Coming up on page 800 of The Stand and it's really not grabbing me super hard. The first book was pretty cool with how the virus gets out and how the transmission worldwide is presented, but this stuff with the 2 settlements is just dragging, and I'm not really fond of any of the characters, which for a King book, is a surefire way to bore me. The circumstances of the novel have been the same for like 400 pages. It's no longer new or special so all this time spent in Boulder setting up the politics and governing body etc is just hard to get into. I'm hoping there's something that happens in the confrontation/conclusion that I take to. I'm wondering if I'd actually like the abridged version more purely from a pacing standpoint.