takes out a black rock and holds it in front of Lloyd, he plays with it moving it between his fingers and changing it from a rock with a red spot on it to what looked like an eye and finally a key, a key that looked like just the right size for Lloyd’s cell, even though he seems to recall that his cell had no lock and was opened electronically. He begs for Flagg to open it, and he plays with him, telling him what he ate before he came here and how that must be torturing him, while at the same time Lloyd just can’t look at him farther than his knees and he does eventually look to find a bright almost sun like crown on top of Flagg’s head and as soon as it appeared it disappears like it wasn’t even there at all, finally Flagg tells him he will open the cell and let him free under one condition: that Lloyd will be his right hand man. So Lloyd agrees and is let out the bars of his cell slightly warm to the touch but not burning hot, Lloyd opens his cell door, while holding the key from his own cell that turns into the rock with the red spot and the eye than back to the key, Flagg tells him about hurting the people who did this to him and more people like those people while also quoting the Bible and letting him know that this new world has been made for people like them. As Lloyd looks at Flagg he not only thinks he likes him and the fact that he holds his own key now but also that he loves him. (It’s finally picking up! And Flagg is having a more interesting role in the story recruiting people for his cause, which I still have no clue what he plans aside from evil things and hurting people but it surely will affect the others characters we have met so far in the story. I feel a bit bad for Lloyd he will definitely die but we shall see what happens no way Nick would fall for Flagg’s deceptions! I’m plenty excited for what happens next!) 


Chapter 40: we get back to Nick Andros, he is sick because of the altercation with Ray Booth and the shot he suffered to the leg it (which I had no idea about until just now, since at first Nick did not realized the gracing of the bullet) was only a grace but now he is sick and his leg is infected he has taken penicillin and other stuff from the station but he still feels a bit bad and he is also seeing blurry from the eye injury caused by Ray, than he falls asleep and in the dream he is on top of a cliff of sand I think looking out into the dark sky filled with stars and right next to him is a dark shaped man telling Nick to kneel and worship him in turn he will get all he wants cities, women, treasure and power but Nick refuses and gets pushed by the dark man once falling he smells corn and below him is a corn field with four different rows leading to a house of which music emanate’s and a black woman very old is singing a song based on his surroundings Nick realized he is at a farm in Oklahoma, anyway the woman and Nick talk about resisting the temptation of the dark man than Nick wakes up and packs up having the idea to head to the Oklahoma farm while at the same time already being a bit better from his leg wound. (Ok another dream cool stuff, I love me a Nick chapter, I wish he would of killed Ray before the attack since now he sees blurry from his eye but at least I think he might get better. Flagg some how is putting these dreams into most survivors heads in order for them to head I think deeper south which is where he is now going with Lloyd so that shall be interesting once they all get there. Honestly I’m not too excited for another Larry chapter, even though the last Larry chapter was quite awesome but here we go.) 


Chapter 41: We get back to Larry and Rita out on the road and on top of a hill I think, they are camping and sleeping inside sleeping bags while Larry is butt naked singing the national anthem and admiring the quiet that is in this new world with way less people, he heads into their tent and realizes that Rita won’t wake up even after being moved by him and that’s when he sees that her hand is holding a container filled with pills and her face is white, her eyes are rolled all the way back and she has green puke on her mouth; Rita OD’ed! (Like what?!!! Why kill her now?! In this way and this quickly?) Larry, pukes himself than he decides what to do with her body so he burry’s her and leaves their camping spot heads toward a town gets cloths and leaves while riding on his bike he gets on an accident and could of easily fallen in a worse way and died so he decides to ride his bike below the speed limit until it doesn’t work anymore, he than stays at another town and he hears something or someone walking down the road he grabs the 30-30 pulling the trigger not realizing that it had the safety guard on other wise he would of shot himself, the person walking had cowboy boots on by the sound of their footsteps (maybe Flagg?) but instead of asking who he is Larry just forgets about it and goes back to sleep. (I don’t like how King just killed Rita like that like bruh what? After all that in the tunnel and also surviving Captain Trips she dies of an over dose?! I just don’t get why kill her this way, I rather just had left her in New York and assumed she got raped and killed by someone instead honestly, but oh well I hope she is in a better place, I don’t like it but we shall see what Larry does from here all alone once again. After she died I was like what? Just like that?! That’s very dumb man, very dumb.) 


Chapter 42: we get a reminder on what Larry was doing in the Fourth of July, until cut back to Stu Redman he is walking down a road his rifle shouldered until he hears the engine of a car approaching behind him, he hides behind a rock and peaks out to see a woman and a guy driving the car so he stands on top of the rock and says Hi! To them they stop and meet eachother on the road and these two people are Frannie and Harold!!! (Like what?!!! How did I not catch that the place where Harold mentioned he wanted to go too was the place Stu barely escaped from?!!! Like what?!!! That’s crazy!!! Man I didn’t see that coming even-though it was right in front of me the whole time.) So Stu introduces himself asks them where they were going and they tell him the place he escaped from he tells them there’s nothing there for them anymore, Harold doesn’t believe him and tries to get Frannie to leave him and they can keep going on their own, Frannie is not too excited about that and would like to see if Stu is interested in coming along with them to the same place they were already going since back where they came from everyone is dead too, just like almost everywhere else, so Stu agrees but Harold says he won’t be coming along with them since he could be a rapist, an addict and even a killer. To try to get Harold on board with the idea Stu shows them his nettle marks and bruises that were made to him at the facility but Harold doesn’t believe him and heads toward their car to leave them but Stu gets close to him and is able to talk man to man with him saying to talk bluntly and getting his idea across that he just wants company on his trip and he won’t get between Harold and Frannie also because he said she is her own woman not anyone else’s, since Harold told him he loves Frannie but she never would love him back. So with that everyone is in agreement and they decide to be together on the rest of their journey, once they stop at a rest stop dining, eating and talking, Stu realizes how pretty Frannie’s black hair and eyes are and the way her hair moves to the back of her head, he didn’t tell Harold this but he likes Frannie too and he wants her after all. (So much for being a woman of her own, wow what a chapter I can’t believe I didn’t see coming that they were going to the place where he had escaped from! That’s crazy! I can’t wait to see what happens next between Harold and Stu because I’m sure it won’t end pretty! On to book 2!!!!)


End of Book 1 thoughts: wow what a beginning with very long chapters here and there but the ground work is laid out, now I can’t wait to see what happens in the next book! There were some great scenes, at the very beginning with the guy escaping the facility, the riots of students and people being killed and silenced by the government, Larry and Rita in the tunnel, Franni and Jess talking about what to do with the baby, Larry’s mom dying on his arms at the New York hospital with dead and dying people around them, Rita’s very odd and quite frankly stupid death, Stu meeting the man and his dog and them just chilling, Stu being the only survivor from the gas station at the very beginning of the novel and than being transported to a facility where he would be let out “as soon as possible”, FREAKING RANDALL FLAGG WALKING DONW THE ROAD!!!! That was crazy and him recruiting Lloyd from prison to make him his right hand man! Oh man that was sick and I feel bad for him but at least he didn’t have a horrifying and lonely death🤷‍♂️, the chapter with Lloyd and his partner at the gas station killing the woman and the gas station clerk was a very entertaining chapter and to think that front here Lloyd would be in jail almost dying there and than being recruited by Flagg is crazy I never would of seen that happening at all. Nick being introduced by getting beat up was interesting and the deputy that helped him out why did he have to die? And his wife too they were both great people, at least somehow Nick became the deputy and basically let his abusers die except for the one who beat him up and let him go because he was sick just for him to come back try to kill Nick instead making him a bit blind aside from him already being mute and deaf like bruh! Nick you should have just let him die! But oh well Nick kills him and than he gets sick because in the altercation a bullet graced his leg and the wound got infected he took pills and fell asleep having the same kind of dreams that everyone has had so far specially the old man who Stu met on the road, a dream of Nick being at the top of a sandy hill and the sky with stars becoming a man and this man told Nick to worship him and he would have everything he could ever need and more but Nick refuses and after being pushed by this dark man (Flagg) he lands at a corn filed and meets a woman singing they talk and he wakes up deciding where to go from his dream getting slightly better from his infection thanks to the pills he took. Flagg’s chapter with the guy who got his car was super weird and very gay idk why, yeah very odd but it led to him grabbing Lloyd at the prison so at least pay off there! I’ll come back if remember more that happens but there was a lot in these last 489 pages I’ve read so far, can’t wait for more honestly! And what a great ending to the first book I hope the beginning of the book 2 will be just as good.


Over all rating: 3.5/4 stars, can’t decide between those two sometimes 3.5, sometimes 4 a lot of the time swapping between each rating but over all I enjoyed this first book quite a lot I’m glad to see where this is sort of going from here since at first I was wondering where it would be leading too. 


Beginning of Book 2: 


Chapter 43: we get back with Nick as he walks down a road and sees a body on it which he assumes to be dead, but as the body slowly rises Nick realizes that is a drunken man, while deciding what to do and where to go this man introduces himself as Tom Cullen and tells him that people left a while back to another town him being the last one here after his mom and aunt died from captain trips, but as he talks Nick realizes that he is not all quite there, Nick attempts to communicate with Tom by giving him a written hand note but he realizes Tom can’t read all that well so he mimes what he tries to get across and Tom barely understands it than later Nick brakes into a store to bandage up his forehead from falling over earlier in the road and Tom bring up the fact that he can’t just break into places and take things but later on he does it because Nick did it too and takes a car shop toy with a bunch of cars and plays with it being embarrassed of doing so since he is a grown man, Nick doesn’t know if to stick with Tom or not specially since he is the last person he has seen from the very own Ray who punctured his eye, also him being a bit slow Nick knows that his journey will be slowed down but he caved in and decides to take Tom with him anyway. Once on the road their is a sign, which reads that they are leaving the state they are on and are about to get into another one, Tom reads it badly but does it and is proud of doing so, than later down the road there is a huge dark sky and Tom rushes to a barn to hide from a tornado he says is coming but Nick doesn’t see one until he feels the air and vibrations of it on his skin and gets mesmerized by it so much so that even with fear Tom gets back to where Nick was and takes him to the barn essentially saving his life, once inside the hold themselves in each-others arms while waiting for the tornero to calm down, but they both feel this presence inside of the shed they are in, lurking in the shadows (Flagg) watching them hiding from the storm, so Tom rushes outside of it and Nick does the same to see that the tornado ripped the entire roof off the barn they were hiding at and he sees the skeleton hands of previous people hiding in this same barn having their hands been eaten by rats, outside they escape the tornado and reach the road safely. Once there a few miles ahead they get to an apple tree of which Nick eats two apples but Tom eats six making him have diarrhea so on the next town Nick goes to a pharmacy looking for pep to bismal while Tom takes a nap under a bus stop kiosk and is there that he meets, Julie Lawry, who was so still at first he thought she was a mannequin and she thought he was a ghost since she hasn’t seen anyone in such a long time, once they realize they are real, Julie is wearing tight shorts and a shirt with no bra on, Nick introduces himself and Tom letting her know he is mute and deaf and that Tom is mentally challenged, he also lets her know that she can come with them if she wants too and she agrees, but she reaches for Nick’s zipper and starts undoing it Nick tries to stop her but realizes what’s the point? And has sex with her. After they finish she tells Nick about her boyfriend how he left to join the Army and she went with her friends to a concert and she kept talking and talking about a bunch of stuff Nick did not really care about. So they both leave toward Tom and he gets red because of Julie’s shirt and her boobs jiggling up and down as she runs toward him, Nick tries to get Tom to drink the pepto bismol he found but he says it’s poison and that Tom (he speaks in third person) won’t drink no poison, as Nick tries to explain it’s not poison, Julie reassures Tom it is in fact poison so he wants to drink it even less now, at this point Nick is really pissed and tiered of Julie so he decides to push her and writes to her that they don’t need her, she gets upset and tells him she won’t leave them so snick pulls out his gun aims at her feet and she backs away telling him to not shoot her as she starts running back away from them toward a building not to be seen again, Nick holsters the gun and decides to head to another store for something I don’t remember what (I think something for their bikes or food) once they come back the tires of their bikes have been popped and their stuff was all over the road spread out, as they get closer Tom hears a shot and leaves toward a building behind them, Nick almost gets shot as he feels the bullet grace his shirt’s collar so he runs in the same direction as Tom did they both leave the town behind as they head toward the road running under the afternoon sun, Nick realizes it was probably Julie who shot at them with an unseen rifle and they were lucky to still be alive, he also thinks the hatred of woman is stronger than the heat of hell. As they walk down the road, Nick turns around as he seems the glare of a truck coming up the road stopping right next to them he realizes if it’s Julie it wouldn’t be too hard to kill them right than and there but instead it’s a man named Ralph Brentner who tells them to hop on up to see where they are headed. (I didn’t think the way that Nick met Tom, they would both team up but I like it I’m glad Nick made friends with him otherwise it would of been really bad if he just left him like everyone who was left from the town who abandoned him. When Tom said everyone left him and looked at Nick asking if he would too, that got me I felt so bad for him. The scene at the barn was pretty good and Flagg was definitely their with them thanks to that tornado, which makes me wonder does Tom have premonitions? Since he said it before it was even formed idk maybe or maybe he is a really good observant and guesser. That woman they both met was so crazy and I can believe that Nick fell under temptation but he could have tried a bit harder to resist. She really tried to kill them like dang Nick you should have shot her. The guy who picked them up makes me wonder what will happen next.) 


Chapter 44: we get back to Larry as he drives down a road on his bike he trips and cuts his forehead, than he keeps waking and fiends a farm but decides to sleep under a tree than during the night someone sneaks up on him with a knife and they are about to stab Larry until a voice behind him stops them from doing it telling him to wait and see what happens. Than at morning time Larry noticed he is being watched and followed, way later once Larry reaches the west coast (I think) and sees the beautiful waves splashing against the rocks of the coast, he sees a small kid carrying a knife running toward him with malicious intent so he kicks the kid and pins him down than grabs the weapon and tosses it over to the sea, that is when the woman who was also following Larry makes him stop and let the kid go she explains that they saw him at the farm way back than and wanted to follow him since they haven’t seen people in a long time just like Larry since Rita, so Larry let’s him go and they make themselves known she is Nadine and the kid is Joe so they decide to team up and go some other place from here, they reach a mansion and find a guitar Larry plays it and makes them fall in love to the music he is playing. So they reach a roadblock and go into a town and find that this town is the same town that Frannie and Harold were living at and they see their message of going to the government facility where supposedly everything is ok, so they camp out in the barn and Larry gets up on the barn to see how Harold wrote the letters and he had a great view of the farm and town while leaving he sees a beam with the letters H. L. L F. G. Inside an arrowed heart, knowing that Harold loves Frannie. Once it’s morning they pack and dead deeper in town to look for supplies and find the Honda store with bikes, Larry shows Nadine how to ride one and once she knows they leave the next morning, on the outside of town blocked offed they need to lift up their bikes to leave and once they do they sleep because it’s late and they are tiered in their sleep Larry has a dream of him, Nadine and Joe reaching the porch of the old woman who was singing in Nick’s dream and she tells him that they need to head to Nebraska (I believe) and that more will follow soon and that’s when he sees a dark face behind him with a set of knifes for a smile and big eyes coming closer to him as the reality of his dream shatters he wakes up and I think this happened before he slept he had a talk with Nadine about what she did before captain trips she was a school teacher hence why leaving Joe behind was not something she wanted to do once Larry mentioned it. Than Joe tells them he saw a woman as she approached they speak to her while on a camp fire and tell her they are headed to the government facility she tells them how her husband and daughter died and how she has been getting so very odd dreams lately, to this Larry says “dreams?” And the tells them what kind of dreams they were about being at a corn field, seeing the woman singing and the dark man behind her. Larry asks Nadine if she has had dreams to which she says no but too quickly and madly making him think she has had dreams but won’t say and he wants to know why she doesn’t want to share them, so with their new survivor Lucy they all begin to ride out to the government facility. Once there they see a sign saying that you must sign up before entering the facility and another sign saying that everyone at the facility is dead and that they are going to Nebraska for them to stay on the road and read the signs (and this is Harold’s, Fran’s and Stu’s group with a new member who wrote the message for any survivors who come along to the facility seeking refugee but all they get is more walking lol) and that’s when Nadine collapses on to the ground. (This chapter was ok, I didn’t expect new characters to show up and be stalking Larry and for him to grow in love with them, I didn’t expect another new character later on who also has had Nick’s and Larry’s dreams lately that was very interesting and even Joe’s dreams as well, I didn’t expect them to go into the home town of Frannie and Harold and find their message to the facility, this woman in their dreams named Mother Abagail is very interesting didn’t see her coming in now either and telling them to go to Nebraska where more people will be going too that’s very cool and also telling them that the dark man won’t be close to them just check because if the mountains, and the ending was interesting to see what happened to Nadine and the next chapter to see Stu’s new group member as well, and Larry tells Nadine what happened with Rita so that’s cool I wasn’t thinking he would of told her that, it was ok but just very long and the next one is just as long if not more and I couldn’t get everything that happened in this chapter on here that’s how long it was.) 


Chapter 45: we start off with Mother Abigail’s backstory to how she used to sing and her dad owned a farm and than one night she saw a dark man in the back of a theater she was performing at with his hands extended dripping with blood smiling with needle teeth (something like that) so she stopped signing and messed up than the audience being mainly white and her being black got upset and started calling her the N word (hard R) and they went to attack her until her dad came but they grabbed him and took out his eyes with a bottle (I think) and he died, so we cut back a en Mother Abigail is getting ready for visitors and goes to her neighbors ranch to take some chickens in her sack, than while walking back she is attacked by weasels for the chicken and she remembers a time when she bent down to pick up a ball she was playing with under her old house but instead a weasel bit her and her dad hit it with a thick piece of wood and it dropped to the ground than her brother stamped on it to make sure it was dead, so with her cane she makes the weasels back off and doesn’t let them take the chickens. Once at her house, she prepares the chickens to a fine meal for her visitors, once they arrive they introduce themselves as Nick, Tom and people who they also picked up along the way and also Ralph the man who picked up Nick and Tom way back when, they are also accompanied by two women and a little girl. Once inside Nick, Mother Abigail and Ralph have a conversation about what got them here and what they need to do to be ready for the dark man, mother Abigail believes they need to go west saying that the dark man is gathering people quicker than they are and they need to be ready God told her so to move west as well, Nick writes his responses and passes it to Ralph to tell Mother Abigail that he doesn’t believe in God and that they should be moving East (I believe) away from the dark man but mother Abigail tells him he doesn’t believe in God but God believes in him. So Nick leaves and decides by himself what they should do, even thinking about the fact that he was announced as their leader but thinking he shouldn’t be a leader since he is a one eyed mute and deaf man, but once he is back he decides they should do what mother Abigail said because deep down he knows that this dark man is real and not just an idea of what they are all capable of doing in these dark times. The next morning Tom and the other guys aside from Nick go to town to trade in their car for a new one and a radio, Nick takes a metal sign and writes on their where they are headed (for Stu, Harold and Frannie to stumble on) and once Tom and the rest come back with two cars they set out west. (It was so freaking long! There was no need to make it so long but it was good and getting answers that I hope will be paid off was very good I’m starting to see the picture of the middle section more clearly now, I hope they can kill Flagg but I’m fearing they won’t be able to and most of them will die. I wonder who will betray them? I just hope Nick and Tom survive.) 


Read on: 5/19/25


Chapter 46: we get back to Stu, Frannie and Harold they are on their way to Nebraska I think it is west I’m not too sure honestly, but they have two new survivors with them Mark and Peri who will come with them, Frannie is still feeling odd with the dynamic of her relationship between Stu and Harold, she likes Stu a lot enough to say she loves him but Harold would never approve even-though she keeps getting more and more tiered of him as they days go on. She keeps getting dreams of the dark man still at her house carrying her dead dad inside of the rug but once he comes he doesn’t want her dad he wants (Frannie is sure of it) what’s inside of her as he grins that knife of a smile while holding the hanger. After a while Stu, Harold, Fannie, Glen, Mark and Peri stop mid way through their journey because Mark is sick he has a fever and his stomach is hugely bloated they think it could be Captain Trips but decide on apendicitis since anyone who could have the disease at this point is probably a mutated version of it but no it was apendicitis so Stu and Glen go into town to pick up supplies and a book on how to treat him the best way possible, while they are doing that, Frannie catches up on her many diary entries and how they went inside of the place where Stu was locked up at, her dreams, Frannie thinking of telling Peri that she is pregnant but doesn’t do it. Once they come back with the supplies, Stu attempts to save him but is unable to do so and Mark dies. Later on they talk about what to do next but realize that Peri has overdosed on the sleeping pills they have been taking and she dies than Glen brings up the fact that there was a guy studying the probability of people surviving catastrophic events thanks to their “gut” feeling and how these dreams could be their gut feeling to go to Mother Abigail’s place and be with her since she seems as a safe bet. (Again no need to be so long this chapter but ok, it was weird adding those two new characters just to kill them so quickly, I wish Frannie would just let Stu know how she feels about him I know Harold would be crazy mad but at least privately it shouldn’t hurt so bad. I hate that they left Glen’s dog behind! Why?! I liked the dog but oh well. With now Stu, Frannie, Harold and Glen being alone again I wonder what will happen next? It shall be interesting hopefully it’ll feel a bit faster the next chapter.)


Chapter 47: we get back to Stu, Frannie, Harold and Glen’s group again as they continue their journey to Nebraska but on the road appears a blockage as they slow down four men with rifles appear and bring with them women who are all huddled together, Stu’s group does not like the look of them Harold attempts to shoot them but can’t get his gun out of their holsters and than the men fire shooting at Stu’s bike making him fall to the ground, than one of the women who were imprisoned was able to attack one of the men and squish his balls another man shot one of the women in the face splattering pieces of her face at the blockade and the road only leaving behind a bit of her eye, than Harold shoots the man but misses until Stu does the same and kills him right at the forehead, the woman who squished the man’s testicle grabs his shotgun but wasn’t able to shot him (I think it ran out of ammo) so she uses it as a blunt weapon and starts smashing his head in until parts of his brain spill into the concrete. Than the remaining women help Stu and Glen to move away from the barricade and decide to team up after they told them the story of the men killing two of their group (both guys) and using the mostly women as sexual pleasures for their group by drugging, threatening and even killing them if they refused to be used by them. After they leave the road they reach a barn (I think) and they talk about what I just wrote, Frannie is worried that one of the woman is getting too connected to Stu and is jealous since she loves him, way later Stu, Glen and company go into town to look for a radio leaving Frannie and Harold behind (bad idea) so he talks to her and than kisses her she doesn’t like it at all and literally falls from the log they were both sitting on, he apologizes and tells her he loves her but she tells him she doesn’t love him. Then way later on the road again Stu and Frannie have a talk and as the sun goes down Stu kisses Frannie and they make love (finally!). Afterward Frannie tells him that she is pregnant and she is worried to see if he will leave or will want to take care of it with her and he practically agrees to do so by they both decide not to tell anyone about it not even Harold, unbeknownst to them Harold is standing behind them hidden by a bush and hears their conversation and also sees them having sex. Later at night he wakes up and goes to where Frannie is sleeping and slips into her backpack and takes out her notebook/diary and decides at first to not read it that it’s wrong what he is doing but temptation got the better of him and he reads it, now he knows everything on the notebook that Frannie loves Stu, her pregnancy (I think this is how he finds out) and everything she ever wrote on their, he decides to masturbate to his own fantasy of a hot woman listening to him and him wiping her because she has been acting bad than he finishes. A bit before sunrise he creeps back into where Frannie is sleeping and starts to put back her diary as she keeps moving and he says if she wakes up he will kill her! And he will run away west! Where freaking Flagg is! But she doesn’t wake up and than he pretends not to know anything and has a great time with the group they also found a lot of military weaponry including a rocket launcher with a lot of rockets so that will be turn out just fine, at the end Harold decides to start writing his own diary entrees, about time he writes something lol. (Wow what an end to the chapter! When Harold was seeing them behind the bush making love I was like dang! Dude that’s creepy and the fact that he kissed Frannie is messed up since she did not want him too but I’m afraid what he will do to them, I know he doesn’t want to stay with them anymore I’m afraid he will join Flagg since he wants Frannie but she doesn’t want him and just with everything he knows now I just don’t think he will stay but I don’t know what kind of damage he will cause before he leaves the group, I’m excited but worried for what’s coming.)


Read on 5/20/25:


Chapter 48: we get back to the Trashcan Man as he moves closer and closer to the place where Flagg is in Las Vegas, but as he gets closer to it there’s this guy named The Kid and he bullies the Trashcan Man and at a point makes him come with him to find Flagg kill him and take over his reign, Trashcan Man doesn’t like that since he worships Flagg and he got a dream where all of the United States is burning and him and Flagg are at the top of it all. Later they find a hotel and a very gay thing happens that I will not repeat (I have no idea why King decided to add this in, there’s literally no need to add it idk why he has made Flagg or people related to him so homosexual) anyway after that they go to the highway again and they aren’t able to go through the road because it’s all blocked up so the Trashcan Man decides to go into the tunnel and see what the problem is than after he comes back The Kid is angry at him and almost kills him until a pack of wolfs comes and saves Trashcan Man and they trap The Kid inside his car allowing Trashcan Man to leave with the wolfs and mock The Kid. After a while he finally is at Flagg’s place and meets Lloyd who gives him food and a room at one of the top floors of the hotel. The next day he is called to work outside doing something with a car, than they all get called back to the hotel and find that at the center there is a pool of cement and a wooden cross than a man comes from the hotel nude, saying he didn’t do anything wrong but he is accused of carrying drugs and being drunk on this new society which does not help out everyone in it and he is crucified even-though he pleaded to Trashcan Man but he pretended not to know him. The next day Lloyd tells him that Flagg finally wants to see him, so he goes to his office and it opens to a dark cloak with those red eyes and he tells him that he is glad to see him and he has a job for him if he is willing to take it, to which he says he wouldn’t want to do anything else. (First off no need to make it so guy with The Kid character at all! Second off it was very creepy how everyone mostly in charge was ok to crucify the man for what he had and the fact that this whole thing with Flagg turned into a huge cult revolving around him is pretty crazy to think if things had gotten better with Lloyd and Trashcan Man before they met Flagg they could be with Mother Abigail. Thirdly, way too long of a chapter it was literally like 73 pages like what?! It took me all day to finish it and of course I took breaks I had to do so, but it’s getting intense with Flagg and his cult of brain dead people (except for Lloyd probably), I can’t wait to see what Lloyd and the Trashcan Man do for him hopefully nothing gay! But it’s looking hard for Nick and Mother Abigail’s group even with Larry coming later it won’t be enough people to fight off Flagg’s army at least I don’t think it will be, we shall see.)


Read on 5/21/25:


Chapter 49: we get back to Larry’s group and he was sitting up on the road on watch duty, when Lucy comes up to him from the Judge and talks to him about time, Nadine and her own feelings for Larry to him (in a way), Larry told her that he loves Nadine but Larry and Lucy had sex because Nadine had not accepted Larry’s advances on her. They also had a couple but she got captain trips and died while her husband is still alive with the group. We get Nadine’s backstory of her in college and how her sorority sisters would bring men to their house but she would never do anything with them keeping fertile and virgin to this day which is why she also did not do it with Larry because she HAS been getting dreams just not from Mother Abigail like the rest no but from the dark man. She knows his name is Randall Flagg and she knows that more and more people are joining his cause and that he punishes people by crucifixion, but all she wants from him is a tender kiss and she believes she is a virgin for him she even thought of leaving behind Joe and Larry in order to go west to the dark man and decided against it but lately she’s been feeling and thinking differently she doesn’t even feel close to Joe anymore only really wanting to go west. (Well she is gone at this point, soon she will either leave them and go west or kill someone and than try to go west, Larry loving Nadine is sad since she won’t allow for her to love him back even-though she does, Lucy loves Larry even-though I honestly can’t remember who she is, interesting chapter too bad Nadine has fallen under Flagg’s deception I wonder if there will be a race against time with her virginity and Frannie’s baby? Idk we shall see.) 


Chapter 50: we start off with Stu and Glen they talk about the new society that is building up at Mother Abigail’s town and how they need to create a new type of government and all the things that could happen from it. Than we get back to the town as a new group of survivors come and it’s Larry’s group! They meet Mother Abigail one by one and we see her react to Larry, Lucy, Joe or Leo as he remembered his own name now (ok), and Nadine as Mother Abigail meets Nadine she sees some darkness in her and thinks it’s the dark man creeping into their town to mess stuff up. Than we cut to Nick as he talks to a member from his own group Ralph and they talk about also building a new society but also about fixing the electricity and about the town haul meeting them will have soon to see what to do about Flagg and just the town in general, and also about the flyers they have for it. Then we meet up with Frannie sleeping next to Stu while she hears some movement outside she investigates and meets Larry! They talk about how he got here and the fact that he followed all Harold did to get them here and Larry admires him too much than she tells him where he is so he can give him wine and the payday candy bar he likes, after he leaves she can feel a kick from the baby in her belly that makes her forget everything she has suffered through up to this very point in time. Than we cut to Harold as he thinks to himself about what his situation is with Frannie not loving him and him wanting to go to Flagg for power and he also thinks about pride and hate how it’s not the strongest sins but the world hating on him and wanting him to change is a sin than he goes to his bathroom and practices his smile in the mirror. (Wow what a long chapter honestly I’m tiered of how long they have been all of them have been longer than 25 pages why?! Just do what you did before it made the story go by a lot quicker than I spend two freaking days on one single chapter! It pises me off. But it was an ok chapter it brought up good questions, ideas and worries for their new town/society I can’t wait to see what happens next, and the Trashcan Man was mentioned indirectly by Larry saying they had to detour from Frannie’s group to get here because their was a huge fire at a town so that was super cool, we shall see what happens I hope the next one we get the perspective of Flagg.) 


Read on 5/23/25:


Chapter 51: it starts with Ralph and Nick seeing the flyers for the upcoming meeting with the whole town, than we cut to Larry and Joe going to Harold’s house which is a bit far way from Stu and Frannie’s apartment, they se how he was working on a garden at the front of his house to Larry is seemed like he wanted no company since he turned after they said his name with a malicious deadly intent to kill them but just as fast he put on that smile he has been practicing and greeted them, Larry gave him the wine and PayDay candy bars he was saving for him but he said he rather not have them he has been trying to loose weight and cut the candy bars, than he invites them into his house but Joe is super scared and creeped out by him and leaves yelling to Larry that he doesn’t want to go into that house. Once inside, Harold and Larry talk about things and once Harold goes downstairs for two glasses of wine, Larry realizes that beside his fireplace a block is moved slightly and he opens the top of the compartment and sees a notebook hearing Harold coming up the stairs he closes it and greets him again. Once outside Larry slightly drunk waves bye to Harold but he has already gone inside and Larry sees that his house is closed off with blinds, than he sees Joe waiting for him on the sidewalk and he tells him he didn’t want to go in there because it was scary and later he tells Larry maybe Harold is speaking/praying to the dark man. Than we cut to Stu and Frannie talking about things and washing their clothes than we go to Larry’s house and Stu comes to ask him if he will be a part of the meeting later at their house he agrees and tells Stu how Joe felt a bad feeling toward Harold and that he also did thinking he would of killed them at the time they first arrived to his house than they look at each-other for a while. Once at Stu and Frannie’s house before the meeting Frannie sees that her diary has been opened and read by someone else leaving a dark fingerprint she guesses of chocolate behind one of the pages suspecting that Harold read her diary she also felt as if someone was watching her, the meeting comiences it’s only seven people and they decided what to do to improve the town and what to do about the dark man and his society in the west, they start thinking about sending a couple of spies in to infiltrate and come back to tell them what they are doing Larry suggests the old judge guy saying since he is old it won’t matter much if he is captured and if he is not he will tell them what is happening over there but some object and than they all agree, but than Nick tells them he would like to send Tom Cullen to the west! Like what?! They all can’t believe it but he explains that if they put him on a trance it will work they won’t suspect much because he is retarded and if they do capture him they won’t loose someone who is more important in the grand scheme of thing he also says how Tom saved him and before they met he seemed like he was in his own trans of sorts and once he came back he answered Nick so he will put him under and make sure he won’t tell the dark man’s army anything he is not supposed too, the women object but the men agree making them change their minds and vote for that plan. Once the meeting is over Frannie and Stu sleep but she keeps thinking about her diary and the fact that they will send Tom to the west. (It was too long of a chapter but pretty ok specially at the end her figuring out that Harold read her diary and Tom being chosen to be sent away to the west?! That’s crazy I hope he doesn’t get crucified. It was ok way too long of a chapter though.)


Chapter 52: we get back to Mother Abigail as he prays in her bed to God and she senses an evil she keeps praying telling God to give her a sign and than her Bible drops and she decides to leave her house and escape to the woods. Later Stu and the others realize that she is gone and decide on what to do next, Frannie is at the library looking for books and she sees a woman who asks her if she has heard about Mother Abigail going missing and she had not, than we cut to Stu and Nick and they think about what to do so they decide that with Harold they will go out into the woods and look for mother Abigail and meet up at a park but this was after Frannie decided to go into Harold’s house and she found his secret compartment where he keeps his journal but she stops because Nadine comes by and asks if anyone is home Frannie doesn’t say anything and lets her go but she wonders what Nadine was doing at Harold’s house? Way later Harold, Stu and the other guy get going to the park and Harold decided to shot them both and escape west afterwards but Glen (I believe) brings Nick and another guy with him so that stops Harold from killing them even though he was pretty close. Once at his house Harold realizes that someone was there and he thinks of ways to hide his notebook. Than way later Stu is talking to Nick I think about something but he gets interrupted by Glen saying Kojak is back the dog followed them all the way from where they were before now he is all scratched up and hurt but recovering than we get his POV as he fights off wolfs and the darkness of Randall Flagg to get to the new town of Mother Abigail. (I definitely missed so stuff but this chapter again was super long I read it in parts throughout the day but it was fine mother Abigail leaving was crazy! And Harold almost killing Stu also crazy! I hate that Frannie was about to open the spot where Harold had hidden his notebook but even after Nadine left she still didn’t open it and just left like what was the point of risking and doing this if you didn’t even see what was under the stone thing by his fire place!!! If she had done it she could of warned Stu and the rest about Harold but oh well he didn’t kill them and idk if he will but maybe soon he was literally on the verge to do it. We shall see what happens next chapter!) 


Read on 5/24/25 - 5/26/25: 


Chapter 53: it started off with the reunion and everyone was voting on stuff to do with the town, Mother Abigail’s disappearance/search committee, the electricity of the town,  reading the Declaration of Independence and signing the national anthem. Than Stu got up to talk and bring stuff up, Frannie was there wearing a green dress looking all pretty, and than once he said something Harold rose his hand and brought up something which everyone agreed with and Stu was mad about it, than he and Frannie talked by the sidewalk and Stu told her a story he had working at the pump station in Texas about this guy who came in on a dead night how he was big and had a leather jacket on and he looked a lot like a dead singer people once knew, Frannie could not believe it but Stu swears it was him. Than we go to Larry and Lucy walking to their house when Nadine comes to tell him they need to talk privately, Larry doesn’t want to talk to her but she literally begs him to do so and he agrees she brings up the fact that they should be together, he disagrees and she tells him to fuck her and than he pushes her and tells her to fuck off basically (he is still fighting with himself trying to be a better Larry which was hard but he managed it this time) once inside Lucy is glad he chose her and they sleep peacefully together. Than Nadine decided to leave town saying if he wants to stay here so be it she it gone, and rides her Vespa up the road out of town and we get a flashback to her in college with a planchette and a group of friends talking to spirits all she wanted was the English homework but she got dragged to do this and who a very creepy message from the other side saying in big letters NADINE, NADINE, NADINE, HOW I LOVE NADINE TO BE MY LOVE” “THE WORLD IS DEAD AND WE NADINE I WE ARE” “WE ARE IN THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD NADINE” all the girls freak out and leave. Than we go to the preset Nadine is basically outside of the town and she feels a gravity pull from the West from Flagg and she gets out a piece of paper and her planchette she says “tell me” and it begins writing to her. (It was an insanely long chapter way too long it took me two days to finish it, granted I was busy those two days but still way too long. So Nadine is leaving town good for her I guess and even back at college Flagg was speaking to her?! That’s crazy talk! I can’t believe that wow! Harold is becoming more and more a bit of an annoying threat I think to the town, at least Larry and Lucy are together and he was able to fight off Nadine’s advances. Stu’s gas station story was pretty good I wonder if the man he met was Flagg? It was a long chapter but interesting in some parts.)


Read on 5/26/25:


Chapter 54: we get back to the committee and they are deciding what to do about the spies and when to send them to the west, one by one separate by a month I think and Nick would have to talk to Tom about it just like Larry to the judge and Sue to Danya to go west. Than we cut to Harold getting ready to work the body pick up crew he does it and it’s a disgusting job he pukes out what he barely ate but is able to finish out the day once at the meet up point he says he will come back again tomorrow but they are looking for more people who can do the job too and he sees a lot more people around than he did before. Once he arrives home he sees Nadine waiting for him they go inside and have a dinner she cooked for him she is not wearing a bra or panties I believe and she makes him get up and walk tor he couch, she hugs him her breasts against his chest and than she pushes him o the couch and gives him a blowjob they talk about how she knows he wants to leave and do bad things to the people of the town specially Stu and where his diary is, Harold asks how she knows and she says he (Flagg) told me she tells him they can do anything he would like but have sex and that what Harold really wants Flagg also wants which is to kill Stu and everyone in town, she offers her hand and Harold thinks about grabbing it but does so and they go to the bedroom accepting his destiny. (It was very long but I see she just wants to use Harold but now they Flagg’s pawns inside the town even when Harold was thinking that maybe he could finally fit in this happens well he sure won’t stay in town for much longer, way too long but interesting the build up keeps building.) 


Read on 5/26/25 - 5/27/25: 


Chapter 55: we get back to Larry and the judge talking about life before, as the judge gets ready to head west and he dies on his car as he leaves he sees the men who work the cleaning up duty of the bodies and he heads west on the roads. Then we cut to Nick, Stu and Ralph they are at Tom’s house. He lets them in and shows them around he has a cage with a stuffed bird right at the trance of his house, statues of animals five to be exact in his basement a wolf in the middle, signs of credit cards, his window has a police light like view, his bathroom floor is lined with blue coloring and toys lay around. Finally at the sofa, they start to talk and they tel Tom they will get him to sleep with the “atom, would you like to see an elephant?” phrase that gets him to fall asleep and be able to be controlled by suggestions so they tell him that he will go west and will infiltrate Flagg’s place if he is found he will run, he will travel by night and sleep during the day, he will tell Flagg’s people that he was outcasted because he would bread dumb children and if he is found out by a single person he is to kill that person and keep going. Than Tom starts talking about Flagg how he has seen his face, that he uses magic, and just odd stuff related to Flagg, they are all pretty freaked out but they say the phrase again and he wakes up not remembering that the trance worked. Than we cut to Frannie and Stu they talk about sending Tom and how they feel bad about it and Frannie brings up the fact that Harold has been with Nadine and Stu asks if Larry knows about it and she doesn’t know if he does than Frannie says that Harold complimented her on her shoes when he came earlier that day. Than we cut to Harold and Nadine he is sleeping next to her and he gets up and ready for work, she opens her eyes as soon as he leaves and sees the face of Flagg by the window saying how will he be as a husband or something like that. Than we get Harold as ge walks toward town getting ready to work and he waits at the bus stop thinking of how he would never had been accepted to the committee even in a bunch of years from now and Nick was accepted even though he is older by a few years, than he thinks of what he would of said that first meeting, he sees his work friend and he tells him he is a card and Harold says that he is a wild card. (A lot better chapter than the last one I loved Tom and the fact that he had more cryptic information about Flagg and that he saw his face too! That’s crazy! I loved that part with Tom being put to sleep. Harold is still annoying but not more than Nadine God she’s freaking weird! Too bad for the judge hopefully he doesn’t die. Overall pretty good chapter! I just finished reading it at around almost 2 am I can’t believe I finished it so quickly and I didn’t get tiered once while reading it.)


Read on 5/28/25 - 5/29/25:


Chapter 56: we get back on the meeting (once again) and we are introduced to a new doctor in town (well an actual doctor now not a veterinarian) and everyone sheers and more people keep coming to the town, we also see Stu sending off the second person nominated to spy on the west and we know she won’t ever come back but they don’t know that she is also a lesbian and I’m sure she has a relationship with Sue. We cut back to Nick, Stu, Ralph and Tom getting ready to send him off to the west as he leaves he asks Nick if he will be allowed to keep his house and he says yes they tell Tom to stay on road 70 I believe until he gets to the west, than Stu and Nick see Tom and Ralph leave hoping to see Tom again. We cut to Frannie and the new doctor as he sees her and tells her not to worry that her baby is fine and healthy but she is still afraid because of the woman who lost her twins once she gave birth to them in town. We cut to Harold and Nadine as we see Harold strap dynamite to the air hockey table he has in his basement and Nadine thinks that when he is in his smiling mood is harder to control him and the stuff he wrote on his diary come to mind since she read it, than he comes back to how he is and they go upstairs and Harold thinks that September second will be the perfect day to test the hockey table. (Ok finally I see their plan idk where they got the dynamite from but ok let’s see what happens with that, Tom leaving no! I hope he is ok I hope he comes back!!! Frannie’s baby is fine I guess that’s cool.) 


Chapter 57: Larry and Leo talk outside their house on the pavement, it sounds like the kid is reading his mind but Leo warns him that Flagg knows about his committee and he laughs at it and that those are the old ways His old ways and tells Larry to talk to Frannie that she knows! So he goes to talk to her and they both come to the conclusion about Harold’s hidden ledger so they decide to brake into his house the next day. We cut to Stu, Nick and another guy making the town’s electricity work for the first time but since things were already plugged in before the power went out it blew the circuit and made it catch on fire they decide to make a team to disconnect all the stuff from the places that are still connected to an outlet. We cut back to Larry and Frannie as they go into Harold’s house breaking the back window they see the hokey table with wires close to it and Larry finds the walkie-talkie box empty, Frannie doesn’t like it there or the wires so they decide to brake the door and they reach the place where his ledger was (thanks to Nadine it was back where Harold first hid the ledger where Larry had found it) and they open it up and start reading whatever is legible they read his quotes highlighted by boxes and his first entry saying how he will kill Stu and maybe Frannie marking the start of an awesome post apocalyptic summer and they leave with the ledger to tel Stu. We cut to Nadine at Nick’s house and she finds his notes and ideas written down on notebooks at the basement the reason why she is here is to place the bomb Harold worked on to kill the members of the committee that will get together there the next night including Stu, she leaves crying thinking to herself no to take a live but she gets darkness in her eyes and her vision turns white except for a green figure (Flagg) looking at her telling her that they know and to leave to the amphitheater and wait one more night until she leaves with Harold to the west, she tries to fight the darkness but gets engulfed by Flagg and screams out for him to stop it! Once she meets with Harold he sees her hair has turned cloud white not a single strand of her hair is any other color, she tells him they know about his ledger that He told her so and Harold  is mad that they know about it, she tells him they need to leave he asks if now but she says not until tomorrow night which should be September second (I believe) he tells her how he was starting to like it a bit but she says it’s too late for that now. (Great chapter! Some of the buildup is finally paying off!!!! Man I hope Nick doesn’t die or Stu from the bomb! I wonder if Stu will be able to find them before they head west! Idk we shall see. I hope they don’t die because of the bomb I hope they cancel the meeting! And arrest Harold and Nadine, maybe kill them for attempting to blow them up? Idk that sounds right to me.)


Chapter 58: we start with Stu, Frannie and Larry talking about Harold’s diary and what they have to do about it as Joe plays guitar quite well down stairs, and they thought the best thing to do is to exile him and Nadine from the town, we cut to Harold and Nadine hiding out at the top of a building where they can see down to where the meeting will happen and Harold is talking about blowing them up. We cut to them being in the meeting and as they speak Frannie has a bad feeling about them being there as we hear motorcycles coming closer to the house. We cut back to Harold as he clicks on the waki talkie to set off the explosion. Then we cut back to Frannie as she and the rest of the group leaves the house and see that Flagg’s men have come down to their town and at the same time Dick is yelling at them to get the doctor that mother Abigail is back but she is really hurt and that they will need a miracle to heal her, than we see that Nick is the only who stays inside the house looking around and he goes into the closet and finds the box with the bomb inside it, Frannie calls after him and she tells Stu he is still in there but than the house explodes with Nick inside of it. We cut to Harold as just moments ago he tells the phrase “This is Harold Emery Lauder speaking. I do this of my own free will.” Which make the bomb go off, after that they see the explosion, Nadine vomits but Harold couldn’t be happier he tells her to help him pack up and fifteen minutes after the blast they start moving west. After the blast Frannie wakes up I’m sure more than ten hours from being unconscious to seeing debris falling closer to her gravel, wood, and the first thing she thinks is where is Stu?! She also is worried about her baby as a bunch of stuff is weighing on her back and as she slowly meets darkness around her. (Wow what a chapter I can’t believe Nick is dead. I didn’t want him to die just why? Why?!!! What did he do to kill him Stephen?!!! Come on he would have been smart and left just as everyone else was also leaving but oh well I wanted Nick to live maybe in another universe. He could still be alive but I highly doubt it, if King kills someone they are probably dead unless Pet Semetary. Heart breaking chapter, I can’t wait but I also don’t want to know what happens to them now. Poor Nick he deserved better.) 


Read from 5/29/25 - 5/30/25:


Chapter 59: we get back to Frannie after the explosion we see Stu next to her bed as she wakes up and they talk about what happened how many died (nine) including Nick and Sue and the both feel sad about it. Than they have another meeting to talk about what happened, who should be the new two members of the committee, what to do about Harold and Nadine if they ever came back and what to do finally about Flagg. People are finally mad and won’t take these meetings lightly anymore. Than they go to Mother Abigail’s hospital room, they talk to her she tells them that she thought Nick was the right one to guide them but it’s Stu’s turn now and that what God wants them to do is to head west and confront Flagg directly Stu, Ralph, Glen and Larry against Flagg and his forces of evil, Frannie doesn’t want Stu to go but he says he has too besides they are just waiting here to get pick off later in the spring, she is mad and tells Mother Abigail she is a liar and other stuff when she grabs Frannie’s wrist and cures her back pain instantly she wishes them the best of luck and for them to be with God that he will help them even though she doesn’t know if they will come back or not God didn’t tell her that, later that day Mother Abigail takes her last breath of many. Later we cut to Stu and Frannie having a picnic before him and his group head out west she tells him how much she loves him and they make love right there at the park. Than they go to the place of the explosion, debris all over the place, Frannie sees the couch that had struck her back on the lawn, she than sees a patch of blood on the ground wondering if it was Nick’s blood she tells Stu to touch it he doesn’t want to until she yells at him to do so and he does. Frannie makes Stu swear he will come back, he does and they both embrace as the last thing they said to each other was I love you. (Wow we finally got the title of the book inside the book it wasn’t directly “the stand” but it was still there, took you long enough lol😂 but it was a good chapter I thought once the meeting got started we would get another boring ass chapter of meetings but this time it was definitely different from the past meetings people being tiered of just standing around doing nothing. Too bad mother Abigail died I’m sure she is leading them to their deaths but it most end somehow I just hope they at least harm Flagg in some significant or permanent way. Overall great chapter setting up the final chapter of the second book. Can’t wait to see how this ends, hopefully it’s worth it.) 


Read on 5/30/25 


Chapter 60: we cut to Stu, Larry, Glen and Ralph leaving the town to head west carrying nothing but their clothes and Kojak by their side, Frannie told Stu to remember what she swore to her and he said he will, as they reached down the street they all waved goodbye Frannie and Lucy going inside for some tea waiting on them to come back. As the group moves they reach the limit of the town, Stu wonders if everyone is ready to go back now but they keep moving forward camping by Golden around nine pm they all couldn’t sleep that night. (Uffff now it’s getting even more scary we’re down to just these four as the main characters now I hope they don’t get crucified man, I hope they can do something good against Flagg in the west.)


End of book two: it was pretty good at first once we saw everyone who was separate meet each other for the first time in Mother Abigail’s town and the many things foreshadowing from their meeting with her specially Nadine and Harold meeting her. The middle was very very boring I get it it’s politics and trying to make the town livable again but it was only near the ending of this second book that almost anything actually happened and than it all happened and went crazy in just two chapters very odd I think it didn’t feel like a huge buildup just things were happening but you best believe when Nick died I HATED that!!!! There’s no need for him to die man! So yeah the beginning was promising, the middle super boring and the end was definitely a freaking bang to this second book! I am confused on the name of the second book “on the border” idk what this met maybe at the very end since they are on the border of the town ready to leave and at the beginning just coming in idk honestly, I thought that was an odd title specially considering the first and third books titles, “Captain Trips” and “The Stand”. Well we shall see what the third and final book decides to do to Stu, Glen, Larry and Ralph. I hope they will be ok but I highly doubt it.


Start of the final and third book “The Stand”: 


Chapter 61: we cut back into Flagg’s outpost he has a pair or set of men with every entrance from a big road to Las Vegas anyway we cut to two of his henchmen playing cards on a dinner they all know that the car they are looking for a blue and white car was where the judge was in and heading west on, they were told by Flagg to kill this man but leave his head intact that he than would send it over to where he came from to set fear for the winter until the next spring so pouring rain they decide to follow the car and stop it, a bit back we also heard these men talking about how Flagg could just appear practically anywhere he wanted too and it seemed as he was the crows and a woman once saw that Flagg whistled and two crows came to his shoulders and started saying Flagg… Flagg… Flagg… and how he was the one who started the Captain Trips disease in the first place crazy! Even though I’m not surprised. We cut to the judge as he makes his way west and he stops at a hotel and sees a crow at first he doesn’t see it as a bad thing but it starts to tap on the window of his room with a look of a grin on his face so he tries to shoot it but the safety on his Harold rifle was on from than on he kept it off. On the road they make a maneuver to go by a blockage on the road but they reach the judge and stop him, one guy gets out the car and so does the judge, the judge raises his weapon and shoots but misses so does the other man but he doesn’t miss hitting the judge in the stomach, he than crawls back into his car. The guy is happy having shot him but then his partner accidentally shoots him in the throat killing him. To my surprise the judge is still alive and the guy gets shot at by him on the floor holding his rifle with his knee but he was not able to get a shot on him, so the other man shoots the judge right above his eye making his head splatter to the inside of the car’s door, he shoots again this time completely taking off the judge’s jaw and teeth only leaving behind something resembling a nose, as all of this happened a crow was watching it unfold and than it disappears. He than starts to think and remember that Flagg told them to not shot their heads he than freaks out and starts to think of places where he can scape as he hears foot steps from behind him getting closer and closer from walking to straight up running toward him, once he turns there’s Flagg with feathers in the back of his head with his teeth out telling him YOU SCREWED IT UP!” (Good chapter and beginning to this last book, interesting we get the present I’ve of Flagg so early on in this book and how he guards entrances to his Las Vegas place, I’m sorry for the judge he tried but couldn’t even kill them or get close to Flagg’s hotel at all he did come close though and maybe even killing Flagg with the crow but even if the gun would of shot I’m sure Flagg would not have died from it shooting the crow, oh man it will be nothing but misery for Stu’s group coming west, and I wonder what has happened to Tom the last spy left on this mission.) 


Chapter 62: we start off with Dayna laying on a bed nude inside Flagg’s hotel she was able to infiltrate their place for four days and was able to fool none other than Lloyd himself making him think she was interested in him. She asked questions about what Flagg was doing farther west and what Trashcan man was doing too and Lloyd told her he is preparing aircraft’s with missiles and weapons, he is finding out dangerous things in the desert when he leaves and doesn’t come back for a while, he tells her about the sort of army that had been built up by Flagg so far, also even a school system for the kids and jobs where everyone does something from 8 am to 5 pm on the dot if not well crucifixion. Than Dayna heads to work changing lightbulbs on top of polls and sees a woman who she has worked with who I thought she liked and maybe she did but at that high altitude she also saw the back of what appeared to be Tom Cullen down on the ground leaving a bus heading somewhere else and she didn’t know for sure if it was him or not but it could of been him she thought. Than she gets woken up by Lloyd yelling at her and kicking her with his posy telling her that she’s a lying whore and she tells him that she hopes he enjoys whatever disease she gave him so they fond out she presumes through Flagg since they also knew about the judge too she pretends to vomit and heads to the bathroom to pick up her hidden blade that she had with her from the Zone and gets the door of the bathroom broken down and than she gets taken to see Flagg himself. Once in his office, she is scared but tries not to show it even though he seems like a regular guy with a normal complexion and nice words he tells her to sit and talk to her, they talk about what either side has to fight for anymore? That his side never sent spies to the Zone and he never attacked them (he’s lying) and that he can send over some of his best engineers out to help with the electricity and that he knows they have had some problems with it she asks how he knows but he says he just does. And he does tell her that she can leave and tell them he means no harm but before she leaves he does need to know the other spy sent over from the Zone which he hasn’t been able to find yet not even with magic, she says she doesn’t know that they were sent at different times but he knows she knows something than his nice face disappears and it’s the dark man again he tosses her and demands her to tell him she tells him to get close and even closer to whisper it to him and than she tries to stab him but her blade turns into a banana gets dropped on the floor mirroring Flagg’s own laughing smile she than decides to run toward a window she brakes it Flagg catches her but she stabs her own throat and eye with a broken piece of glass and dies. Flagg is really mad about it and start’s shooting and kicking things he calls for Lloyd and tells him to take her body and burn it, he asks about her head and he says to just do it that it doesn’t matter. Than Lloyd comes back and is drenched in gasoline and sweat he sees a kid and give him chocolate he talks to the bartender about the huge loss they just had with the judge and Dayna and how they could not get any information from them. (It was a great chapter I forgot about her and the fact that her lie was good for four days is commendable too bad she did get found out but man the fact that Flagg can’t find Tom is very interesting and he is very pissed off by it lol at least he can’t do and control everything. The only spy left is Tom I hope he doesn’t get found out! There was another good picture again wow it’s been quick with it for what the second book lacked in pictures we are getting them here now, we haven’t gotten a pic until this book in so long that I forgot they are a thing lol. RIP Dayna and the judge tuff luck for them.) 


Chapter 63: we get to the kid who Lloyd gave a chocolate to, a woman named Angie and another woman named Julie Lawry. They started to talk about stuff when the kid sees Tom Cullen and Tom sees him too they meet and Tom gives him an Airplane ride and as they do that Angie and Julie keep talking and Julie asks if he came in with a deaf-mute guy? She says no that he came alone and got driven out of the Zone, she starred at Tom and only a smile came to her face as she remembered him and Nick in Arkansas and that note saying “We don’t need you”. (Wow!!!! What in the heck!!!!! She’s back! Oh my god what a horrible timing, man just the thing Flagg needed to find the other spy and she is here out of all places she could be she is here freaking Julie!!! Oh!!!! Man I don’t have high hopes for Tom anymore, I’m sorry buddy im sorry.) 


Chapter 64: we cut to Harold as he writes on a piece of paper or maybe a type writer? As he is a bit delirious but he explains how he was mislead by Flagg and how sorry he is and while leaving Boulder, him and Nadine got to an accident that made him roll onto a tree by the side of the road braking his right leg in pieces. He yelled at Nadine for help for a rope on the bike but she said it was always meant to go this way she couldn’t take him to Flagg only she could go, Harold remembered the gun he still had as he was scaling up the gravel up to the side of the road and tried to shoot her and missed twice only leaving behind one bullet of the two it already had. Nadine I assume left to get to Flagg leaving Harold behind, to write his last words on his ledger, saying how he was sorry and how he could of been someone good at the zone and he signed it with his given name Hawk. He than grabbed the gun and he remembered of a time where him and his friends used to jump counting one… two… three… from a high place and roll over a bunch of soft stuff at the bottom and do it again but he never did he always just stopping at three but this time with the gun inside his mouth he counted to three and didn’t stop there. (Ok we got to see what happened to them great but Nadine being alive pisses me off still and Harold writing his sorry letter is nothing to what he did and wanted to do more back in the Zone but reading his last ever journal entry I did feel a smidge bad for him but not is because of him why Nick died so whatever he deserves his awful cowardly end even if he did finally “jump” I only wish Frannie could of killed him or Stu but not it had to be him oh well and I understand Flagg manipulated him but I don’t care, die Harold I did feel bad for you once but after what you did no man not anymore.)


Chapter 65: we cut to Nadine on her moped coming closer to Las Vegas she is still thinking of what she did what the right thing to do back in the town but than her moped stopped working and she had to walk toward Flagg’s hotel, later at night she kept walking and she heard a voice calling her name and it was Flagg calling to her from behind her on top of a car, she came to him and they talked about her being hiss bride and the mother of his son but she had a change of heart until than Flagg tells her it’s too late now and rapes her so hard that his face came off and yellow lights for eyes came on and he even had a different face. Than after he slept and than woke up he felt that he missed the third spy leaving and it was a full moon in the morning he got back and heard about something that happened while he slept with Nadine to his side. (What a disgusting rape scene why even add that here? But it was a chapter I read. He also brought things he could not remember anymore, and many other viruses that were ready to be spilled at the Zone so that was interesting, I completely forgot about that because of the rape scene.)


Chapter 66: we get back to Lloyd as he is playing cards and than this guy who is the head of the pilots decision of Flagg’s Las Vegas tells him how Trashcan Man has been blowing things up when he should not be and he killed two men, injured one and just stopped their operation by a lot, Lloyd said he can tell Flagg that himself and he left angry, than this girl comes and tells him about Tom and the entire story of meeting him and Nick way back when but Lloyd said he will check it out with the person who has a list of people living there she is angry because he won’t do anything right now but she leaves anyway. Than we cut to Tom on his apartment in Flagg’s Las Vegas remembering that he saw Dayna and that the people here aside from seeming to be afraid every time they talk about Flagg they were otherwise regular cool folk. He than sees that the moon is full and get his knapsack ready and his bike to head outside of Las Vegas and report back to Mother Abigail’s town, on his way out no one saw him or even raised concern as Tom kept pedaling he felt good until a sounds en darkness reached him and he saw that He was near, that Flagg was near him and he felt him seeing him with his third eye but somehow he was able to pedal past him presence and head toward the highway past the dessert road, he than took a shortcut and found a nice place to take a nap in. (Wow Tom was able to escape! I’m glad even though that girl tried to get him exposed to Flagg and even Flagg himself almost caught him Tom was able to escape! I’m so glad I wonder what he will tell the people who are left alive back in town and I wonder what he will think about Nick being dead, I hope and seriously hope now that Tom at least survives the rest of the book I’m surprised honestly that he is alive and was able to survive Flagg’s Las Vegas now let’s see what happens.) 


Chapter 67: Flagg is back from the desert with Nadine by his side, we cut to Lloyd calling up the directory to talk tor he guy who knows the people of Las Vegas, he tells him that Tom was living at an apartment and that Nick Andros was on the red list which Lloyd had no idea what that was about. He then was called by Flagg and in his office he saw Nadine sitting down and Flagg walking around the room he made Nadine greet Lloyd and he shook her hand feeling a coldness as he brought it down. Flagg asked Lloyd how things have been going with the project of the weapons while he was away, Lloyd said good but Flagg wanted more specifics and he told him so about the weapons to destroy Boulder, than Lloyd also brought up the fact of the third spy and how he had escaped Las Vegas that’s when Flagg stopped what he was doing and in an instant he grabbed Lloyd by the color and told him how he could allow for that to happen?! He said that he didn’t know about him and Nick Andros because he didn’t know about the list, Flagg tossed him against the wall hitting him hard, he said that he could not haven gotten far so he called a guy who works in their sort of military to gather up people and look for Tom Cullen that they should be able to reach him within a couple of hours. As Lloyd was recovering from the slam he also told him about Trashcan Man and how he has been destroying Flagg’s jets and equipment going all crazy and Flagg tells him to put the word out to kill him fast, than Lloyd leaves. Than we cut to Tom waking up from a nap and seeing how he has to keep traveling away from Flagg’s place even-though they will be looking for him soon, he later sleeps and talks to Nick in his dreams and he tells him to follow the big thumb in the sky that will lead him to the Zone. Than we cut to Flagg at the hotel on the very top floor thinking about how things are going when he hears something behind him and is SCARED because things aren’t going too well and he sees Nadine telling him that it won’t work out for him that Stu, Larry, Glen and Ralph are coming to kill him and he gets angry tells her to shut up she doesn’t she tells him his people are leaving him they don’t trust him anymore because he let Tom slip through his fingers, his men at the border are leaving their posts jumping ship, and that evil never prevails. He yells at her “YOU LIE!” And grabs her shoulders brakes her collarbones and tosses her off the freaking balcony!!!! As she gets lower and lower toward the ground she has a smile on her face, Flagg loosing his mind tells himself that everything is fine he tries to levitate but barely gets off half and inch from the ground. We cut back to Tom waking up under the thumb and seeing a place where he has to go too as Nick told him in his dreams, Tom liked the people at Las Vegas but they all seemed afraid not really happy. He said that before back at Boulder, the people Stu, Frannie and all of them were so nice to him and friendly and how he can’t wait to see Nick once he heads back but Nick doesn’t respond to him in his dreams after Tom said that. (This one was fire!!! Wow Flagg loosing it like that?! No son for you you crazy psycho! I hope Lloyd decides to leave him soon and I hope that Trashcan Man can blow more stuff up, I hope Tom makes it I feel like he’s very close to Boulder now! I love Tom!)


Chapter 68: Trashcan Man left the Las Vegas hotel and is walking aimlessly in the dessert heat, he was feeling bad and thinking of ways he could maybe save his life by giving Flagg a huge trophy or something he think he would like so he was looking for a government compound not too far from Flagg’s place while at the same time thinking about his past with the burning of the lady’s check and people bullying him. He got to the place the corpses of the dead soldiers lay inside a security booth as he looks for a hidden item inside the facility, and he picks up the guys rifle than goes to the other side of the facility this time the sign read to watch your genitals and be careful and also the sign under that one was of radiation. Trash couldn’t hold back his smile. (Ok now I understand he found a nuclear bomb and will blow it in the last chapter of the book and that’s how the book ends not that bad of an ending I think, we’ll we shall see if that happens it’s what I think will happen, but yeah he’s out of it and even more crazy now. Can’t wait to see what happens already.)


Chapter 69: we cut to Lloyd as he is taking a drink and in comes one of his men they both talk about how things have been going Lloyd talks a lot about the last couple of hours Tom escaping and Flagg killing Nadine, and the guy says how he coming real close to criticizing Flagg to which he says basically “whatever” anyways the guy invites him to leave Las Vegas behind with him and other men from their group they plan to go to Brazil or somewhere in South America. He declines the offer saying how he has changed since Flagg rescued him from that cell all that time ago, the guy tells him he is worried Lloyd will tell on them but he says he won’t, they both drink and Lloyd passes out sleeping without any dreams. We cut to Tom getting closer and closer to Boulder and he recalls a time where he almost got found out in the woods but got saved by the believe a man had that his noise was a deer and not who they were looking for, that freezing cold night he sleeps and dreams of Nick. (I think Lloyd will die and again I hope Tom survives.) 


Chapter 70: we cut to Trashcan Man pulling a freaking Nuke up a flight of stairs getting ready to offer it to Flagg as retribution for his explosions at Indian Springs, saying “my life for you.” (I told y’all he will kill them with it and I pointed out a nuke as well.) 


Chapter 71: we cut to Flagg out in the desert as he is rapped up in three blankets and one for his head and than his third eye goes up towards the sky and leaves him going far away until he finds four figures as he gets closer a dog barks at his presence and a man tells Kojak to shut up he also felt odd because of the presence of Flagg than his eye comes back to him and he now knows that they ARE coming to Las Vegas he will have all his men put between what traveling they have left to get there and where they are now to capture them he wants them alive. (Interesting look into Flagg’s third eye explains how he knows so many things, not looking good for Stu, Larry, Glen and Ralph we shall see what happens, they will die but won’t kill Flagg Flagg and them will die because of Trashcan Man’s atomic bomb going off in Vegas calling it now.)


Chapter 72: we get back to Stu, Larry, Glen and Ralph on their way still to Flagg they talk and sleep. They reach an embarkment and have to scale up it to reach the road Stu falls and brakes his leg and the rest leave him to die alone because the quest must keep going. (Ok I’m tiered of doing these just kill them already King end their suffering. I can’t believe you killed Stu like that! That’s crazy stupid I mean it’s something as simple as it just happened but no you made it happen!  After surging all the stuff that Stu went through (surving captain trips, escaping the facility, being deputy of the new civilization they were making, the bomb that killed Nick!) All of that just to kill him like this?!!!! That’s insane man and just dirty, King you did him dirty man! At least kill him with the rest of the men not alone on a freaking ditch! Sigh let’s see how this ends for them soon.) 


Chapter 73: we cut to the rest of the group without Stu as they get closer to Las Vegas and as they come closer and closer to it they see men holding weapons at the road and get taken to a jail cell. Than Flagg comes into the jail and talks to them trying to get them to tell them information by lying it doesn’t work for him so he has Lloyd shoot Glen he did and hit him three times after failing to do so before than Flagg tells the other two Larry and Ralph that they will basically die so they get taken to the front of the hotel and are put inside of cages that have handcuffs connected to two cars so they can get ripped apart, the people are worried and Larry tries to get them to realize what is happening but they don’t understand and are afraid of Flagg so than comes another guy and he tells them the same thing but Flagg rises his finger and a ball of blue (I think) plasma burns his mouth, eyes and face killing him than Flagg challenges the people to disobey him and no one does, than comes in Trashcan Man with the atomic bomb the people panic Flagg tells them to stay but they don’t listen he is super frustrated and even scared of what Trashcan Man brought with him, Lloyd tries to get him to leave with it somewhere else but instead Flagg’s ball of electricity or whatever it is becomes bigger even grabbing Flagg himself and he becomes part of the electric ball and launches itself toward the atomic bomb killing everyone. (Wow!!!! What a twist!!! I literally got up and played videos because I felt too scared to read and see Lloyd get split apart but I’m glad he did not die that way, he died but at least not like that! I hope Flagg is dead but I don’t think he is. What an ending for this chapter freaking great!) 


Chapter 74: we get to Stu and Kojak as he helps Stu up the way Larry and the others went they were able to do so. Than Stu hears a sound and Kojak growls but it’s just Tom Cullen he came back and he helps Stu to get a car and reach a small town they camp out at a hotel and the night comes than a storm also comes and the rest of the radiation does into California, Tom also gets outside and leaves. (Ok I don’t think that is the real Tom Cullen but I guess we shall see I hope Flagg died but honestly why do I still have hope at this point in the story?) 


Chapter 75: we cut to Stu, Tom and Kojak, again as they make their way from the west to Boulder and their whole journey back that lasted through Christmas and New Years they waited so long that Frannie already had her baby boy, anyway they get there but Stu asks if she is ok and the baby because he got nightmares about the baby and Flagg having to do something with it but the guard guy said that she is fine but the baby is almost dead so Stu heads to see her at the hospital. (I swear! Frannie’s baby better not be Flagg!!!! I swear it King!!!! God!!!! Seeing Tom enjoy Christmas was very nice though. 3 more chapters to go, I have my eyes on you King.)


Chapter 76: we cut to Frannie going in and out of consciousness she remembers burying her dad, the fact that many post superflu babies die so she thinks her son will too Peter Goldsmith-Redman (the same name as Peter from the eyes of the dragon ummmm interesting) so she is half asleep but she sees Stu and Tom and she thinks they are made up from her mind and she also sees Kojak and no they are real she hugs Stu like she never had before not believing his alive. (Ok cool it’s not so bad right now what could possibly go wrong from here? Aside from the death of the baby but that won’t matter much if Stu, Tom and Frannie are still alive, let’s see.) 

Read on 6/3/2025:

Chapter 77: we cut to Stu and Frannie at the hospital and the doctors talk about about Frannie’s kid had Captain Trips but he is fighting it, the difference between with Captain Trips is that when the disease first hit it killed the antibodies that also fought the Captain Trips meaning it killed people faster and they don’t know how or why the people who are immune are immune to Captain Trips but eventually there will be a new generation build against Captain Trips because all the immune people that are left will get together to make babies but since Frannie had her baby with Jess and he wasn’t immune the baby is struggling to live. (Interesting how they explain the science behind of what little they know about Captain Trips hopefully baby Peter will be able to survive! I want for Stu and Frannie to be happy, too much loss has happened for them not to be so. Last chapter here we come I don’t want to read it since I’ve heard it’s awful but we shall see how it is, idk maybe I shouldn’t read? Just leave it off at this semi happy ending? (Sigh) let’s go and finish this.)

Chapter 78: we cut to live in Boulder where Stu and Frannie are happy with their baby boy Peter all grown up, the free Zone has become a humongous society now with everyone locking their doors at night, Sue is due very soon and Frannie and Stu will stay until she gives birth to than leave for Maine where Frannie is from since she is feeling homesick and tiered of the free zone, but a new guy  came (Hugh Petrella) and because the he is the new deputy in the free zone he is urging to let his officers have guns (interesting) so Stu asks Frannie “do people ever learn?” And she replies “I don’t know.” (See interesting way to end this chapter and even the book would have ended here would of been great, but literally just the epilogue that’s left let’s see this through.) 

The circle closes: 

We had back to a man and his boots, waking up not remembering where he is or what happened as men approach him and yell “Yuh-nah” and he is happy as more come closer with spears they worship him as he extends his line less palms and smiles his devilish smile. And the line reads, “Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.” So I guess Flagg will have his rice again but I will hope that new people will rise against him or even Stu once again. (Yes the ending sucked, but it could of been worse he could of been Frannie’s child and kill them all but no he just appears halfway around the world and will definitely make a new society built on him alone. It pisses me off a bit but hey it’s not as a bad of an ending as him being Frannie’s baby and killing them all, or him being Tom in disguise and killing them all. I’m mad but at least happy to know that Stu and Frannie and their baby Peter are alive and well hopefully they won’t have to face Flagg again.)


 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings