I have so much to say about this book but I'll try to keep this short. When I first started this, I had really high hopes. The outbreak of the superflu and all the events surrounding the population becoming infected was horrifying and unsettling. The first half of this book was an easy 5 stars. The characters were interesting and enjoyable, and the story really seemed to be building up to something big with Flagg's people vs. Mother Abagail's. But then once everyone got to Boulder, we started following boring committee meetings that seemed not to have anything to do with the bigger picture, and the story just kind of meandered until it was time to go face Flagg. And when we finally got to the big stand-off against the dark man, it was over so quickly. They blew up and then we spent 100 pages following Tom and Stu on their adventure back to Boulder. It wasn't uninteresting - I liked the characters enough that it was still an enjoyable read. I just don't understand why the story went where it did and why we spent so much time reading about things that didn't add to what was happening. Had this been an entire book about the superflu outbreak and the military trying to cover it up, I think this would have been a 5 star read.