Ambitious Bibliophiles discussion

I started this earlier this year after seeing it on a list of book suggestions on reddit somewhere. One of the books on that list was the book "14" which I had recently suggested. I grabbed a sample chapter from my kindle and read it and was immediately hooked into the writing and intro to the story.

The story revolves around small and large groups of characters and how they survive after a nuclear war. There is a shadowy character who seems to enjoy the new world a little too much but I wont ruin much about him but he is eerily similar to Randall Flagg. Swan is a little girl who is able to "hear" nature but she doesn't understand it. If someone kills a flower or cuts down a tree she can hear its cries of pain. She is essentially the main character and most important as far as the plot. You will meet a lot of other characters along the way. Some are down right evil and others you will wish showed up much earlier in the story because you will grow to like them. (But don't get too attached...)

This book is very bleak at times, extremely violent and gut wrenching. I think I stopped about halfway through because it got to be very depressing, being immersed in this vast wasteland that was the United States. When I picked it back up I realized that I was just about over the hill where the plots started to solidify and intertwine (which is funny because the scene right when I started reading again is a few of the characters cresting a hill and finding a settlement).

I really enjoyed the characters, their back stories and how they changed (literally and figuratively) as I progressed through the book. I did at times feel like this was just a re-imagining of The Stand, not much as a rip off but it was very similar so I think that was another reason why I stopped and sorta lost interest. This is the first book I read by this author and I noticed that he enjoys using exclamation points and the phrase "Oh...". These writing style crutches are somewhat expected in books but sometimes it seemed excessive.

I would say I recommend this book, especially if you read The Stand (if not, read The Stand first) with some of The Passage and even a little bit of Mad Max thrown in.

I think I need to go read a comedy now...

The app didn't tell me what book your post was about so I spent the whole time reading it and thinking, "this book sounds great!" And wondering at the same time "WTF is it?!" Lol I'll definitely check this one out. Is it shorter than the Stand and the Passage?