Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding end of the world novel... 4 1/2 stars
Review: "The Stand" has become one of Stephen King's most popular novels, and is known as one of the greatest end of the world novels ever written. I put off reading "The Stand" up until recently, because of all the acclaim that it has received. When a book is hyped up that much, it usually fails to meet my expectations. Not to mention the fact that the book is over 1100 pages long, and has a story that spans over the entire U.S. That means a lot of time and patience has to be put into keeping track of all the different characters and other aspects of the story. I am so glad that I finally gave this book a chance, and I was amazed that I was actually begging for more after the story had ended. The story is over 1100 pages, but it moves incredibly fast. The thing that appealed to me the most about this book, was that the story lets perfect strangers across America gravitate towards one another. What the characters have to overcome is amazing. Not only do they have to survive a killer virus, and society as they know it breaking down, but also something more evil then they ever could've imagined. Another aspect of the book I found appealing was the focus on religion. Anytime you have an end of the world novel seem like a battle between God and the Devil, it is often much more appealing. Another reason to read "The Stand" is to witness King's character development at its best, due to the fact that this book dealt with many likeable characters. Randal Flagg is obviously the story's best one. He is the source of the greater evil, and is known as the "Walkin Dude". He posses unimaginable powers and is basically the Devil himself. Obviously when you have a character like Randall Flagg, people are going to be seduced by the evil that such a character offers. The "bad guys" are my favorite characters in the book, because King puts a lot more energy into them, than he does the heroes of the story. The characters on Flagg's team are well developed villans, that really stand out and make an impact on the story. God's team is led an extremely old negro woman named Mother Abagail. She is the driving force for the survivors, and the reason that all the survivors seem to find each other. King was brilliant with her, because he portrays her as God's weapon against the Devil. All of the characters that come together to form the society of survivors are well written, likeable, and posess courage and determination that is extremely inspiring. It is very hard to choose a favorite character when reading this book! "The Stand" is an epic masterpiece that offers rich character development, an intriguing end of the world story, the fight of good against evil, and the overall strength of the human condition. This is definately one of King's best novels.
Rating:
Summary: Longest and Greatest of Stephen King
Review: The book of the King's that isn't really for horror fans. A deadly virus is released onto America, and ends up killing 99.4% of the world's population. The few who survived are somehow immune to such a virus, and are somehow called to two parts of the world. One part is owned by a nice God-loving old lady. The other is ran by a mysterious man named Randall Flag. Both of them try to set up their own community and try to live through the horrible tragety of the "super flu." However, when both communities collide, it's all up to the people to make their Stand.
Rating:
Summary: It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Review: Stephen King's longest novel ("It" is shorter by fewer than a hundred), "The Stand" is a novel of a superflu called Captian Trips which kills 99.5% of the American population. A handful of survivors gather into two camps; the good guys in Boulder, Colorado and the bad guys (where else) in Las Vagas, Nevada. The villian of the piece is a populor figure in King's fiction, Flagg. And after all these years with him, we still know little about him. There are many other memorable characters. Trashcan Man is a wierd pyromaniac. Nick Androes is the best of the good guys, as a deaf mute, and a leader in the new society. Also a huge problem arises, one of the women is pregnet; will the baby contract the superflu? The adventure is exciting (the rape gang shoot out), and horror is gory (the radiation sickness is gruesome), and the relationships is realistic (the friendship between the leaders sem genuine) The love stories are a little less defined. In the end, I think this is where "The Dark Tower" series starts. In the end, the length isn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it's still a little thick.
Rating: 
Summary: King is an acquired taste
Review: Having read both the original version of The Stand in high school and more recently the restored version, I can say without reservation that I loved them both, but give the restored version the nod due to it's more expansive character development. Many non-fans of King have told me over the years that the reason they dislike his works is his tendency for wordiness, spending a page on a subject when a paragraph will do. This is exactly why I always liked him. His occasional ramblings always seemed to heighten the tension that reading his more horror based writings naturally produced. While The Stand isn't a traditional horror novel like Salem's Lot, Christine or The Shining, it does benefit from the extra pages, and with a story as good as this one, it's hard not to consider them a bargain.
Rating:
Summary: best book ever
Review: The Stand was the best book EVER (screw all who dissagree) im only twelve and for some reason my school librarian has trust in a 12 year old METALLICA-led zeplin-AC/DC fan to rent a stephen king book from a highschool i red it in two weeks, first stephen king book for me he's now my favorite author, when i recommended it to someone in my 6th grade class he tried it, got 20 pages into it threw it down infront of me and spat on it so i kicked him in the groin and got suspended (nother story) aparently having a 148 I.Q. means alot in your choice of reading ane way best book ever READ IT!!!
Rating:
Summary: The Stand - Uses of Symbolism
Review: In the novel The Stand, by Stephen King, the use of symbolism is prevalent throughout the story. The story is complex, with symbolism brought into play with many of the numerous characters that are introduced. However, its primary use is reflected in King's portrayal of the protagonist, Abigail Freemantle, and the antagonist, Randall Flagg. His use of symbolism with these characters augments the story's impact upon the reader to a point where without its use, the novel would seem to lose its purpose and meaning.
Freemantle and Flagg have spiritual powers and use them to attract people for their eventual battle between good and evil after a virus catastrophe kills off over 99% of the world's population. The survivors gravitate to one side or the other, with Freemantle attracting her followers to the good side, and Flagg attracting his followers to the evil side.
Abigail Freemantle is portrayed as a messenger or a prophet of God. She is a peaceful old woman who clairvoyantly contacts people through their dreams and attracts them to her, meeting in Boulder, Colorado. Once her people are gathered, she has a spiritual, somewhat biblical control over them. This is even more evident when she chooses four men to go on an apostolic journey across the wilderness on foot with only the clothes on their backs to defeat the evil side.
King portrays Randall Flagg as either a demon or Lucifer himself. He changes forms, and seems to have more supernatural powers than Freemantle, and uses them. He attracts the evil and troubled people either through dreams, voices, or sometimes suddenly appearing to them and tempts them with false promises. His side, the evil side, gathers in Las Vegas, Nevada.
An additional use of symbolism can be seen where Freemantle and Flagg choose to group their people together. Freemantle chooses Boulder, Colorado, a peaceful city, while Flagg chooses Las Vegas, Nevada, known for its corruption and vice. These two settings further illustrate the battle between good and evil that King writes about.
Although King uses symbolism in many other instances in the story, the characters of Abigail Freemantle and Randall Flagg reflect its most profound use. Through its use, King writes a very powerful story.
Rating:
Summary: Apocalypse now... or whenever
Review: Stephen King is a guilty pleasure; he writes for "the masses", which some snooty readers look down their literary noses at. But he is one helluva storyteller, as well as a more than passably good writer. "The Stand" is not his best book, but in a way it's more chilling than some of his better works like "Salem's Lot" or "Pet Sematary"; whereas nobody really believes in vampires or Wendigos, "The Stand" gives us a scenario that is all too believable. In a hidden laboratory in the Mojave Desert, the military is busy creating all kinds of nasty bugs to be used in bio-chemical warfare, in direct violation of the Geneva convention; and one of them is a spectacularly lethal, shifting-antigen virus called Superflu which has 99.4% communicability, which means 99.4% mortality. Simply put, almost everybody in the world will catch it, and everyone who catches it will die. When the virus breaks out of the lab,a technician bolts off the base with his family, carrying the Superflu virus with them, and a chain reaction is set in motion that will culminate in the deaths of billions of people. In a world gone insane with death, social breakdown and anarchy, an Antichrist figure appears named Randall Flagg, and the survivors of the Superflu epidemic will have to take sides in an apocalyptic confrontation between Good and Evil. The first 250 or so pages of "The Stand" are by far the best, as King spins the compelling story of how the Superflu escaped from the laboratory, its rocketing spread across the United States, and from there to the rest of the world, and the spiraling descent into anarchy as people drop dead like flies. Most of the survivors, including a lanky Texan, a young pregnant girl, a deaf-mute and his mentally retarded friend, a self-centered rock singer and others, gravitate towards their guardian angel, a 108-year-old black woman named Mother Abagail, just as others are drawn, in spite of themselves, to the Dark Man, some loyal to him for what he stands for, others out of fear (this dude has a habit of nailing people to crosses when he gets annoyed at them); everyone has to choose a side, no fence-straddling allowed. Sooner or later, a clash is inevitable, and when it comes, only one side will be left standing. King sometimes overwrites, and "The Stand" could have used some judicious pruning; but he knows how to keep the tension high and one has to give King his due, the tension never lets up in this book. One reads this book and wonders, even without the mythical figure of Randall Flagg, could it actually happen? In smaller ways, it already has: the plague epidemic in the 14th century killed a third of the populations of Europe and Asia, and less than 90 years ago, the "Spanish flu" epidemic of 1918 left 30 million people dead -- and this was before the age of jet travel. King's genius lies in producing spine-tingling shivers, but this time around he outdid himself; what he produced in "The Stand" is the stuff of nightmares.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite King novel of all time, next being IT!
Review: The Stand by Stephen King was ORGINALLY released by Doubleday in 1978 and it was 816 pages long, The Stand was rereleased in 1991 complete and uncut, but the orginial manuscipt was 1200 pages long, now The Stand is not 1200 pages long, but just 1,153 pages long. The Stand takes place in Nevada after a deadly virus is released, one of the watchguards then grabs his wife and two kids, and get out of dodge. But they are too late. In Texas, we run into Stu Redman and the local crew hanging out at the local gas station, and they see the soldier driving, and he crashes into the pumps, the soldier is sick, and his wife and kids are dead. He is then taken to the hospital where he dies before he reaches there. In Maine, we run into Fran Goldsmith who is pregnant with her boyfriends child, and she does not want his kid, so they break up. Now we meet Nick Andros, a deft-mute, but he can read lips, he gets attacked by the local bad boys and is rescused by the local sheriff. In New York, we meet Larry Underwood, a up and coming singer who has a hit single called 'Baby Can You Dig Your Man?' to escape the horrors back in California; drugs, parties, and drinking where he can clean himself up. Soon, the virus spreads thanks to travlers crossing the country when they stop to get gas at the station where the dead soldier crashed into the pumps. Soon the country goes into chaos, and two sides eventually come together in this chaos. The highways are crowded with dead drivers trying to escape the death of the big cities, and soon the world is wiped out, but the suriviors who survive face a new terror: the devil's imp who goes by the name of Randal Flagg, he gets his followers together in Las Vegas, and while Mother Abagaible who the other side of the survivors see in their dreams. So they meet up with Mother Abagaible and they head to Boulder Colorado.
Now, while they know the two exists, one of the followers goes bad and plants a bomb into a apartment trying to kill everyone where they are heading a meeting to restablish the Bill Of Rights and the Constitution, so one of the followers head to Vegas to take Flagg down. The Stand is by far THE BEST STEPHEN KING novel he has written in his 30 year career, the only best novel that can reach The Stand is IT. So dont be intimidated by the length of this novel, this novel would read through a breeze, and it very good. Defintely one of my favorite novels of all time, one of the being American Psycho, The Rules Of Attraction, The Rainmaker, The Firm, IT, The Cardinal Of The Kremlin, Patriot Games, and the list goes on. Read it, and you wont regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Feb 7, 2004 spoiles the ending!!!!
Review: Firstly, ignore this review if you've finished the book. I've already finished the book, so it didn't effect me, but if I read Feb 7's review before I finished the Stand, I would have been pretty mad at having the ending mostly spoiled. This book has an awesome ending if you don't know what to expect. The Feb 7 reviewer just spoiled the biggest surprise that this book has. Thanks, buddy.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome Book for anyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I've been reading Stephen King novels for a few months or so, and they are great. Normally Mr. King's trademark of writing is his ability to make you turn a night light on. When I read The Stand I learned that Stephen King isn't filled with demented thoughts of evil demons, but actually a tale of grief and Christianity. Mr. King touches me so much in his novels. In the Shining he scared me out of my wits and in It I couldn't stand to see a clown(in my moms bedroom the doorstop is a clown). The Stand made me very sad and put me on the verge of tears(ive never cried in my life except as a baby) when Larry Underwood and Ralph made that heroic speech, then when they died from the Atomic Bomb. This is a gripping page turner please read this book whatever you do.
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