I just give up.

The beginning was a lot of fun. King laid out a very believable apocalypse, of a military experiment that got out of hand. This let loose an unspecified sickness that had a nearly 100% contagion rate and a 100% fatality rate. Told from the point of view of many (many many many) characters, some who survive and some who don't. The feeling of dread and apocalypse was well chronicled.

But the story got bogged down in way too many details. And most of the characters were unsympathetic, so it was even more dreary reading about their backstories. I complained a few times while I was reading it that maybe I shouldn't have gone with the newer, expanded version, although I'm not sure if all the parts that bored me to tears were newly added parts or not.

But he skipped right over the actual collapse of society somehow. You'd think in the 700 pages or so that I did read, I would have gotten something about the collapse of (American) society, but it went from incoming doom, to highways strewn with cars and dead people before I even knew it. Then it became on of those books I am coming to truly abhor - a travel book.

For way too many sci-fi and fantasy books, the trope is to send your characters on a quest. From [b:The Hobbit|5907|The Hobbit (Middle-Earth Universe)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1372847500s/5907.jpg|1540236] to [b:The Passage|6690798|The Passage (The Passage, #1)|Justin Cronin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327874267s/6690798.jpg|2802546], the author sets up the story, then sends them on a meandering quest to finish up the story. To me, it just seems boring, because the actions that happen on the way have little or nothing to do with the actual story, just, as one film reviewer of The Lord Of The Rings put it, "one damn thing after another".

And that's what happens here. And for hundreds of mostly boring pages, with boring characters, they head out for Nebraska due to some odd "visions" they're all having to meet some old black woman on a porch. Meanwhile, there's some nefarious Man In Black who draws others to him. Oddly enough, almost nothing happens during the quests, just more chances for back stories.

One group, with the old black woman, just began another quest and I stalled out. I then read some reviews here and all the non fan reviews complained of the same things for the rest of the story- wandering around some more, setting up two communities that represent Good and Evil, and have Good triumph through some kind of deus ex machina or something.

So I decided then and there to just give up. I didn't need more questing, I was already tired of the Good/Evil stuff that was going on, and I certainly wasn't looking forward to a WTF ending. Life's short, my To Read list is approaching 1,000(!) books and there are far more interesting ones I've already started.

So another King try ends up abandoned and cold by the apocalyptic wayside. I'll give it two stars because it did keep me interested for a couple hundred pages. But bored for 400 more, with a staggering 650 left. I better hit Save now before I change it down to one star...