Book Club: Katie and Judith read Stephen King's The Stand - Book 3

After spending over a month reading The Stand and not a lot else, I finally finished it at the weekend. It's been a wild ride. Fictional superflu. Actual flu. 2-person book club meetins at home, in the pub, in Costa and on the beach. My poor book is rather ragged-looking after just one read, and it's going to be a relief not having to carry that massive tome around with me everywhere. It's been the rare occasion when I've almost - almost - wished for an e-reader instead. 

Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.

Loose Ends

• By the end of Book 2, it still felt as though there was an awful lot of plot to go; the narrative was racing towards a conclusion before it felt ready - despite having already invested over a thousand pages in the book. How on earth was Stephen King going to tie up all the loose ends in the last 300? (That's almost the length of an ordinary paperback novel, and yet it seemed pitifully small.)
• Well, one means he used was to simply cut off entire threads of story. The first few chapters see one character after another come to a sudden and brutal end, some before their stories really felt like they were beginning. Of the three spies sent to Randall Flagg's Las Vegas, two are dead within two chapters. Harold's story, too, is cut off suddenly; we are suddenly at the miserable end of his life, and see how he got there only in flashback. And Nadine. After years of grooming from Flagg to become his wife and the mother of monsters, one outburst and all his plans are thrown out of the window - literally!
• Narratively, this should be most unsatisfying. It breaks all the rules of storytelling. And yet, somehow it works. The sudden demises of Dayna and the Judge in the first chapters show how dangerous and terrifying an enemy Flagg is, how our heroes are ostensibly powerless against him, that he can thwart their schemes so quickly, and yet... he is not in control either. 
• One reason I was disappointed in Needful Things, one of King's other novels, was because it ended up in a bloodbath. Most of the characters ended up dead, and I stopped caring after a while. The Stand has a similar body count among the named cast, and yet it worked. The stakes were higher.

Sacrifice

• I could have kicked myself when he men from Boulder simply walked into Las Vegas and I finally realised what kind of story this was. How were four unarmed man going to do battle with Randall Flagg and his forces and live to tell the tale? They weren't meant to. That wasn't the plan. They were the sacrifice. And in retrospect it seemed obvious. The book is so full of Christian allegory - King even describes it as such in his introduction! Still, I shouted out in horror when I realised what Flagg had in store for the characters. 
• So why, if they just had to show up and die, did they have to walk instead of drive? If they'd taken a car, how much suffering might have been prevented? But the walk was important; a test of character and faith. And, as Judith pointed out, it was about timing. They arrived, Flagg's gathered everyone together to make a spectacle of them, and the Trashcan Man shows up with his nuclear bomb. And so the plot strands all come together. Brutal.

Stu

• Looking back over Mother Abagail's prophecy, I realised she didn't say that one character would die, she said that one would not reach the destination - and that was Stu. He falls in the desert and breaks his leg, and as his broken-hearted friends leave him behind, we learn that "they never saw Stu again." That was when I started to put the pieces together - because I was sure that Stu would survive, against all the odds. With the help of the dog, Kojak, and Tom Cullen, the surviving spy on his way home, Stu pulls through the impossible and heads back east towards Boulder.
• I actually found Stu's journey home the most suspenseful part of the entire book. We think the danger is over - and then he starts having nightmares about Frannie's baby, opening up new fears. No, no, it has to be all right! There aren't enough pages left to do the alternative justice. Small spoilers remind us that we haven't actually seen anything that's going on in Boulder since they left. 

The End:

• And then he arrives home to the worst news. The baby is alive - but it's got Captain Trips, the superflu that no one has ever survived. It's only a matter of time. But no. It can't die. Not this close to the end. Not after 1200 pages or so of waiting. And so I dared to hope that this child would have some sort of mutation that would allow it to throw off the disease - and when this turned out to be true I shouted "YES!" and punched the air. 
• Although, ultimately, there was no battle in the end (and how many epic fantasies don't have a battle? It's just taken for granted these days. Nice to mix up the expectations there!) the only survivors of the main cast are Frannie, Stu, and Tom Cullen. Apart from Harold's bomb, the Free Zone has been largely safe, though, most of the casualties happened in Vegas or on the way. The community is growing. Yet, even so, my prediction about starting again once more proved correct, if not in the way I expected. Because, despite the increasing growth of the Boulder community, people are moving away again. The system begins to show the same flaws and problems as in the previous America. The Free Zone is now full of anonymous strangers, and with anonymity comes loss of community. So Stu and Frannie, with their baby (and another on the way) decide to move away, start again, US history unwinding again. They're going back to the pioneer life, away from everyone, out into the unknown. Very Little House on the Prairie. I was even right about the book ending on Mother Abagail's farm with Stu, Frannie and the baby. Although I wasn't expecting the new society to be that small!
• Almost ending, I should say. The epilogue leaves us with a final glimpse of Randall Flagg, still out there, somewhere. And as I'm aware that there is some crossover with the Dark Tower series, of which I've only read the first two books, I'm wondering if that world is where he's ended up.

Ultimately, I found the ending a lot more satisfying than I'd expected to, based upon where book two left off. I've seen several people criticising the book for having a rushed ending, but I think there were good reasons for some storylines coming to a very sudden halt. Yes, The Stand has earned its place at the "good" end of King's work, and was definitely worth the time and emotional commitment invested into it. 

Book Club: Katie and Judith read Stephen King's The Stand - Book 2, Chapters 51-60.

This update is rather belated as I spent a week somewhat appropriately struck down with the flu. I never get flu - I think this is the second time in thirty years, and so the timing of this was rather hilarious.* In the second half of Book 2 of The Stand, all our good guys have come together and settled down in Boulder, Colorado, and are working together to form a new society, known as The Free Zone. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, the evil Randall Flagg has got his own community.

Spoilers aplenty! Read on at your own risk!

Life in the Free Zone

• Judith got very annoyed that even after the world's been turned upside-down, there seems to be the old expectations of gender roles: the women (ie Frannie) do the housework, while the men go out and do manual labour. Of course, we only really see the domestic arrangements of a few families. But Stu seemed surprised at first to see Frannie washing and mending when there are stores full of clothes for the taking. But that's no way to live - chuck out clothes instead of washing them. Still, Stu is a Good Egg and promises to take turns hand-washing the laundry (at least until the power's back on and "Frannie" can use a washing machine again.
• And anyway, what are they doing with all the rubbish, all the empty food cans and waste? I didn't see any mention of bin men. Is the water still on? Do they have a plumber? These are the details we want to know!
• Judith's grumbles of last week were that the Free Zone residents appeared to be recreating the same old way of life as they were familiar with from the old America. But money is useless now. Ownership doesn't seem to matter. If what you need is available, it's there for the taking - if it isn't, improvise. 
• Of course, these resources won't last forever. For now, the Free Zone residents just want to survive the winter.

The Committee

• There are a lot of committee meetings in this part of the book! And sure enough, most of the named protagonists are on the committee - it does seem a little bit cliquey, and we didn't much like Glen Bateman's conversation with Stu in the previous section, which seems to be all about how to ensure that their in-crowd get nominated. 
• One of their tasks is to organise a team of spies to go over to Las Vegas against Flagg, and I didn't feel at all comfortable with the way that this group of seven took responsibility for picking out their "volunteers" in their absence, in full knowledge of their probable fates. For two of the spies, at least - the Judge and Dayna - they would at least get to make an informed decision, even if they can't very well feel able to decline. But the third was the mentally challenged Tom Cullen, and that just doesn't sit right with me. But, although Tom is "not playing with a full deck," it seems that he's got the rest of his cards stashed away in his subconscious, so if you hypnotise him, he's able to understand and consent to being sent off on his own into mortal danger, even if he doesn't remember it afterwards. No, this did not sit well with me at all.

Nadine, Harold - and Larry

• It's a very black-and-white world: there are the good guys and there are Flagg's people. Nadine and Larry are on the line - they could go either way. One decision shapes both of their fates: when Nadine tries to seduce Larry, but he's having none of it. It seems quite rare in fiction for a character to actually resist temptation! So, good for Larry. It's just a shame bad consequences came of him making the right decision...
• Yet, as Judith pointed out, Larry cannot be held responsible for Nadine's actions, and if it was the moment that marked Nadine's downfall, Larry's choice of loyalty to Lucy over lust was the moment that marked his redemption. If he'd gone with Nadine, would he have been able to save her - or would she have dragged him down with her? (I see parallels of abusive relationships where one person thinks they can change another.)
• Instead, Nadine turns to Harold, and this is where his nastiness, his martyr complex and his venomous hatred turn his loyalties over to Flagg once and for all. I was still shocked by what happened next...

Wasted Characters?

• I was Most Displeased by the death of Nick Andros in Harold's explosion. Nick had been my favourite protagonist in the first book of The Stand. but once he arrived at Boulder he seemed to disappear somewhat. Sure, he sat on the committee, and his connection to Tom was a key plot point, but it felt rather as though King didn't know what to do with him, so got him blown up, instead! As Judith pointed out, his lack of a voice meant that he kind of got lost in the crowd once Boulder began filling up with people.
• Similarly, Mother Abagail, who was such a strong force for good, just vanished halfway through the book, returning to bring prophecies and then die. Her role seemed to be as a catalyst for plot events, rather than as an actual character.

Predictions for Book 3:

• That the focus will shift to the four remaining white (probably) male able-bodied members of the committee as they trek out to Las Vegas to confront Randall Flagg somehow.
• Somehow the four of them: Stu, Larry. Glen Bateman and Ralph (who we don't really know very well) have to take on Randall Flagg and his entire company. It seems like a doomed mission of foolishness, and I just don't know how they can hope to win in whatever battle is coming up. I'm sure they will defeat - if not destroy - Flagg, but King's got his work cut out to impress me with whatever deus ex machina he'll use to make this a battle and not a suicide mission.**
• Mother Abagail predicted that one member of the group will die. That seems to fit Larry's journey of character growth: redemption equals death. 
• Judith reckons that the book might end with the beginning of the battle.
• I think that whatever happens, the population will suffer even more great losses, and will end up starting another new society from scratch, with a very small and simple community. Perhaps it will end, after all, in Mother Abagail's farm.
• I'm pretty sure Stu and Frannie will survive, and we've had so much invested in Frannie's baby that I really hope that it will live too. As a family, they'll be a symbol of hope for the future in a broken world. Also I feel like Tom Cullen has a charmed aura of Author Protection. Despite all the odds, he'll be okay.

*Not hilarious.

Book Club: Katie and Judith read Stephen King's The Stand - Book 2, Chapters 43-50.

Spoiler alert: This post goes into a lot more detail than a general review. My literature-brain is at work.

Book one of The Stand saw most of the world's population killed by a super-deadly, weaponised version of the 'flu, engineered by the US military, and accidentally released into its own population. The few survivors are scattered and wandering, a few of them teaming up while looking for somewhere to go, something to do, now the world as they know it has come crashing down. They are being haunted by strange dreams and dark nightmares, seeming to call to them from across the country...

Introducing...

• Book one let us get to know the main cast of The Stand: Larry and Stu, Frannie and Nick, with glimpses into the lives of a couple of the bad guys, and brief sightings of the Dark Man, Randall Flagg, and an old lady called Mother Abagail, who seems to be his opposite number. Now we've figured them out, it's time to bring in a new supporting cast, to replace all the friends-and-relations wiped out by the virus.
• The problem I found is that the new characters do not yet feel as fully-formed as those we've already spent time befriending (or whatever the opposite is.) All the groups of travellers are getting bigger, but with each chapter bringing in a new point-of-view, both Judith and I found ourselves needing to take a little time reminding ourselves of which newcomers were travelling with which old faces. 
• We both found the narrative's treatment of the women newbies a little troubling. Nick, the Generally Good Egg, meets Julie, but as soon as she is introduced to his other companion, the simple-minded Tom Cullen, she stirs up trouble between them and Nick's dismissal of her (but not until after he's slept with her because of course) seems uncharacteristically brutal. I get that she was a troublemaker, I didn't like her right from the start, and obviously he's meant to have seen something inside her that is dangerous, but... I dunno. She felt very much like a lazy use of the "evil seductress" trope rather than a real person, and it didn't quite sit right with me. 
• And Judith was bothered by Larry's treatment of Lucy. He's "in love with" Nadine, but not so much that if he can't get together with her, he won't make do with Lucy as second best. Lucy, too, seemed like a trope, rather than a character: the woman who is with a man who doesn't love her, because she doesn't expect any better. Judith's read a lot of bad sci-fi ("or good sci-fi by men who know nothing about women") and is so familiar with and so tired of that kind of two-dimensional character.
• Of all the new characters, though, Nadine is the most interesting. I didn't trust her, right from the start; sneaking around behind Larry, rather than introducing herself to him. But on the surface, she seems decent enough: she loves children, doesn't believe in violence, is a virgin well into her thirties. And then it turns out she and the dark man go way back... Oh, she's never met him, as far as I can tell, but she's been dreaming of him since long before Captain Trips. Like Larry, she's walking the fine line between good and evil, but where Larry seems bad but will probably end up a hero, I have a very bad feeling about Nadine's plotline. I do not think it will end well at all.  

Doubles and contrasts

• My English Literature brain has noticed a lot of pairs, doubles and contrasts throughout this page. You've got the people dreaming of both Abagail and Flagg, with their heaven-and-hell symbolism, and I've just highlighted how I can see Nadine acting as a dark mirror for Larry's character development. Then we've got Tom Cullen and the Trashcan Man - both a little broken, but one all goodness and one all bad.

Apocalypse

• The Stand is not the first "post-Apocalyptic" book I've read; there do seem to be a lot of them about, but this is unusual in really living up to the description. It's surprisingly religious in some ways, with a good-versus-evil battle for souls, and a lot of biblical imagery. And we've had Pestilence, or Plague, and Death. War is coming, and Judith has a bad feeling about their preparations against Famine.
• Early on in the book, two characters discuss the weird phenomenon of trains and planes involved in accidents not being full to capacity, with a consistently higher no-show rate than those vehicles that reach their destinations OK. I'd heard a lot of stories about people who should have been on the trains and bus bombed in London in 2005, and Judith confirmed this: both her sister and her aunt ought to have been on the same train. One was early, the other late!
• Boulder, Colorado, where the good guys eventually settle was a lot emptier than most of the towns the protagonists have passed through. Maybe the inhabitants thought they could escape the plague. But the plague was everywhere by the end. It seems very convenient for our guys, not to have so many bodies to bury. But maybe it is also foreshadowing another disaster approaching. (The very nature of this book tells us another disaster is approaching. But what will be the catalyst?)
• War is coming, and Flagg has the advantage so far, with our heroes spending most of their time travelling and settling into their new city. Flagg has an arsenal of weapons, and, if Bateman is to be believed, most of the technical people. What on earth is Stephen King trying to say here? Computer nerds are evil, or technology is? Is he advocating an ending similar to the finale of the most recent version of Battlestar Galactica? It seems like a very harsh and simplistic judgement!

Location

• I asked if there was any significance to the locations where people have congregated. Neither Judith nor I have been to America, so we can't go from personal experience, but Las Vegas has a rather garish reputation of debauchery (and I'm sure it's lovely in real life. Well...) Also, it's surrounded by desert, so there's nowhere to run.
• Abagail's farm in Nebraska seemed idyllic, all fertile and wholesome and old-fashioned. But it's not big enough for all the people flocking towards them, so they had to find a new place: Boulder, Colorado, a deserted city (as are they all, now, but this one has fewer corpses ruining the aesthetic.) But there does seem to be a sort of exiled-from-paradise theme here, too. 

Politics

• The bit that made Judith the angriest in this section was Bateman's discussion of having to reinstate a political system in the free zone of Boulder. And, of course, it has to be the same old way of doing things as before: a hierarchy, a democracy, sure, but let's make sure that it's the sort of democracy that he and his people want. They'll have Mother Abagail as the nominal head, because she's the one the people have come to find, but really Bateman and his carefully-selected committee will be in charge. Stick to what is tried, tested, and not entirely broken, but for goodness' sake, don't try anything new.
• Although Judith liked Bateman upon first meeting him, now she can't stand him, finding him manipulative and sly.
• Politics, I think, is where the new utopian society will start to come apart.
• But what's the alternative? In Las Vegas, where Randall Flagg is setting up his own domain, it is a democracy, ruled by fear. And Flagg may have called all the dark hearts towards him, but he is ruthless in disposing of anyone who is not "useful" to him.

Dreams

• So, as has already been mentioned, the characters have all been dreaming of Randall Flagg and Mother Abagail. Up to a point, fair enough. But their dreams are starting to shape too much of the plot. They're going to places because of dreams. They're getting valuable information from their dreams. And it's starting to nag at me that this feels like cheating. Sure, if everyone's having the same dreams, they'd say "hmm, that's weird," and "maybe there's something going on here," but it's bothering me how much trust they're putting in them, and it feels like lazy storytelling to me.

Harold

• When Larry arrived at the free zone, he revealed that he'd been following a trail set by Harold Lauder. He had a far higher opinion of Harold than either Frannie or Judith and I did. It set me to wondering who had the more accurate impression of the guy. Larry judged him only by his actions, unprejudiced by Harold's age, personality or appearance. Is he ignorant or wise?
• We discussed last week that Harold felt like a dangerously unhinged "protector" of Frannie. When he described Stu as "that guy," with all his preconceived ideas of the stereotype jock figure, I was thinking, no, Harold is the "that guy" of today's world, the self-described "nice guy" who makes a martyr of himself, whining about being "friendzoned" whenever a girl doesn't fancy him, and feeling all hard-done-by and entitled to another person's affections. Not a nice guy at all. 
• As such, he seemed far too cheerful about Frannie and Stu becoming an item. He took it too well, and, after Fran's reflections after discussing Harold with Larry, you could almost wonder if, after all, Harold was more mature than we'd given him credit for. Then you remember he's spied on them together, stolen Frannie's diary, and generally acted much younger than his age, and it's all thrown into doubt. In the last couple of pages of chapter 50, we see Harold's perspective, and no, it is all an act. 
• I never had a high opinion of Harold, but I was still shocked to see him plotting to actually go to Flagg and betray his fellow-survivors. All because he didn't get the girl. It seems that everyone who goes bad, ends up with Flagg. There's no grey areas. I'm not sure whether I like that or not. I suppose Harold's story shows the mundane sort of evil born of jealousy or selfishness or so on. Not all of the bad guys are the murderers and robbers and rapists. Some start off quite ordinary folk, with a weakness, and where there's a weakness, there's a vulnerability to the dark side.

Conclusion:

So, what's to come? Now we've got all our main good guys together in Boulder, they've got to start building a community once more. There's a meeting been called to discuss leadership, politics and a legal system. Judith is concerned that no one's mentioned farming yet. Canned foods won't last forever, and people need fresh vegetables. They need doctors, surgeons - even appendicitis has proven fatal, now. Frannie'll need a midwife. Meanwhile, we know trouble is coming. War is coming, and they are unprepared. But before Flagg launches his assault on Boulder, in whatever form that will take, I think it will start corroding from within. ("Things fall apart; the centre does not hold.) Nadine is dangerous. Harold is dangerous. Larry is a risk. I think good will prevail, ultimately, but at a great cost, and Randall Flagg will not be utterly destroyed. I rather suspect that there will be yet another great collapse, and that the book will end with the last survivors having to start afresh yet again. Perhaps back at Mother Abagail's farm in Nebraska - but she will not be there. She's a hundred and eight. She will not survive the book.

Book Club: Katie and Judith read Stephen King's The Stand - Book 1.

After finishing reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell at the beginning of March, you'd think I'd whizz through a load of the shorter books on my to-read shelf. But instead, I launched almost immediately into one of the biggest novels in any bookshop, Stephen King's epic The Stand. But not alone. This time I'm reading in company, with my best friend Judith (who beat me to the one and only copy in the library, so I had to buy my own. It was free on Waterstone's points, though, so I'm not complaining.) From time to time, Judith and I hold our own two-person book club, and this time I've made enough notes to share with you, you lucky, lucky people.

Spoiler warning: As a multi-part discussion, this will contain a lot more detail than a normal review.

Expectations and Surprises:

• I knew very little about The Stand when I started reading it. All I knew was that it was a post-apocalyptic novel set after a super-flu wipes out most of the world's populations, and that its villain, Randall Flagg, is one of Stephen King's biggest baddies, and that he pops up in several other of King's novels in different guises, and also that there is some crossover with the Dark Tower series, of which I've read the first two books. As such, I won't be surprised if I see him there later on - and am not certain he hasn't already been mentioned.
• I had images in my head of desert wasteland, of lots of people walking, of ravens and crows.
• Judith has read The Stand before, probably at least ten years ago, and she was surprised at how long it took to set the scene; she had forgotten that we see so much of what the world was like before the flu virus, nicknamed "Captain Trips" set in. We get through the length of an ordinary book (about 400 pages) introducing the protagonists in their ordinary or not-so-ordinary lives, going about their business and facing their own challenges, big and little, before the virus breaks in and disrupts everything. I found myself so engrossed in the characters' stories that I'd almost forget about the main plot until King would remind us at the end of a chapter, and show how the virus is spreading from one person, across the country and to the entire world.

The characters

• The designated protagonists are the survivors from each of the different subplots: Stu, one of the first to come into contact with "Captain Trips," Frannie, a college student who has just found out she's expecting a baby, Larry, a rock star with one hit record who has found himself in financial trouble, and Nick, a deaf and mute wanderer who had just found a place for himself, when the flu came to town, leaving him the last survivor. He was our favourite character, a guy who's had a bad lot in life, but who has made the best of things. A thoroughly Good Egg. (Great. He's going to die, isn't he? Probably in some kind of heroic sacrifice to save the world. He's that sort of character.)
• Then there's Lloyd, who is simply repulsive, a criminal who has got mixed up in robbery and murder, and who found himself quite pleased with his new bad-guy image in jail... right up to the point at which he discovers he's facing the death sentence. It's difficult to feel sorry for Lloyd, and yet, once the flu hits and he's left alone in his cell, you wouldn't wish that onto anyone. Then Randall Flagg turns up. "Pleased to meet you!" he says, and I don't think it's a coincidence that I had already jotted down that very line (followed by "hope you've guessed my name") after reading the first couple of pages featuring Flagg. 
• Nick might be my favourite character, and Judith's, but Larry Underwood seems the most complex, with the biggest "journey" ahead of him. He's not a good man, and deep inside, he knows that. He's weak-willed, selfish, often unkind. His own mother described him as a "taker." She loved him dearly, could see there was good inside him - but wished he'd do more to get in touch with that goodness. Already, The Stand is shaping up to have a big Good vs Evil conflict going on, with some characters falling each side of the divide. Larry could go either way. I predict that, ultimately, he'll be on the "good" side, but it'll be a long hard struggle for him.
• Towards the end of book 1, the survivors are just starting to meet up with others, and we've got the beginnings of a new secondary cast. Frannie travels with her late best friend's little brother, Harold Lauder. He's a weird kid, pompous and nerdy, an intelligent teenager, a weird mixture of child and man. But at the end of part one, he shows some worrying, rather creepy tendencies. It's clear he's got a crush on Frannie, who is five years his senior, and feels protective towards her, but that protectiveness shows itself in a worrying, potentially dangerous way, when they meet up with Stu, betraying his feelings as a possessiveness that Judith described as thoroughly repulsive.

Morality:

• When Frannie comes home to tell her parents about her pregnancy, her mother and father show two very different approaches to morality in life. Her mother is very religious, with a rigid moral code - and utterly loveless, a very nasty woman. By contrast, her father is a gentle sort of man, who does not like to contradict his wife, but prefers a peaceful life. He lives his life by logic, science, reason. Yet, when it comes to Frannie's baby, he is surprised that his opinions are driven not by logic, or by generations of rules and laws, but by his emotions. I pondered on what kind of moral code will be of more use when building a new civilisation from scratch.
• Judith's example was of a train heading towards five people on the railway track. If you had the power to flick a switch and save them, but by doing so, kill one person on the siding, would you do that? The logical answer is that one person dying is better than five, that, to quote Spock, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." But, according to a book she'd been reading (she did not name it) that is a psychopath's answer; most people's consciences would feel worse about killing one person by one's actions, even to save five, than to let them die through one's inaction, because they would die anyway. (And I decided that I didn't like either option, and that I'd just shout "GET OFF THE LINE!" because, to use another Wrath of Khan quote, "I don't believe in no-win scenarios.") But as for what sort of moral code will be the foundation of a new civilisation, and its strengths and weaknesses, we'll have to wait and see.

The Collapse of Civilisation

• I chose the wrong time to read The Stand; when a vicious strain of flu and colds was doing its rounds, making me feel quite uneasy. But I also wondered about whether The Stand could be viewed as an allegory, or a warning, of anything else that might cause society to collapse. I looked up the poem that some of the characters discussed, W. B. Yeats' "The Second Coming," which was written after the First World War, or could also refer to the political situation of Ireland at the time. It's full of end-of-the-world imagery, and I felt that it sets the tone for the entire book. In the middle of the 20th century, people feared nuclear war could bring about the end of life as we know it, and I even thought about the UK of the moment, with the government making cuts upon cuts upon cuts, to the health service, to welfare for the disabled, the poor, the young, the old. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. How much more can this go on?
• And Judith has been reading about all the old lost civilisations, where the top ends have grown more and more prosperous, the gulf between rich and poor grown wider and wider, until  -Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
• Bateman, one of the people met along the way, serves as Mr Exposition, predicting a rather pessimistic future of small societies destroying each other. 
• The most horrifying thing about The Stand is that the "Captain Trips" virus was entirely man-made, a biologically-engineered weapon. And the question raised is why? Who would be stupid enough to make something that would practically wipe out the entire world - and make no antidote? Yet it's entirely believable. Always, nations are making bigger and more horrifying weapons that they never expect to use, just to prove to actual and potential enemies that they're not to be messed with. But in this case, all it takes is one person getting out and doing the natural thing of running for it.
• And what is worse: "Rome falls." They've got agents with phials of the germ all over the world. When it's too late for America, the whole world is going down too. I just don't understand that. Is it an attempt to stop anyone asking questions, to preserve the American military's reputation, even though they're too dead to care about the rest of the world's judgement? Horrific.

The Dreams:

• The main characters have all started to have nightmares of Randall Flagg in a high place, most clearly in Nick's dream of being offered his hearing and a voice. It's an obvious biblical reference to Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness. 
• By contrast, Nick has also dreamed of a ripe cornfield in Nebraska, and an old lady known as Mother Abagail. Judith was a bit confused by the cornfield, as she was sure it was supposed to symbolise innocence, nostalgia, simpler times - but, despite living on an Island with lots of farmland, it didn't have any personal associations for her. For me, the fertile farmland was set up as a contrast to the desert: life instead of death, good instead of evil.

In Conclusion:

By the end of book one, only a couple of the many characters introduced so far have met up, and they are all wandering fairly aimlessly. Nick is heading for Nebraska, Fran, Harold and Stu heading for Vermont, and I think Larry's in the same state, but has not met up with the rest. They are coming closer, but still in small clusters of people, nowhere near forming a society. I'd had the idea that The Stand would form one community, or maybe two (one good, one evil) but if so, it's still a good way into the future. Maybe, instead, it's an epic along the lines of Game of Thrones with the characters scattered all across the continent. I kind of wish I'd got a map where I could mark out all the characters' journeys, and where they are in relation to each other. 400-odd pages in, and we're at the point where I'd imagined the book to begin! Not that I mind; what I like best about Stephen King's good works is that he does take time just getting to know the characters, setting them up and drawing you in, making you care before throwing everything he's got at them. 

If you've read The Stand you're very welcome to add any thoughts to the comments below. I'll be posting our thoughts on the first half of Book 2 on Friday.

Mini-reviews: It, The Last Englishman, Flowers for Algernon

It - Stephen King

2014 was the Year of Stephen King for me: although I had read his books before, it wasn't until last year that I recognised what a wonderful storyteller he is: not the mere writer of horror stories his reputation suggests - King writes about people, makes you care about them, and then, once you've grown attached, he makes you fear not just whichever monster they face, but fear for his characters. And as such, It really isn't "a horror story about an evil clown" at all. Yes, it is gruesome and unsettling at times, but the novel did not frighten me half as much as the idea of it did - and the clown does not appear nearly as often as I'd been led to believe. I still don't think I'd be up to watching the 1990 TV film adaptation though. I really. Don't. Like. Clowns. (I learned that a young Seth Green - Oz in Buffy - played the younger version of Richie Tozier. YES. Perfect.)

Just as someone once described Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, (a very different book, with similar themes) what happens in It really isn't what it's about. Yes, there is a shape-shifting monster whose favourite disguise is as a murderous clown called Pennywise, but really the book is about the perils unique to childhood, it is about a hostile place, the power of people to ignore what is going on under their noses, it is about the strength in friendship to overcome monsters visible and unseen. At over 1500 pages, It was nearly double the runner-up for longest book read last year, but not a word was wasted, not a page dragged. King has a rich prose, taking his time in building up the town of Derry, inducting the reader into the Losers' Club with Bill, Ben, Richie, Beverly, Eddie, Mike and Stan, and weaving together past and present as our characters' forgotten memories of the summer of '58 slowly return to them as required in the battle against It.

Key quotes: "That's what happened when you got back to your used-to-be, as the song put it. The frosting on the cake was sweet, but the stuff underneath was bitter."

"If there are ten thousand medieval peasants who create vampires by believing them real, there may be one - probably a child - who will imagine the stake necessary to kill it."

The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome – Roland Chambers.

To most people, the name Arthur Ransome is synonymous with quaint English adventure stories for children, full of decent English children in a time when they were allowed to run free, sail, camp, climb mountains and play at being adventurers, explorers and pirates with no supervision from anyone older than the age of twelve or thirteen. All as jolly and wholesome as anyone can wish for! But before he came to write the Swallows and Amazons books, Ransome lived a very different life as a journalist, witnessing first-hand the Russian revolution and cosying up to many of the biggest names of the Bolshevik movement so well that ultimately, his every motive and movement came under question. In The Last Englishman, Roland Chambers attempts to unravel the mystery of Arthur Ransome, only to find the writer to be a slippery fish indeed!

I have to confess myself very ignorant about such a momentous period in history, and as such I found this biography heavy-going at times, but also fascinating, leaving me wanting to read and understand more about early twentieth-century Russia. As a biographer, Chambers draws Ransome as a curious, enigmatic figure, but shows little admiration for him as a man, showing him to be a far more difficult, sometimes naive or irresponsible, and curmudgeonly figure than his character “Captain Flint” – Nancy and Peggy Blackett’s Uncle Jim – the retired adventurer who might be closer to how Ransome would prefer to be remembered.


Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes

One of the science fiction classics of the 20th century, Flowers for Algernon is presented as the journal of Charlie Gordon, a young man with learning disabilities, who is eager to be the test subject for an experimental IQ-increasing drug trial. His journals (misspelled at first) chart his progress from "simpleton," working as a janitor in a bakery, to a genius who puts the world's leading scientists to shame. As well as his increasing intellect, Charlie's progress reports portray his emotional development and his new understanding of the world and the people within it. This is a bittersweet experience, when he comes to recognise the cruelty of his "friends'" jokes at his expense, and that intelligence brings as much trouble as it solves.

Flowers for Algernon is an important novel, as important now as at the time when it was written, raising discussions of personhood, and the treatment of the mentally disabled. It asks how far identity comes from one's perception of the world, and raises the question of the ethics of pushing the boundaries of nature through science: is it a miracle or an abomination best left alone?

Key quote: "Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols. But I know now education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn."

Readers Imbibing Peril IX wrap-up post.

Apologies for the lateness of this post!

This year I took part in RIP IX (Readers Imbibing Peril, organised by Carl Anderson at Stainless Steel Droppings.) My chosen challenge was Peril the First: to read four dark, spooky and intriguing novels in the space of two months, and you can see my sign-up post with its goals and suggested reading list here. I'm pleased to announce that for perhaps the first time since I started this blog, I've managed to reach my goal!

The books:

The Silkworm by "Robert Galbraith." The second of J. K. Rowling's crime novels featuring Cormoran Strike lives up to and goes beyond the standard set by The Cuckoo's Calling, and shows that her magical storytelling is not limited by genre. I could not put this down.

The Coldest Girl In Coldtown by Holly Black. A vampire novel for the reality TV and social media generation, combining the danger of the monsters of old with the glamour of the more recent species - but no, they do not sparkle.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King. A collection of novellas that pose the question: what might drive a person to commit a crime? As I found with his own son's book, Horns, there is no horror quite as unsettling as the perfectly mundane awfulness that can be found in seemingly ordinary people.

My last book did not come from the original to-read pile but was a birthday present from Hanna. I'm not entirely sure that 11.22.63 counts, as it's not exactly horror, but it is written by Stephen King. An immersive, fascinating, world-changing novel. I did not want to finish this book. Definitely one of the best books I've read this year. (I intend to write a full review very soon.)

Mini-reviews: Doctor Sleep, Landline &L. M. Montgomery

Doctor Sleep - Stephen King

After rereading The Shining earlier this year and surprising myself with how good it was, I approached its long-awaited sequel Doctor Sleep with some trepidation. Stephen King says he periodically asked himself: "what's Danny Torrance up to now?" and Doctor Sleep sets out to answer this question. When I started reading, I felt that I didn't really want to know what the adorable precocious child turned out like as an adult, and the start of the book confirmed this. Danny, now known as Dan, has inherited many of his father's self-destructive traits and starts off in a very bad place. Unlike his father, however, whose attempt to save himself and his family in isolation led to catastrophe, Danny finds redemption in a small community, with good friends and a job that uses his unique talents to help people.

As a horror story, Doctor Sleep isn't a patch on The Shining. The monsters look like a harmless group of elderly people who travel in camper-vans, but are actually a kind of vampire who achieve immortality by murdering "shining" children. "The True Knot," as they call themselves, repulsed but did not really engage me. I've said before and will say again that Stephen King is more than just a horror writer - his stories' strength is in making you care for the characters. I really wanted everything to work out for Dan and his young friend Abra Stone, a bright girl with far stronger "shining" powers even than Dan himself. And on an emotional level, the novel provides a satisfying sense of closure to the tale that began all those years ago. Dan breaks the cycle of destructive behaviour, and Jack Torrance gets atonement through his son. There is a beautiful moment which made me unexpectedly sob on the train.

You didn't need to be Ebenezer Scrooge to know there were good ghostie people as well as bad ones.

Landline - Rainbow Rowell

There's been a lot of hype about Landline in the blogging world, which has fallen head-over-heels in love with Rainbow Rowell like the characters in her books. I've found Rowell's books are all very different in tone: Attachments is cute, Eleanor and Park is raw and heartbreaking, while Fangirl felt like a chapter from my own life. Landline felt darker than Rowell's previous work, even Eleanor and Park, sad in a way that made me feel uncomfortable, an examination of a marriage that might be in trouble. The story takes place over the Christmas period, when television writer Georgie decides to spend the holiday at home working while her husband Neal and their daughters go to visit his family. Being plunged into the situation at the start, my thoughts were "That's a real shame - at Christmas! - but why is everyone assuming that divorce is on the cards?" Of course, the book reveals that the marriage has had its ups and downs for a while. Luckily, in Georgie's old bedroom there is a magic telephone that allows her to phone Neal - but Neal in the past. "How does that work?" I asked when I read the premise. "How can that possibly not cause a time paradox?" But Rowell handles it well, and reveals how these telephone calls had an impact on their relationship in the past as well as in the present.

Landline is saved from becoming depressing by Rowell's trademark humour and the cute moments captured on paper, little details unique to this couple, this family, and an adorable ending that had me crying happy-tears. It was a quick read which provides a lot of food for thought about communication and compromise, the essential ingredients to any successful relationship.

When Georgie thought of divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems.

Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery: Volumes 1 and 2 (1889-1921)

It's no secret that Anne of Green Gables is one of the books that made me what I am today, so when I found the journals of author Lucy Maud Montgomery in the Oxford University Press shop, I couldn't stop myself from splashing out, curious about the woman who invented the beloved redhead. Montgomery lived with her grandmother on Prince Edward Island until the latter's death, and then married a minister and moved to Ontario. Her diaries give a picture of the joys and frustrations of being an intelligent woman at the turn of the last century, with an untamed imagination but having to conform to social expectations. Montgomery, known as Maud - never Lucy - was an observer of life, but not a people-person, which made her role as a minister's wife at the heart of a community a difficult one indeed. She writes of the strain of being expected to socialise with people she had no affinity with, and being unable to make close friends within the parish for fear of showing favouritism.

Those familiar with the Anne books will recognise phrases and incidents that later got translated into fiction, as well as the familiar dreamy prose. The diaries from the war years are particularly interesting to read alongside Rilla of Ingleside as a contemporary account of World War 1 on the home front. The journals are also illustrated with Maud's photographs, and she and some of her friends look far different from the usual stern Victorian and Edwardian portraits. Maud looks like she really lived, her eyes revealing an intelligent sparkle and amusement. I could tell just from the photos that she was a kindred spirit. There are also some

pictures of a pair of china dogs, brought back from honeymoon, which must have been the model for the ornaments Anne falls in love with at her boarding house. I couldn't really understand from the description in the book what was so alluring about these dogs, but the photos reveal them to be positively cute and cheeky little creatures, very different from the austere hounds I had imagined.

L. M. Montgomery kept these journals from the age of fourteen until near the end of her life, and they reveal a fascinating social history of one woman's life in a changing world; as a girl, wife and working woman.

The Shining - Stephen King

I first read Stephen King's The Shining at university, in my Gothic Fiction unit of my Literature degree. I came to the book with preconceptions, the famous bits of the Stanley Kubrick film. But although these scenes gave me a pretty good idea of where the story was going, none of the most memorable scenes of the film come from the book. I was familiar with Jack Nicholson's particular brand of crazy, and read the book just expecting it to build up to that moment. This time around, I took the book as it is, watching the struggle of Jack Torrance, who, if not exactly a good man, is a man trying to be good.

In case you're unfamiliar with the story, The Shining takes place at the Overlook Hotel, a popular Colorado tourist resort in the summer, but in the winter an undesirable place, cut off from the rest of the world. Jack Torrance takes a job as the winter caretaker, and moves in with his wife Wendy and five-year-old son, Danny, a bright young boy with a very unusual talent. Danny knows things that he shouldn't know, sees things that no one else can see, a gift that Mr Halloran, the Overlook's cook, refers to as "shining."

In a great gothic novel, the setting is a character in its own right, and the Overlook Hotel certainly is that, with its history of dark deeds and sinister deaths, and its isolation. It's one thing having characters separated from the outside world in centuries past, in ruined castles with dark, dank dungeons. But in America in the twentieth century, how isolated can the Torrance family really be? If you're the owner of a hotel in the Colorado mountains, and you're employing someone over the winter months, you'd make sure they can't get stranded there, right? The Torrances arrived at the Overlook by car, the hotel has a telephone, a radio and a snowmobile. But as the story goes on, Stephen King takes away these connections with the outside world, one by one, by a combination of natural and supernatural means.

The Overlook has a malevolent personality, and Danny's "shining" feeds it, make its powers stronger. The Shining contains several features of a conventional haunted-house story: the clanking elevator in the middle of the night, the topiary animals that move, the thing in room 217 - but its real terror is the way that it works with the Torrance family's own inner demons. And boy, does Jack Torrance have a lot of those! What marks Stephen King as a master storyteller rather than merely a horror writer, is the way that he makes us care for his characters before throwing terrible things at them to cope with. Jack Torrance is a troubled man: a recovering alcoholic with a deadly temper, clinging desperately to his pride. A former private school teacher, Jack lost his temper and his job, and what keeps him at the Overlook long after he and his family should have fled for their lives is his need to be provider and head of the family, his terror that this is his last chance and that if he messes this up he might never get another job. The Shining shows a family that has been under a lot of pressure, but is emerging from a dark period with a glimmer of hope - and then cruelly snatches that hope away in the story's terrifying finale. Jack's memories of his childhood and the darkness in his more recent past foreshadow the events in the book's finale, posing questions about addiction, inherited behaviour and fate. The real horror of The Shining is that it is unclear how much of what Jack becomes is natural, and how much is supernatural.

The Shining now has a sequel, Doctor Sleep, now available in paperback.

From a Buick 8 - Stephen King

In the months after Curtis Wilcox's death, his son Ned spends more and more time around the police barracks among his dad's old colleagues. When he discovers the vintage Buick Roadmaster locked up in Shed B, naturally Ned is curious. But what is inside that shed is no mere car...

From A Buick 8 feels rather like a classic ghost story, the sort told around a campfire by torchlight. It is set out as a story within a story, with the narrator Sandy reporting to the reader the tale he had previously related to Ned. This framing device took me a while to get used to, working out which later of storytelling I was reading at any one time, but it means we get to take our cues from seeing Ned's reaction to the things he is told and shown - and from Sandy's thoughts about Ned's response. This also sets up the final act in the present day.

When I started reading, although I enjoyed getting to know the police team of Troop D, I felt that it was taking a long time to really get started. 150 pages or so in, all the Buick had to show for itself was a perfectly shiny condition, mechanisms that couldn't possibly work, a couple of missing people and a localised lightning storm in the shed. Eventually it became apparent that the car was some sort of portal to another world or dimension, a two-way door. People would disappear in its vicinity, and then a few unearthly creatures or plants appeared after the lightning phenomena, and would promptly die. There is something Lovecraftian in the things that appeared from the Buick, horrifying in their strangeness but I didn't feel overly impressed with the novel as a supernatural tale of terror.

But partway through, I realised, this isn't what it's really about. I ought to know better by now. Although Stephen King is known for his horror stories, what makes him stand out above the rest is everything else, the humanity. From A Buick 8 isn't really about a creepy car, or creatures from another world. It's about family: the families we're born into and the family we make for ourselves. It's about grief, and curiosity, camaraderie and a shared history, about the life of a police troop over a lifetime, and about the connectedness of events. Nothing happens in a vacuum, but life is made up of "links in a chain." Conversely, King reminds us that even so, real life does not work out into a neat little narrative. The world doesn't always give you the answers, and given the cops' reaction to the Buick and its mysteries, I wonder if the message to take away is that we couldn't handle the answers if we were given them.

From A Buick 8 was not one of King's more famous books, and I came to it without any prior knowledge or preconceptions. Certainly it is no Carrie or The Shining - but neither, thankfully, is it a Dreamcatcher. If you come to it expecting a fast-paced, action-packed thriller, you may be disappointed, but if you accept it for what it is - a pensive, brooding examination of storytelling - it's well worth a read.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6

Contains Spoilers

After the emotional turmoil of season five, with the mystery of Dawn's existence, the illness and death of Joyce Summers, the unbeatable villain, and finally Buffy's own death, I thought that season six would be a relief. Buffy would come back, and yes, I had been spoiled on the fact that she "came back wrong," so maybe she'd be a little bit out of control, maybe a bit slay-happy like Faith. I WAS SO WRONG!

I've been observing for seasons that Willow has been getting in too deep with the magic pretty much since she started dabbling in it, and her desperation to bring back her friend gets her doing some very dark spells indeed. The ritual which brings Buffy back to life is horrifying, and is interrupted, leaving us wondering how far it's worked. (And they manage to bring her back to life but are chased away from her grave leaving her to dig herself out - UGH NO!)

No wonder Buffy is traumatised! Who wouldn't be, after her experiences? But as much as Willow wants her friend back, she wants reassurance that she's done the right thing, and Buffy does not give it, because little does Willow know that Buffy had been happy where she was. She had fought a hard battle in the last season, and had found peace, only to be dragged back to a difficult, violent world by those who loved her best. And she can't tell them why she's not okay with being alive again, because the truth would destroy them.

It's not only Buffy who is keeping secrets in season six, and here's where the famous musical episode "Once More With Feeling" comes in. Oh, I have been hearing about this episode ever since it first aired; the one that set the standard for every other series and sitcom. It was all everyone talked about at school the next day, and at Christmas I saw a couple of clips on one of those rubbishy "top ten musicals" countdown shows, which must have been made about ten years ago. The bits I remembered being shown did not do the episode justice AT ALL, bits of songs like "I've got a theory," (fun, but that's it) "What can't we face when we're together?" (which makes it sound all mushy and completely missells the tone of the episode) and "Where do we go from here?" (which is a lot less poignant without context.) There is an amazing mixture of musical styles, each suiting the characters. Buffy gets the big musical numbers, Tara sings a romantic ballad, Spike gets an angry rocky number and Giles performs a very Gilesish acoustic ballad, while Xander and his fiancee Anya have a comic duet with some troubling lyrics. I had expected a cheesy, fun, gimmicky episode, to lighten the mood and take a break from the main season's plotlines, but instead "Once More With Feeling" is the catalyst for all the cats to be let out of the bags. Tara discovers the extent of Willow's magic, Anya and Xander discover each other's reservations about their forthcoming marriage, and everyone learns what really happened to Buffy after she died. Giles decides that he's getting in the way of Buffy learning to stand on her feet again, and flies back to England. Also Spike and Buffy kiss for the first time.

I think it was inevitable that Spike and Buffy would get together at some point, but I didn't want to see it. I loved the chemistry he had with Buffy, and enjoyed their scenes together, but a relationship, if you can call what happens between them that, was never going to work out. This season shows a very damaged dynamic between the characters, and one I found very difficult to watch. This is a relationship of desperation, one that is unbalanced, violent and loveless. I think what Spike calls "love" is more like obsession. I've liked Spike as a villain, a frustrated would-be monster, and then as a lovesick puppy. I love a morally ambiguous character, a villain with a soft side or an anti-hero, but the ambiguity is dashed away after he assaults Buffy in her bathroom. It was a horrible conclusion to a nasty relationship, and I couldn't care about Spike's story after that. He crossed the line and I can't see how there is any coming back from that. I didn't think the story was handled very well: the writers dwelled more on how the attack affected the perpetrator than the victim, and Buffy's story galloped away from the incident without a backward glance. In a world of vampires, robot girlfriends, invisibility rays and beer that turns its drinkers into cavepeople, the only time I've really said "nope, this would never ever happen" was when Buffy decided to entrust her little sister to the care of her would-be rapist. A serious misstep there, I felt.

In season six, Willow really does get in too deep with her magic. It's been hinted at for seasons, and I guessed that sooner or later she would turn to the dark side. I anticipated Evil Willow, but what I got instead was Mean Willow, whose magic became an addiction, and she turned on everyone who tried to help her to see she was in trouble. Willow is my favourite character, but for about half a season I started to dislike her immensely: she kept making the same mistakes over and over, not learning from them, and crying when she had to deal with the consequences of getting caught. It took endangering Dawn's life to get her to realise the error of her ways, and even when she turned her back on witchcraft, I suspected it was only suppressed, not gone for good.

The Scooby gang have come up against all sorts of Big Bads in the past five seasons: vampires, of course, a Frankenstein's Monster, and in the last season even a god, but in season six their "archnemesis...es" are a trio of nerdy students: Warren (creator of the Buffybot) Jonathan (he of "Superstar" fame) and... some other guy. They fancy themselves as comic-book supervillains, the Sunnydale branch of the Evil League of Evil, but basically they are just clueless jerks, stereotypes of geeks. I viewed them with contempt, and they grew more repulsive with each episode - especially Warren, who represented a purely human form of evil. Still I did not expect him to be a serious threat... until the words "he won't be much good without his friends," were spoken, after Jonathan and The Other Guy were carted off to jail. Oh dear. You mustn't say things like that. A couple of minutes before the end of an episode, that line had a ring of Famous Last Words to it, but I didn't realise quite how "last" those words were, before Warren shows up with a gun...

I have been grumbling for a couple of seasons that Willow's girlfriend Tara never showed up in the opening credits montage, but was always relegated to "guest star," the only member of the Scooby gang to fill that role. Finally, after making up with Willow, she is welcomed back into the fold, with an appearance of her own in the credits, and I celebrated. For forty minutes. 

BEFORE SHE DIED!

It came from nowhere. Warren appeared, fired a gun in the direction of Xander and Buffy who ducked out of the way. I thought for a moment that Xander would be hurt, or killed. Buffy was wounded. Then cut to Willow, upstairs, with a spray of blood splattered across her clean white shirt... and Tara falls down, dead. I stared at the screen in horror and made several incoherent wounded animal noises. I should have been prepared for this. It is Joss Whedon, after all. How does he manage to get me every time?

Oh Tara! You were not a forceful character, but you were so lovely and sweet and rounded and human, and gradually weasled your way into my affections until without my realising it, you became my favourite character. What will Buffy be without you?

Well, the last three episodes give a pretty dark indication of that, and in the aftermath of her girlfriend's death, we get to see the real Big Bad of season six: Evil Willow. THIS was kind of where I expected her magic storyline to go, though I never dreamed it would be triggered by such an awful, senseless, tragedy. Welcome, Evil Willow, an awesome villain, in a very disturbing way. Willow is ordinarily so sweet, but we've seen glimpses of her inner darkness, and now it takes over as she goes on a rampage of revenge after Warren. Awesome fades to horrifying, after she reprises the line of her vampire doppelganger of many seasons ago: "Bored now," and dispatches Warren in the most gruesome way imaginable.

It seems that no one can stop Willow now.

Hurrah, Giles is back! The first bit of light in several episodes, and it made me very happy. We get to see another side to Giles, the side that can take on Evil Willow, although it seems to be at great cost. I feared for his life at one point, and after Tara, I didn't trust anything - though I thought it was traditionally the series finale in which Joss Whedon kills off his beloved supporting characters. But for Giles to be killed as a direct result of Willow's actions would be taking Buffy into darker territory than any we've seen so far in a series filled with anguish and despair. It'll be hard enough for the character and show to come back from her (well-deserved) murder of Warren. If she killed a good friend, I think there could be no return. It was predicted that no supernatural power could rescue Willow from her magical self. Good thing there is still some good old-fashioned humanity left, then, and she is saved by Xander. Xander has never been my favourite character. I grew out of disliking him after a couple of seasons, but he's not been at his best in season six. But his friendship for Willow is pure, and it is his love and forgiveness that brings her back to her old self, as he declares, even if she destroys the world, he still loves her, and would rather die by her side than anywhere else. Yes, it was corny, but it was what was needed after this remarkably bleak season.

Episodes with the most impact: (This section is getting more and more difficult to describe accurately.)

1-2: Bargaining. Setting up the tone for the entire season, Willow and the Scoobies resurrect Buffy from the dead. But it is not pretty.
7. Once More With Feeling. The Musical Episode! But if, like me, you expect a nice, lighthearted break from the main plot, then you are very mistaken. The musical format advances the plot in powerful ways.
8. Tabula Rasa. Because I was already familiar with this title, I expected it to be emotionally devastating, but it is quite fun. Thanks to Willow's magical meddling, the group lose their memories and have to come to their own conclusions about who they are and how they relate to each other. Introducing Joan the Vampire Slayer and Giles' new family: son Randy (who you know as Spike) and fiancee Anya. THIS is the light-hearted break from the main plot... until the last five minutes which will require tissues.
9-10. Smashed/Wrecked. Willow's magic gets out of control. Buffy and Spike start fighting and end up... not fighting.
11. Gone. A relatively lighthearted episode, involving an invisibility ray.
15. As You Were. Riley returns, with a wife. The last scene between him and Buffy made me cry for personal reasons - I want to get back in touch with my ex before he moves abroad, but can't bear him knowing that my life hasn't changed in the slightest in the years since we've been apart. And yes, I do want reassurance that just because my life can be disappointing, I'm not a complete failure.
16. Hell's Bells. Xander and Anya's wedding day. Xander, afraid of becoming like his awful father, chickens out and jilts Anya at the altar. JOSS WHEDON IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS.
17. Normal Again: Is all of Buffy just a delusion of a very sick girl in a mental hospital?
19. Seeing Red: I don't know what to make of this episode, in which Spike assaults Buffy; it is very difficult to watch, and I'm not sure if that necessarily means it's good. And this is the episode that ends with Tara's death. Again: it is powerful and shocking but...
20. Villains: Willow goes over to the Dark Side and becomes very scary indeed.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5

After the weirdness that was the season 4 finale set entirely in the characters' dreams, season five opens with a pretty fun and relatively fluffy episode, in which Buffy comes face to face with Dracula himself. And boy, does he look out of place in the Buffyverse! This Dracula looks like he's wandered off the set of Interview with the Vampire, maybe even from the Volturi of Twilight, and it just felt wrong. I enjoyed seeing the allusions to the original novel, especially poor Xander filling the Renfield role, but overall it was a pretty average episode - right until the end, when we meet Buffy's younger sister, Dawn.

But Buffy doesn't have a sister.

It's not just that we've never seen her or heard her name mentioned. This isn't just a bad-soap retcon; things Buffy says in the next few episodes contradict what we have seen on screen. "It's not like she hasn't grown up in this house!" Buffy grumbled in episode two; but she hasn't. Buffy herself was surprised to see her, for a moment, when she first appeared. I wondered if the Jonathan-centred episode of season 4, "Superstar" was a practice run for season 5's storyline, in which we, with Buffy and her friends, are plunged into an alternative universe without being told, and left to figure it out for ourselves.

Actually, though the Dawn storyline runs through the entire season, we get answers a lot earlier than I had expected; once more Joss Whedon and his team of writers defy the rules of storytelling to bring us something exciting and new. We learn quite early on why Dawn has always been there... but wasn't always there last week. She is a "key" made of "energy" into the form of a human who will be protected by the strongest woman in the world: Buffy Summers, to prevent the season's Big Bad, Glory, from opening up all doors between parallel dimensions and causing another apocalypse. It kind of makes sense in context. Kind of.

I wasn't thrilled to see that Buffy's boyfriend Riley is still around, and still in the title credits. How come he's in the title credits but Tara is still only listed as a guest star? He was okay, but dull, for season four, but now he's outstayed his welcome. After my last review, Laura queried my assessment of him as "nice." Even in the last season he had some unfortunate character traits that reared their heads occasionally: he could be too persistant, a bit needy, and whatever he might say, he didn't really like that Buffy could take care of herself instead of letting him be the big strong protector. In season five, we see these insecurities grow until they overshadow everything likable about Riley, to the point where I was shouting "JUST GO!" every time I saw him. It took him too long, but I have never been so pleased to see such an indifferent character leave. My friend arrived at my house one day to find me shrieking "YES YES HE'S REALLY GONE!" Good riddance, and please don't come back.

And then there's Spike! I liked Spike from the moment he screeched his car into Sunnydale back in season two, and now we get to see another side to his character. In season five, he comes to realise that he has a crush on Buffy.

What?! 


We've seen Spike as a formidable, quick-witted foe, and we've seen him as a whiny, powerless villain who
no one takes seriously. Now we get to see Spike in love. It is a strange, unsettling story to follow. Certainly Buffy and Spike have chemistry, and are very entertaining to watch together as they fight (and do they ever meet without fighting?) Spike's infatuation made me think of the Phantom of the Opera: simultaneously pitiful and creepy. Sometimes his obsession brings out his better side (even if he is usually only trying to impress Buffy) and sometimes it drives him to disturbing extremes - Buffybot anyone? The two sides of his character do not sit comfortably together; I think we like to be sure whether we feel sorry for a character or are repulsed by them, and Spike evokes both reactions.

We also get to see some of Spike's backstory: as an angsty would-be poet in Victorian England. At first, I thought he could not be more unlike the Spike we've come to know, but as the series progressed and as I thought about it some more, I came to realise that the change was not as great as I'd first thought - and not as great as it should be. This is the change of someone who has lived for over a hundred years, not the change of someone who has had his entire being replaced with that of a monster. Spike seems to be very human, and becoming more so.

For the first time, another character expresses the same reservations I've been having about Willow's use of magic. Her girlfriend, Tara, is a more experienced witch, and as such, has a better understanding of what the limits are. Willow gives Dawn a bit of help in her attempt to do a very dubious spell, and later faces Glory with some terrifying magic. I think it's safe to say that any magic that turns your eyes black is best left alone. But I predict Willow has only just begun and this story will get worse before it gets better.

This season has been all about family: Dawn being inserted into the Summers family and being accepted as one of their own, and the Scooby gang as a family. In the middle of the season is a story revolving more around the Summers women than anything supernatural, when Buffy's mother, Joyce, discovers she has a brain tumour, has surgery, recovers, and then dies from an aneurysm. I'll be honest: I was expecting this since Buffy quipped in season four that she hoped her mother would have a "funny aneurysm" when she saw the cost of her college textbooks. I've lost many hours of my life to the website TvTropes, and I was familiar with the "Funny Aneurysm Moment" trope in which a joke or light-hearted comment is echoed by a far more serious turn of events later on. I didn't know at the time that the page namer came from Buffy, but as soon as she spoke the line, I knew Joyce was doomed. I had not expected the story to be so drawn-out, however, covering several, very well-done episodes, and culminating in "The Body." "The Body" is an extraordinary episode which portrays the shock of grief like nothing else I've ever seen. I realised while watching it that the reason everything seemed so still and silent was that there was no music, no soundtrack, nothing to ease the tension. A very powerful episode indeed, probably the best yet.

In the season five finale, Buffy becomes much darker than ever before, when the Scoobies realise that there is no way they can defeat Glory, and try to make a run for it. Glory has tormented Tara, who is lost and confused within her own mind, and Giles is wounded by a spear through the windscreen of Spike's camper-van (causing Serenity flashbacks: WHY WHEDON, WHY?) Buffy calls Ben, the handsome medical intern she befriended in the hospital when her mother was ill, little knowing that he shares his body with Glory herself. Instead of a glorious (sorry) climactic battle between Buffy and Glory, the villain meets her end at the hands of Giles, while in the form of "Ben." It is chilling to watch as the nice, polite, English librarian kills Ben in cold blood with his bare hands. We've heard before that Giles has a dark past, but this is the first time we really see what that means.

Ben: She could have killed me. Giles: No, she couldn't. Never. And sooner or later Glory will re-emerge, and make Buffy pay for that mercy. And the world with her. Buffy even knows that...and still she couldn't take a human life. She's a hero, you see. She's not like us.Ben: Us?

But even destroying Glory via Ben is not enough to save the world. Only Buffy can do that, by making the greatest sacrifice: her own life. Compare her calm decision with that of the sixteen-year-old at the end of season one, desperate not to die. She's changed a lot: become more serious and grown up, but losing her witty humour. The Slayer's life has not been an easy one, and here it is, cut short. Apparently season five was written to be a potential series finale, and it certainly feels like one. The "previouslies" at the beginning go right back to the very first episode, showing everything that has led up to this point. This finale is darker and more epic than before. All the same, I'm glad that there are still to seasons to come. What a note to end it on!

Best episodes: (It would be misleading to use the word "favourite.)

6. Family: In which we find out a lot more about Tara. The episode end with Spike punching her in the face - which is not usually a thing that one would find heartwarming, but in context is rather lovely.
7. Fool for Love: Showing Spike's backstory. Introducing: William the Bloody (terrible).
10. Into the Woods: I'm only including this because we see the back of Riley. The episode itself is infuriating.
12. Checkpoint: Buffy vs. the Watchers' Council.
13. Blood Ties: In which Dawn discovers her life has been a lie.
15. I Was Made To Love You: A remarkably average robot-girlfriend-of-the-week episode, with a shocking ending. "Mom... Mom?... Mommy?"
16. The Body: "But I don't understand! I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore! It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why."
17. Forever: Dawn tries to bring her mom back from the dead. Thank goodness we don't get to see the results.
18. Intervention: Spike creates a Buffy-bot. Time to get off the ship. This is not boyfriend material.
19. Tough Love: Willow and Tara have their first quarrel, with tragic results.
22. The Gift: The darkest and most epic finale yet.