This was the April Bizarro Group Read book ... and it took me until July to finish it. I want to thank Wol-Vriey for his support of the group read and the Bizarro group in general. 
 Now, why did it take me so long to read this book? Length was only part of the issue, and this is a long book. By the end, you have spent a significant portion of time in Bizarro Boston and the world building felt very solid. The characters also were fairly strongly defined ... with one issue. 
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 So in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King talks about the middle of The Stand and how he had written himself into a corner. There was no real progression, just - to use a gaming term - two sides turtling. It wasn't until out on a walk (as the story goes) that King realized why there was no movement and how he needed to fix the problem. With the distinction between the two sides dwindling down, there had to be a catalyst for the third act. 
 In editing The Stand , I doubt that King took much out of that middle act (well, in the extra long cut of the book, anyway). The thing is, he didn't need to. Before we had both sides shoring up defenses, we had spent a long time fighting to get some respite. There was the hope that life could go on as it had before (which reminds me of Dhalgren and the family in the apartment that Kid runs into), a hope that hits a strong resonance in humanity. Despite so much "change is good" mantra-ing out there, the idea of returning to what was comfortable is a very common theme in storytelling. We see this in The Walking Dead with the family units that are formed, especially when they find places to hole up. We see this in "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (where our heroes realize where their actual comfort is ... sort of). We see this in "Mad Max: Fury Road" also, a movie where the perfect amount of change and comfort is tied together. 
 In short, The Stand could play with finding comfort because the story and the characters had earned that respite. 
 * * * 
 Vegan Vampire Vaginas reads like the middle act of The Stand with very little of the first or third act aspects. We have characters seeking comfort in a very strange land (well, strange to some) and slowly "finding" it ... the issue at hand is that I never felt that the characters earned the right to have that break. 
 The book takes its time establishing the comfort of our characters - often using the extra pages for increasingly taboo sexual activities - time that during the first few chapters I was happy to give it. But after Chapter 25 or so, I was ready to move on. I was not in the mood for flashbacks. And boy are there flashbacks ... lots of them. The shorter ones for our main character were fine. The longer ones (three or four chapters long at least) ended up dragging on. I did not need the details of the gold heist ... or maybe the story could have been the gold heist instead of the fallout from the heist. 
 And frankly, the fallout from the heist - especially the third act reveals and conclusions - was too much. I felt that the story being told had resolved much earlier, but then the book changes stories on me and begins searching for an ending. 
 Easily, 25% of this book could have been cut and we would have ended up with a tighter central story that moved along at the pace a heist story should move at. Heck, even 40% of this book could have been excised and the remaining 60% rearranged to eliminate the "JJ Abrams mystery box" and allow for dramatic irony instead. Frankly, I think that would have been a more gripping story, especially if the last act of this book received a chunk of the cuts. As it stands, VVV is too long for the story it tries to tell and too comfortable in the world it creates.