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. ( )

bought this on impluse. Read the original when it first came out, and it had a huge impact. It's really dated now - no cell phones, no internet, no twittter. Hard to imagine shutting down towns today with no one knowing about it. However, within it's time period, it still works amazingly well. It's long and engrossing. If you don't know, it's when a superbug designed for germ warfare is accidentally leaked and 99.8% of America (and the world, but we don't follow them) dies of it. I think its the sort of book that each time your read it you could focus on a different bit of it, and still get something out of it. King wrote that its the book that most fans ask about how the characters are doing, as if he is getting postcards from them, and that about sums it up. You get very involved with these people and their compelling situation, and you wouldn't mind hearing more about them... it could be a teleseries... Anyways, I liked it. ( )

Great, great book. I have read it numerous times. ( )

King's best in it's original form before the slog was added back in. ( )

This is the story of the survivors of an accident that spreads a lethal virus and kills 99% of the population. They start to have dreams, and group in two "colonies": the ones guided by an elder lady that claims to receive messages from god, and the ones that follow the dark man.

The beggining of The Stand is quite slow, buracratic. All the inumerous characters are presented, one by one, with a lot of flashbacks and all that stuff.

When you reach page 250-300 it feels like there was no evolution. There is a lot of things going on, but you read an entire book (considering the number of pages) and you are still on the beggining of the story. It starts to be tiresome, but if you keep going, the story changes and get exciting. The characters gain depth (except for Fran, whose only role seems to be crying from the begging to the end) and the interesting sci-fi / apocalyptic / end-of-times plot gradually shows up.

The plot also gets a religious tone, about the contest of good against evil, verging the supernatural. It still seems that's a lot more to come when you reach around page 800, close to the conclusion. At this point most of the characters are captivating, and the turns of the story keep it exciting. Things that generally don't occur in other romances, in this one can and will happen, and you will keep hoping it all goes well till the end. Stephen King doesn't spare anyone, good or evil.

The last 15-20 pages are monotonous, useless from my point of view. ( )