I maintain in terms of characters and story The Stand is one of King’s best (at least that I’ve read) but holy hell that man does not know how to end a book. I’ve read maybe 10-ish of his full novels, and I can recall maybe 3 that had satisfying endings?
I’m currently reading In Nightfall by Suzanne Young and idk if it’s quite a 0 stars candidate but it’s cerainly the most frustrating book I’ve read in a very long time.
It desperately needs better editing, there are some truly weird and awful word choices that just don’t need to be there. There’s no flow to the writing at all. There’s far too much “she said” constantly around dialogue that doesn’t need it, she’s rampant with adjectives and adverbs to the point it feels like she’s scared to let the audience infer anything from her word choices and character behaviours and has to tell you specifically whenever somebody is being kind, sad, angry, curious etc.
She’s also slightly obsessed with describing specific aesthetic details of characters but not others. Like I can tell you the hairstyle of almost every character but I have no indication what any of their faces or bodytypes are at all. I don’t need everything spelled out, but it’s like she’s limited herself to only describing a handfull of characteristics, and not especially well at that.
The romance angle in it is also fairly cliche and uninspired which is disappointing.
I’m the total opposite on The Terror; I thought the book was a masterful suspense story and an interesting way to handle what eventually becomes a horror novel and the series was fine but simultaneously felt padded and also like it skipped through a bunch of stuff too fast.