Just Finished...

It took me a month (I was travelling a lot for work), but I have finally come to the end of it: Stephen King's The Stand (extended edition).

What to say about this book, aside from the usual Stephen King's reviews? 
It's epic, entertaining, gory at times, brutal - it shows America in its true light, and humanity in all its wickedness, amazingness and nakedness.
I love how the characters he portraits feel real, solid.

I'm usually quite disappointed by King's endings - I think he rushes into it as if he would suddenly realise "Holy sh*t, I've already written 1000 pages, better wrap this up asap!", but not in this instance. I think this is one of the best (well, less worse) endings he's ever written.

I really enjoyed the apocalyptic story, so close to us, even though it was written back in the 70's. It's still really valid and while reading I could imagine myself thinking, what would I do in this situation? Which side would I follow - the baddies in the West with the "Walking Dude", or the goodies in the East with Mother Abagail? Hmm. Tough one. I'd probably be dead in a ditch because of Captain Trips (the infection).

The edition I've read is published by Hodder and I loooove the graphics and how they have packaged the books in the series. Unfortunately I don't have the full series yet, but I'm counting on finishing it soon - lack of space permitting.

You can see the whole series here below - I just love the use of colour and black and white. The books are illustrated in black and white, I think it's 1 illustration per chapter, and then the textblock is bled in the same colour of the cover and of the spine. The designer of this series is Jamie Keenan, and according to the FaceoutBooks website they originally were a bit different - you can see some of them at Keenan's website: HERE.

What you see below are the HB editions, which are a bit different, I have taken a couple of pics en passant at home to show my horror collection on Instagram, and while reading another favourite of mine: IT.

According to Keenan: King's name becomes almost illustrative and sets the tone for the rest of the cover while at the same time doing what any other mass market author name in gold foil might do.

So, all in all, good book, good author, good design. Couldn't ask for more!