But even then, it was far too long. And it seemed like two completely separate novels that were stitched together very poorly. The first half was pure science == apocalyptic plague wipes out 95%; speculate on how people & govts would deal with it, during & after. But the 2nd half was all fantasy and special powers and ESP and what not.
It was like, "Well, I have these two novels I'd like to combine cuz I don't want to harm my reputation as an author of War-And-Peace length books. Fortunately they're on a word processor so I can instantly change all occurrences of the name of any character in the 2nd novel to match someone in the first. And change a few scenes where one ends and the other begins, to make it appear that both halves might have been planned as one novel, as long as thwy don't look too closely at the finished product!"
One thing I had to roll my eyeballs at was his choice of cities to represent the centers of Good vs Evil, and that was Boulder CO and Las Vegas. It would have made a lot more sense to pick Boulder as the latter, and Colorado Springs as the former.
And I'm saying that as someone who grew up in Boulder, and spent much of my adulthood there.
And with all of those shortcomings, it was still his best book so what does that say of the others?
:D