This is going to sound like King heresy but… I'm 75% of the way through Under the Dome and kinda enjoying it more than The Stand. Don’t hurl rocks at me!
While it’s not bad by any means, The Stand took me like 3 months to finish. Dome took like a month. Overall I also enjoyed Dome more. Somehow The Talisman is also taking me forever to get through. Hopefully Black House is a quicker read for me.
Excited to get to Under the Dome considering its praise. I wrapped The Dark Tower a week or two back and while I definitely understand it is far from perfect, it was a tremendous fantasy series. I don't know that I've ever known so quickly that I will reread something so large several more times, or maybe make it like a bi-yearly thing. Working through 4.5 now.
I only read The Stand once as a teenager (I believe) on my initial Stephen King kick, but I've always thought I should go back and read it again
I breezed through Under the Dome in a week whereas The Stand took me about a month. Both are great but The Stand is a better book.
The Stand is goated, I think the "no great loss" chapter in the uncut version is probably the best thing he ever wrote
I would love to read Under The Dome, but I do a lot of my reading on my train commute and don't know if I want to carry around a tome in my backpack during the hot months. I like to stay light!
Under the Dome rips and never really lets up, but is more like Needful Things than The Stand. The Stand is slow, sprawling, and plodding (in the best way).
The Stand is the better written book for sure, but Under the Dome is like a thriller. It just never lets up from page one. And Big Jim is one of his best villains I think.
Going on vacation Friday and grabbed Joyland after seeing some people recommending it as a good beach read. I think this will be the most recent King I've read.
Bounced over to Children of Dune after Wind thru the Keyhole but coming back to Big Steve and picking up Black House
Got about 50 pages left in Black House. Much much darker than I was anticipating and also very bloated. I feel like so much could have been trimmed from this book. Loving the more focused connection to the Dark Tower in this one though. Would be so curious to know more about how specifically King and Straub co-write these books.
iirc Talisman was pretty even between the two, like swapping pages straight from the typewriter stuff. Black House was a lot more Straub heavy which is where the unusual narration style came from
This tracks. All of the "and now reader, we will float over to this part of town" stuff. At any rate, excited to see how this one ends - which I've heard is very cliff hanger-y.
it definitely has issues but one thing I'll give Black House is that Henry Leyden is a goated side character