How Stephen King keeps getting away with it...

In the first book, A Game of Thrones, Ned Stark is one of the most archetypical fantasy heroes and yet there is a darkness to him. He has so many mistakes and regrets and scars that he wears openly that we get to know even more deeply only for him to be killed off at the end of the book.

Characters in Dracula, Frankenstein, Wthering Heights. These are horrible people doing horrible things all of the time.

Characters in Dracula, Frankenstein, Wthering Heights. These are horrible people doing horrible things all of the time.

Another thousandpage book of his is It is one of my favorite novels of all time.

But what's so brilliant about The Stand is the fact that the apocalypse is unraveling gradually. We have an enormous cast of characters, but when we first meet them, for the first several hundred pages of this book, they are just people living their lives.

Characters in Dracula, Frankenstein, Wthering Heights. These are horrible people doing horrible things all of the time.