Eight out of ten.A killer virus wipes out 99% of the worlds population, in the immediate aftermath of this destruction the survivors are forced to pick sides. Good or bad. ( )

Outstanding, better than the first. One of my favorite re-reads.Like visiting an old friend. ( )

The Stand is Stephen King’s most recognised and ambitious work to date consisting of approximately one-thousand three-hundred and twenty-five pages. As to be expected of a Stephen King novel, The Stand is a very character-driven story resulting into lengthy descriptions of characters pasts and aspects of their personalities. Although a big enough plot already, King has made the mistake of plunging into the character’s past. A superflu which kills off 99.3 per cent of the world’s population, the survivors dream of an elderly negro woman...dream of being chased through cornfields by the ‘dark man’, then the survivors gravitate to good and evil and have a final stand-off. So really that alone without the blabber The Stand could add up to nine-hundred pages alone. I have the most recent edition of The Stand, the Hodder paperbacks edition (which has a very nice cover in my opinion and because of this I buy all of my Stephen King books from Hodder) which has all of the content which was originally cut from the book. You can so easily tell which parts were the ones cut from the original release because they were quite random parts and really irrelevant...maybe they were better left out.
The Stand compromises of three books to split it up I suppose. In my opinion, the three books should have been sold separately like a trilogy so it’s more easy reading and is less annoying to read, but who cares it’s been that way since the eighties so it’s best how it is. The three books were:

Book I: Captain Trips
Book II: On the Border
Book III: The Stand

As usual I give a plot summary in almost every book review I do, in this review I’m going to do it differently, I will review each book individually because the plot summary will be just too long...well, the review is going to be verrrrrry long now. Ok, here we go. Oh! If you do want to know the plot I suggest you don’t read the next few paragraphs 

Book I: Captain Trips
A superflu breaks out in a military base. A soldier based in the camp is one of the first victims of the flu, however he does not know this and to avoid being locked within the base takes his family and goes. Crashing into a petrol station, he infects everyone in the vicinity, who are immediately taken into be experimented on. Soon, the infected die...but one, Stuart Redman who appears to have no symptoms of the virus whatsoever and demands to released. Eventually he escapes by killing the only surviving agent in the building. Escaping, realises he is the only living man in Stovington.
Frances Goldsmith is pregnant. After revealing her secret to her mother and father, her mother is angered; saying she has brought same upon the family. Her father however is thrilled. Soon, both of her parents become violently ill with an unidentified virus and quickly die. After burying her father discovers that she and a pervy, nerdy, fatty called Harold Lauder are the only living ones in Ogunquit, Texas.
Larry Underwood is an aspiring musician. He returns to New York City to visit his mother who soon comes down with cold symptoms. One night he comes home to find her collapsed on the floor...she supposedly dies. Not long after, the busy roads of the big apple become quite and deserted, the streets strewn with corpses of flu victims. He comes across a middle-aged woman called Rita Blakemore and develops a crude relationship with her. They both decide to leave New York. Together they hike out of the city. Rita is unprepared for the journey and overdoses on sleeping pills.
Nick Andros, a deaf-mute who travels across the country earning money as he goes is a wise and polite, clever despite his disabilities. Nick gets mugged one night and wakes in a cell where he becomes very good friends with the sheriff who captures Nick’s muggers and locks them away. But Sheriff Baker and his wife become ill with the superflu and Nick looks after the prison whilst he is away. Baker and his wife die and Nick choose to leave the city.
Lloyd Henreid and his partner in crime, Poke, travel across the country killing and stealing and one day on a petrol station robbery are defeated. With Poke dead, Lloyd is sent to death row where the A-Virus is already in the works. Soon, Lloyd is the only one surviving in the prison and dying of starvation results in chomping on his dead cell-mates leg.
All of the survivors are on the move, too rebuild society and find other survivors. Meanwhile, the prince of evil rises...

Book II: On the Border
All of the characters begin to have odd dreams about being chased thorough corn fields by ‘the dark man’ and of an elderly woman playing a guitar out front her house saying they can come and visit her anytime.
Stu finds an insightful, bright-minded, elderly man called Glen Bateman and his dog Kojak. He stays with them for a while and continues his journey to discover more people, eventually meeting two more: Harold Lauder and Frances Goldsmith. Harold doesn’t like Stu and thinks he will steal whatever chance he has with Fran away from him. Fran however begins to like Stu more and more and Stu realises he likes her too. The three of them go back to Glen and then the four of them resume the quest to find more survivors. Their party builds.
Meanwhile, Larry Underwood, now ravaged and bearded is being followed. He is attacked by a psychopathic ten-year-old who is being kept under control by a woman called Nadine who calls the boy Joe. Their party builds.
Nick Andros, still alone, has met nobody on his travels. As far as he knows he is the only living person on Earth. That’s before he meets Tom Cullen, a lightly retarded young fellow who joins Nick to journey to meet other civilization at Mother Abigail’s home. Eventually, Nick and Tom hitch a ride with another survivor Ralph Brentner and along the way pick up others and then make their way towards Mother Abigail. They have all been having the same dream about ‘the dark man’. Mother Abigail and Nick’s group of survivors take to Boulder, Colorado where they will build a new society and reforge civilization.
Later, the three groups are eventually all living in Boulder, Colorado and form a civilized utopia and plot against Randall Flagg (aka the dark man). Eventually Boulder is swarming with people and conflict begins to spark between the people.
The child Nadine Cross had previously called ‘Joe’ has recovered enough to reveal to her he is called Leo Rockway and when Nadine realises that Leo does not need her anymore she seeks to be needed and goes to Larry Underwood who rejects her as he is now committed to someone called Lucy. So Nadine goes straight to Harold (who is now in charge of a group whose job it is to clear away the corpses of the superflu victims and is a respected person in the community) and easily seduces him, he instantly falls for her and she pleasures him but without proper sexual intercourse (so technically they’re both still virgins). After she has Harold’s heart she reveals to him that she is destined to be with Randall Flagg and simply manipulates him into following the dark man with her.
Meanwhile, the committee find a logical solution to beating Randall Flagg. Spies. They choose three people of the community to go and spy on Flagg: Tom Cullen, Judge Farris and Dayna Jurgens.
Also, Mother Abigail has gone off out into the wilderness for her own purposes and nobody of the community knows why she does this and nobody know when she’s going to be back. Regular search parties are sent out to find Abigail Freemantle but they have little hope.
Harold and Nadine plot to destroy the free zone committee by constructing a bomb. Harold puts together some dynamite and Nadine plants it at the place where the committee meets.
Then, just as Ralph Brentner and a search party arrives in town with a feeble and dying Mother Abigail Harold detonates the bomb killing Nick Andros as he attempts to discharge it. Sue Stern is also killed. Fran suffers from a spinal injury and a broken foot. Harold and Nadine flee to the west. Flee to the dark man.
Soon after, Mother Abigail awakes and requests that Stu, Larry, Ralph, Glen and Fran come see her. Mother Abigail (or God Himself) appears to heal Fran of her spinal injury after a heat conversation with her. Then, she tells the four men that what they are doing in Boulder, Colorado is not defeating the dark man so she tells them they too must go west and destroy his evil plans once and for all. Not long after Mother Abigail dies.
The four men take to the west (with Kojak too) to destroy Flagg.

Book III: The Stand
The Judge arrives in the west and Flagg has already sensed his purpose to be a spy and send out men to kill him once they see him – but, not to mark or damage his face in any way as he wants to sends Judge Farris’ body back so it is recognisable. A dude called Bobby kills the Judge by face injuries so Flagg kills him for his mistake.
Dayna is already in Vegas as a spy and has learnt a lot about Flagg and his plans, but quickly after learning she has succeeded in retrieving information the reader learns she has been found out. She is taken to Flagg who attempts to hypnotize her into telling him who the third spy is because he cannot ‘see’ who it is. Dayna refuses to divulge the information he wants and he becomes angry throwing her across the room. To avoid telling Flagg he kills herself without hesitation with a shard of shattered glass.
Tom Cullen who now knows all about what Flagg is doing goes back to Colorado, travelling in the night, sleeping in the day.
Nadine and Harold have travelled far, Harold breaks his leg at some point and Nadine goes on without him. After surviving for five days he shows regret for the wrong he had done and shoots himself.
Nadine meanwhile is travelling alone, delirious, and the dark man appears to her and virtually rapes her, impregnating her with his son. Then, after arriving back at Vegas Flagg is told that Tom Cullen (who recently left) was the spy and he sends out people to search for him. He is, to this point, unsuccessful. Nadine tells Flagg that they’re coming for him, to kill him and he is angered and throws her out of a window, losing his unborn son.
Sorry, I’m tired of summarising. Nobody will read such a long plot summary anyway so it doesn’t matter...

If you look at The Stand just from the plot it deserves five stars easily. King has introduced realistic events, a superflu which could happen in real life if our race is not careful. And a dark wizard rises and forms a group to fight for power, something which can only happen in fiction. King joins both realistic themes in with that of fantasy and wizardry.
I felt like I was a survivor of Captain Trips and joining the characters across America to find civilization the entire time whilst I was reading The Stand, that’s how realistic Stephen King can make his books, and believe me I would like nothing more than to finish this review with giving it five stars...but there are a few more things I need to quickly comment on.
Stephen King is known for his characters, but how he blabbers about some things is not stated. Like for example, when something so insignificant happens King will go on to tell the reader of how a character can relate to it as it happened in their past or something they had seen on television.
Stephen King just using the description he already uses is brilliant, the stories and side-plots he tells are brilliant but when he tells the reader something that is just totally irrelevant is annoying.

Now, the final verdict. Stephen King is probably my favourite writer at the minute, I loved ‘salem’s Lot (which had very little blabber might I say), loved The Gunslinger (maybe a little less than ‘salem’s Lot) and liked It about as much as I liked The Stand. Considering his plot I’d give him five stars without question, his characters keep it stable at five stars as they were unique and extremely well thought up, his description is insightful and gives the most clear image in the readers mind. Still at five stars. But here comes the bad part, irrelevant blabber and inserting quite random events...I’m afraid it’s got to be three and a half stars which I don’t want to do as I really liked this book but got pissed off with one thing.
BUT, when I look back on The Stand and realise how King made created such real images in my mind I reconsidered. I watched the nineteen-ninety-four mini-series adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand and it was absolutely terrible, I’ve never seen such a bad film adaptation. Now, the two-thousand and four mini-series of ‘salem’s Lot was something else, amazing. The Stand’s film adaptation doesn’t do the book justice at all and maybe no other production can...the image King projected upon my mind was not how I pictured it in the film, it was something much, much more. And I do suppose that King cut down on the blabber a lot towards the end of ‘On the Border’ and through ‘The Stand’ so it was easier to read...right now I’m torn between a four star and three and half star so for now I will put it as four, but it may change... ( )

Nearly a 5 star book but not quite. Some of the material added helped to flesh out the shorter initial publication while some of the material seemed to be unnecessary and unhelpful author bloat. The book is a compelling ride and yet, at the same time, it suffers from an overly dichotomous view of good and evil, a disturbing tendency to equate scientific and technological knowledge with a lack of morality and an over dependence on what eventually emerges as a literal "hand of god" to solve problems. As usual with King his female characters are either underwritten, female helpmates or tools of stronger characters. The book also suffers from the "magic suffering negro" complex" which can be found in so many American books and movies. ( )

The Stand resides as one of the best written horror novels I have read. With its purposeful inundation of characters of all types, and its numerous story lines, The Stand comes together like a true life ride with the twists and horrors that few like King are capable of. While a very hefty book at around 1100 pages, it does not read like a drug out synopsis of the end times but rather like a finely formulated, character driven masterpiece that I argue may be one of the best 'End of the World' works in publication. ( )