The Stand, by Stephen King

I liked The Stand.  It is the first book I've read by Stephen King, and I was surprised that he was such a good writer.  I liked the depth of the characters, the broad scope of the action, and the way King wrote so the reader felt he was in the story.  It was also fun to get inside the heads of his characters.

For me, The Stand was lacking when it came to theme, something about the danger or recklessness of applying technology to warfare.  Or maybe it was that all organized societies drift toward destructiveness, and so we shouldn't have organized societies?  Regardless, the book suffered as so many other well-written ones:  they don't culminate in a meaningful theme.