The Stand
Ratings850
Average rating4.1
When I was in high school, they released a TV miniseries if The Stand that I watched. I always thought it was the best end of the world/virus take I’d seen. Not because it’s realistic or gritty, but because it frames the story with great characters battling good and evil.
When I read the book, I wondered how closely it would follow the miniseries. Turns out the show was a near scene for scene recording of the book (one of the bonuses of making it 6 hours).
What’s amazing to me about The Stand is that it follows so many characters storylines so well. It would be easy to get lost with that many characters, but somehow they fit together in a way that I didn’t feel overwhelmed. Add to that a story that had me on the edge of my seat and I see why this is considered one of the best sci fi books of all time.
Utterly fantastic.
King weaves a n enthralling plot with well-realized characters into a masterpiece well worth the steep 1100-page price tag. Tom Cullen is the most lovable, Trash the most interesting. I'm interested in understanding how this ties in with the rest of the King multiverse.
Next to the Dark Tower, probably the best King book. Epic, apocalyptic, supernatural, human.
Stephen King's The Stand, while not strictly full on Dystopian, is absolutely brilliant. The characters are fantastically well written, including the characterization of society itself as crumbles away to nothing and slowly begins to be reformed. I have a tattoo of the original dusk jacket art from the first edition, if that helps convey just how fucking amazing I think it is.
Read this when I was a kid, re-read as an adult. I remembered most of the big plot points but there's a bunch of detail that I totally forgot. Lots of great characters, a few really fucked up moments. Great concept, great execution. Not particularly scary but definitely some disturbing moments.
I never did finish this book, and it was probably the last Stephen Kind I ever read. I have the long long version, and boy is it long. I may read it someday, but for now, it's staying in my gave-up-on section. I don't recall it being particularly interesting, but I was in high school.
There are hundreds of reviews that will pick apart the bones of this book so read them if you want. For me, Stephen King is one of the greatest storytellers of all time and this is his greatest book. Second time I have read this. This time I read the un-cut version and at 1420 pages its long, laws yes. If you are put off by the page count go for the standard version, I don't think you lose any of the magic, M-O-O-N spells magic. Just read it.
I have the same “problem” with The Stand that I do with LOST (I love both, so take this with a grain of salt) - I want a stripped down story without the supernatural elements.
Some narratives need a gigantic serving of the paranormal to keep the plot moving forward; but, I think King has become accustomed to using it as a crutch for his writing, when he doesn't always need it (or else, it's his “thing” - which I guess is his prerogative).
It boils down to the fact that I feel that the characters are so well-formed and have such a rich history, that this could have been enough for a more grounded adventure. I want to know what really happens if the world is largely wiped out by a virus, leaving only a handful of survivors behind. King offers answers only in the context of the “Big Bad” who exists outside of the natural laws of the earth and thus is contained only by King's imagination. (Similarly, I want to know what really happens if a plane crashes on a deserted island a-la-LOST - do we really need to add polar bears and smoke monsters to the mix?).
I think that either tale could have been equally as riveting without the added ambiguity of “the unknown” - but it is what it is, and both are enjoyable nonetheless. AND, of course, we can't ignore that this is Stephen King who has penned many a novel in which supernatural entities are to be expected and even welcomed. Ultimately, it's King's story, and it's a good one.
The made-for-TV adaptation of The Stand is also worth seeing... as are all six (6) seasons of LOST
DNF @ 69% (~930 pages)
I really tried with this one, y'all. I found it really compelling to start! The first third or so was interesting but had me wondering ‘where is this going?' The next third kind of answered that question, but I just didn't find the answer something I cared about. I did intentionally read the ‘uncut' version and I found it way too long for its own good. In addition to being bloated, it also contained some really disturbing imagery that I didn't find worth it. I know this is SK and I know this is horror, but there was some animal cruelty that made me downright nauseous and haunted me throughout my day even when I wasn't reading. I think this interested me so much at the start because it felt similar to Covid in a lot of ways, which I wasn't expecting! But I just could not bring myself to finish it and definitely won't be going out of my way to recommend it. I'm really glad I looked up a thorough summary of the last third because it truly wasn't going to be worth it.
Terrifying three-quarters, the ending diffused. I thought the utter majesty of the book was its geographical description of the intermountain west. Adequate companion through Covid.
This book is heavily tied to a dark vs. light storyline, with a side of human ambition being our downfall. The U.S. government has secretly created a bio-weaponized disease in a secret facility in the Mojave Desert that is accidentally released when something in the facility goes wrong. One! Just one person, does not follow protocol and flees the hidden post with his wife and daughter. Within hours, they are succumbing to the disease and end up crashing into a gas station where a group of 5 men are hanging out. This begins the spread of this superflu, which is dubbed “Captain Tripps”.
Imagine all the worst-case scenarios you’ve seen in movies where the spread of disease is on an apocalyptic level, like Contagion from 2011 where it’s like a number to the exponent of itself, but then the result does the same thing. Here’s an example. This is taking place in the first, probably, 500 pages of the book, with a select number of people who are immune to Tripps, and while this is happening we are following several primary characters (good and bad) through their own journeys to survive. There are dreams brought on by either Mother Abigail (good guys) or Randall Flagg (bad guys) that bring groups of them together and they end up traveling to either Boulder, Co. or Las Vegas, Nv., respectively. The thing that I liked about this was the immunity had NOTHING to do with someone’s character, it was purely a luck of the draw. So you still end up with all varieties of people from genuinely good to horribly evil.
There is a lot of disability rep in this book as well, but don’t expect it to be handled with the same sensitivity as we have today. This is approached from a mindset of the 1970’s when people were not nearly as careful with how they spoke. If you are one who is opposed to certain dated terminology, like “deaf and dumb” to refer to someone who is deaf and mute skip this book or be prepared. There is a lot to get mad about in this book, so skip it if you are a member of the sensitivity police. It’s just going to piss you off, and this book is not intended to be PC.
If you are a fan of apocalyptic or dystopian fantasy I would highly recommend this book, it is an amazing book even if it is one of the chunkiest around. The story is intricate and compelling and proves just how amazing a storyteller Stephen King is, and while he can be the “king” of overkill when it comes to his descriptions, he balances it well in this story. I was highly invested in the characters, and that says a lot for how much they grew and developed through the story. If you really enjoy a light vs. dark trope, this book has all the elements that make a battle between these entities interesting.
Originally posted at youtu.be.
Contains spoilers
This was a tough read, but still worthwhile! Didn’t connect with the characters as much as I’d hoped. I kinda appreciate the ending, even if it’s a bit anticlimactic.
As a kid, my biggest fear was a zombie apocalypse. The idea of fighting an unwinnable war against something as all-encompassing as every dead person ever, reanimated, and the emotional defeat and hopelessness that would cause terrified me.
This book resonated with me, capturing my fears and projecting them large with a backdrop of real, believable, tangible human stories of loss, self-doubt and insecurity, fear, wrestling with your own dark side, regret, and coming to terms with the possibility that Something greater than all of us really does exist and have power in the world today.
Reading about Mother Abagail and her perspective on God's sovereignty, the slow redemption of certain characters, and even the perspectives of those characters who never had a redemption was impactful to me. Honestly, I'd say that this book is important and challenges the standards of our modern world maybe even more strongly than it did when it was released 30 years ago.
As a reading experience, this was by far my favorite King book. I had a hard time with the Shining because of the way that evil was portrayed, rampant and inevitable, with no counterpoint. Having this book framed as a good vs. evil battle made reading the atrocities the bad guys committed more bearable, because how else are you going to show who they really are? I read the Complete & Uncut Edition of this book, and I can't imagine cutting out anything from this book. It all felt so well done and necessary.
Age range: 18+
Not a YA novel, in case you were curious. Very violent, very graphic.
A fantastic book. While i was daunted by the length i was hooked on every single page throughout.
This is an extremely long book that spends so much time developing characters that you inevitably don't care all that much about when something happens to them. Many of the characters were boring or straight up unlikable, so listening to their struggles for 50 pages at a time gets to be monotonous, and the explicit scenes felt a bit gratuitous and unnecessary in parts. I found they didn't really add much to the story and seemed like they were added for a horror or shock element in an otherwise slow and uneventful novel.
The premise was really exciting and the looming threat of the Dark Man really made me hope for more mystical/fantastical moments. I also hoped for more from Abigail, since I really loved her character and place in the overall story. In the end we're left questioning who these two really are and what place they really have in the overall world. Are they really the embodiments of Good and Evil? Have they always been “the chosen ones”? Did they somehow have a part in the plague? No questions are really answered... Which is very on-brand for a religious themed plot, but I found it left me unsatisfied.
In 1000 pages of build-up you really hope for some sort of battle for Good vs. Evil, sabotage, enlightenment... Anything. But we're really just left with a confusing turn of events and a lackluster end thought.
I loved the prose, but it wasn't enough to read 1000+ pages of people walking, eating, and talking a whole lot.
I heard from a close friend of mine that this is easily far and above Kings best piece of work. Having read this, Salems lot, and Dreamcatcher (which a lot of people consider his worst (they are wrong)), I can believe it, but I really hope it isn't true. The experience of reading this book is kind of insane. The first 200 pages or so are expertly paced, the middle section has a perfect rising tension about it as you discover what the rest of the story is gonna look like, and then as it's wrapping up everything just kind of makes sense. I can't say much without going into spoilers but I haven't gotten so lazy that I'll start including them in here without tagging them so until I get hit with a random burst of inspiration I'll leave this as is.
El primer libro es hermoso, lo sientes tan personal y más con la reciente pandemia. Te mantiene atento, ansioso y con la incógnita de a que llevara, el segundo libro es un cambio total a lo fantástico pero no queda mal, repite algunos bloques descriptivos.
El final si se me hizo demasiado acelerado y le dedicaron más tiempo a momentos que hubieran sido buenos acortar para enfocarse más a detalle en como se cerraban algunos círculos.
At over 1,300 pages, this was a daunting novel to pick up. However, the narrative continued to flow and I never got bored as I followed the various characters develop their independent story lines across America.
Ironically, The Stand is more about the journey than the destination. It mirrors the everlasting political battles that seem hinged on the individual's interpretation of “freedom”, which is certainly relevant today. While I didn't connect well with any of the characters, I felt I was constantly thinking about them and their choices, even when not actively reading.
American Protestant apocalypse fiction. Not with out interest, but the entire book is so over bloated, anything interesting gets heaped under some of the dumbest things I've ever read. It's a compelling premise, but I am baffled at how it remains seen as a classic.
The plot is simple and straightforward, it shifted from the super flu pandemic aspect to a battle between good and evil. It was quite unique.
I enjoyed it a lot.
Note: It didn't need to be 1400 pages long IMO.
After reading King's first several books I couldn't understand the hype for this guy. Like he's not THAT good. But after reading The Stand...WOW. This writing style isn't like his previous ones. It is vastly better. The size of this book my be scary but every single word is a pearl. Fantastic story and never been more relevant with the times we are experiencing now. If you like this book I thoroughly recommend reading The Passage. It is so much like The Stand but with Vampire like creatures. Also The Troop is an exceptional scary story with a lot of Stephen King qualities.