The Stand

Rating:
Summary: very good. way too long.
Review:
let me say, first of all, this book was worth reading, and i enjoyed it very much. now, let me say(flame me if you must, i don't care) that this book was wayyy too long. much of the writing is brilliant, engaging, thought provoking, and just plain good. very much of the writing is slow, and overdetailed. it's not that i'm someone who doesn't like long books-IT by King is my favorite novel of all time-but i wouldn't have minded so much if more things took place during the extra pages. It takes fifty pages of reading about larry underwood walking for days on end, Nick Tom doing the same, Fran and Stu doing the same-for something which foreshadows a great climax or interesting showdown or whatever to take place, and once you're done with those two very brilliantly written pages, you're back to more unnecessary detail about what the characters are doing. I understand that King does this because he wants us to care about the characters, but several points during the book, i thought if he would just cut it out and get to the point, i would care about them a lot more. He succeeded in making me absolutely love the characters of IT because the characters are actually doing something interesting while you get to know them. I just felt like I was reading 500 pages of sub-story about unnecessary things, only to be let down by a short, quick ending. The ending was intresting...but seriously for over 1000 pages of foreshadowing..the "stand" lasts about two pages. UGH!!!

I wouldn't be complaining about this so much if i had been able to buy the original version of the novel in stores, or find it in a library, but i couldn't because only the uncut version is available now. Many things in the extra pages DID make me care for the characters(fran's confrontation with her mother, nick's life story of overcoming being mute etc.) but eventually i just want for the novel to pick up the pace, and it just wouldn't do so. so much so that once something interesting did happen, i found myself not caring anymore.

the novel is not without it's brilliance, the ending of the world was absolutely breathtaking, the symbolisms of good vs. evil were great, and king's description of the "dark man" intrigued me very much among many other great things. i also loved the thing in the end about "do you think people ever learn anything?" that was perfect. there is a LOT to love about this book, but i was just dissapointed that i didn't love the things i normally would have-had i not had to read through hundreds of pages of filler to get to them i think this would have been one of the greatest books i've ever read.

Rating:
Summary: Worth reading, but not worth loving...
Review: Ahhh, The Stand. Can a writer belabor a point more than King does in this novel? Yes, Stephen, we realize that the book embodies the epic struggle between good and evil. You don't have to knock us over the head with that point. You're smarter than that, we're smarter than that, and it's annoying. This book would have been much better with more subtle symbolism. As it stands now, it's too long, and there are too many characters to care about all of them. However, King does a brilliant job of showcasing the world after the pandemic hits. The scariest element of The Stand is that, while improbable, an outbreak like the one in the book could possibly happen. The way the world falls apart in the novel is scary. The detailed events of people freaking out, the abandoned cars, homes, roads...wow...it's amazing writing. The evil characters are corny, not scary. So King succeeded on one level, but failed on another. The book is worth reading, but it's too long to savor and enjoy. After a while, you feel like you're too committed to stop reading, even though the story gets pretty slow, with all the government crap King introduces. So if you have a long winter ahead of you, read The Stand. A few elements of the book with really stick with you, but the rest will just make you cringe with embarassment for King. Trust me.

Rating:
Summary: Gripping, believable, and engrossing
Review: For a book that starts with a (I hope) fairly unlikely premise, I was sucked in from the beginning by a huge array of very human and believable characters and an absolutely gripping plotline. It's long, but needs to be that way to fully capture the epic nature of the story being told.

The characters are richly drawn: there is no clear line between the "good" ones and the "evil" ones, and the book's most powerful moments come when some of the characters we empathize most with have to wrestle with actions taken "for the good of the many" that are objectively wrong (e.g., sending a retarded man incapable of giving consent on a mission that risks almost certain death). King well captures what I feel would be the aftermath of such an apocalyptic end to civilization: the shell-shocked wandering, the fear and loneliness and desperate desire to reach out to others, and the slow reconstruction of lives from the ashes of old ones. He does far, far better at that than many of the other apocalyptic fiction books I've read.

That said, I think one of the most masterful -- and underappreciated -- aspects of "The Stand" is what it makes you think about society and humanity. It ends with two of the main characters deciding to leave Colorado (where many of the survivors have gathered) because it's getting too built up, because it's when you get people in groups that you start to have the rise of weapons and power-seeking governments and mistrust. It's an uneasy way to end a novel that otherwise would end very hopefully, but I thought that ending was more true and thought-provoking than anything else he could have done.

The one thing that I didn't like was, actually, the mystical overtones. I find it perfectly reasonable to think that the survivors of an apocalypse would turn to religion afterward -- in fact, I didn't think there was enough of that -- but the actual inclusion of a "dark man" and the build-up to a final battle was, I thought, unnecessary. Even without that, the book would have been a great exploration of the darkness and grace that man himself is capable of; no need for a nefarious bogeyman to blame and kill.


Rating:
Summary: M-O-O-N spells the greatest book ever!
Review: Just finished Stephen King's 1420 page monster. It was a pretty satisfying read, and the good parts were very damned good, most if not all of those in occur the earlier stages of the book. The opening sequences as the virus takes hold are the scariest pages I've read (newspapers excluded) for their vividness and plausibility. I remember walking through the train station picturing just how easily a flu of this kind could spread. Still, I don't think The Stand anywhere near King's best work, and it surprises me that King fans cite it as his best. Christine, Misery, Firestarter, The Shining, Tommyknockers, Bag of Bones, Dream Catcher and From a buick 8 are some that beat it, off the top of my head.
The waffling on about the committee and the meetings, prior to Harold Lauder's bout of pyrotechnics, was one 'stage' where the book really suffered. If anything I could only chalk it up to a lack of plotting; he seemed to plow away hoping the story would emerge, but it took a while to do it. Harold was the sole saviour of this whole passage of the book in my humble unpublished-novelist opinion.
As an end of the world scenario, Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle, beats it hands down (having said that, Lucifer's Hammer is in a class of its own.)
Trashcan Man was a great character, and I can't believe the original edit of the novel left his cross-country journey on the cutting floor.
I don't entirely see why fans of SK see this as his best. I think he didn't do a 100% job on the start he made, and yes, the religious themes were too heavy handed for my liking, but again that's just my personal prejudice. It seems that perhaps the burden of making this a hands-down stunner was too heavy. He probably had to lighten the load a bit, be content with how it was coming out, or else it wouldn't have come out at all ... if writing a long novel can be likened to marching up-hill with a sackfull of boulders (and it can), King just had to toss a few back down there to make sure he could make it up to the top. After all, he had other books to write (and I'm glad he did.) The Stand might have taken decades if he'd milked it for all it could have offered (but boy, would *that* have been a novel.)
SK doesn't generally plot his books, if he can avoid it, preferring 'organic' plots that arise from characters and situations. That's good policy, I reckon, but this one needed a little plotting in the middle chapters. Otherwise, this is justifiably a popular read- hats off once again to Mr. King.

Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Book EVER!
Review: I love this book. And to be honest I'm not much of a King fan. I read a few others of his, but this just blew me away. Years after reading The Stand I still think about the characters. If there is a God in heaven, King will write a sequel to this.

Rating:
Summary: My All-Time Favorite Stephen King
Review: "The Stand" had me hooked from the first sentence. It was mysterious, touching, scary, confusing, and sickening. I read this book late into many nights.

As the book begins, a virus is being spread throught the U.S. (unbeknownst to anyone). People begin dying left and right, and the rest of the book follows the travels of those who survive. The survivors wander around looking for others like themselves. This was the most interesting part of the book.

The last part of the book becomes a quest for good vs. evil, as the survivors try to make some sort of "law system" for themselves and run across evil that is not from this world.

Bottom Line: This is one of the best books I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: Who is Spider Robinson?
Review: According to Amazon.com's editorial review of "The Stand," Spider Robinson, in his 1978 review of the original version, actually begged consumers not to purchase the book. I guess Mr. Robinson didin't consider "The Stand" to be on the same level as his own classics like "Lady Slings the Booze" or the "Callahan's Place" series. You've never heard of them?

No kidding. Nobody has to beg consumers not to purchase Spider's books because, well...nobody purchases Spider's books to begin with.

"The Stand" is a good book; maybe great. Mr. King at his best is possessed of a certain folksy, sitting-around-the-campfire style that most readers are likely to find engaging, and that style shows itself most strongly in this and a few of his other works. I've heard it suggested that such a style isn't really "literature." The next time someone tells me that, I'm going to smack them with a copy of "Huckleberry Finn." Hard.

The post-apocalyptical theme has been popular in literature for, oh, the last two thousand years or so, although it's often badly mishandled. Mr. King manages to make the end of the world both spectacular and tragic, as well as creepy and sordid (not to give it away, but everybody gets the flu and dies...). Of course what happens afterward is the real meat of the story.

The bad guy is very, very bad. King imbues him with an almost endearing charisma of the darkest vein, and at times you almost don't want the good guys to win, because whatever this guy's got planned is bound to be just...really cool. And really evil.

The protagonists (and it's a long list) are all well-drawn individuals, rather than an interchangeable ensemble. A story of over a thousand pages leaves plenty of room for character development, and Mr. King makes the most of it; the reader is left feeling as much for the character's small failings as he is for their larger trials and tribulations.

The book is not without its failings, however. I've only read the "uncut" version of the stand, (re)published sometime around 1990. I don't even know if the original story was set in the 90's or the 70's (when the book was originally published). Either way, the purpose of releasing the "uncut" version was ostensibly to update the story for a new generation of readers, and in this I'm not sure Mr. King is entirely successful. There tends to be an inescapable zeitgeist to good stories; it's part of what makes them good. The original story was written in the late seventies (maybe early eighties). The updated version of this book doesn't really FEEL like a story taking place in 1990--too much of the backdrop is 1970's all the way: the slang the characters use, their manner of dress, the vehicles they drive. One of the main characters is an almost-famous rock star whose one hit is titled "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?" That probably wouldn't have knocked Nirvana out of the top spot on MTV in '90. I think the story could have stayed safely in its original "when" and still been just as (if not more) relevant than the updated version.

It's still a fantastic story; the kind you'll be sad to finish. Rarely is such a large cast of characters handled so fluidly and engagingly; rarely is a bad guy so bad and simultaneously so endearing. I don't know if this is really "horror" or not, but it's a great American story.