Rating: 
Summary: A voyage in the chill of King's imagination
Review: When I first opened the book,and read the first 30 pages,I didnt think much of it..But then,a drape lifted slowly,and I began to see Kings genious looming ..This book begins with the simplest of plots,and then starts twisting and turning until you cant give it up.The characters are real in every detail,the plot winds up perfectly and the reader after more or less of 12 hours of realises that he is REALLY scared.(Especially if he has a cold ..hahaha)..I strongly recommend this book to everyone.It is a tale of supernatural...realism! If you havent read it yet,do yourself a favor and read it!
Rating:
Summary: A great Read
Review: Wow...this is the type of Epic story you will read over and over again. I know i loved the characters, I needed to spend more time with every one of them. This is a masterpiece. Every two or three years pull this book out and enjoy it again. What we have is plague that will end the world. A small percentage of the population is immune to it and survive. Needless to say soem are good some are bad. So we have the old fashioned Good vs. Evil except in this case Stephen King adds a hell of a twist. Please read it, don't be worried about the size of the book, it's not as bad as you think and you will want more, I promise you will!
Rating:
Summary: Epic story, brilliantly told.
Review: Sure, this book is long, but there's very little wasted space. The final hundred pages or so might have been shortened just a little, but basically, everything King has put into this massive work belongs there; to cut it would be a crime. This is a different sort of horror story; the horror is a man-made one. Here we have King exploring the extent to which the human race can be its own worst enemy, as well as its own best friend. Normally I don't much care for the "Hand of God" sort of ending, but this is fantasy; anything can happen. You bleed for these people as they suffer through the grim sequence of events; watching their friends, neighbors, and loved ones die by the millions; feeling alone and devastated; gradually finding each other and trying to regain some reason for hope. By the way, this made a pretty darn good miniseries; I was quite surprised how faithfully the book was adapted to television. I don't know if I would call this King's masterpiece - he really is at his very best with out-and-out horror stories - but this is certainly a rich, powerful, and very moving human story, very much worth reading (and please, read the complete version).
Rating:
Summary: Stephen King: The Greatest
Review: I'll only take few words for this thing. This book have been part of my life in 1997 happy new year's party. I was celebrating the new year coming and just twenty minutes after the fireworks, I was back to the book. I think this book is the greatest one I could ever read. I would like to know Stephen King. I'm already in Venezuela and I'm expecting to get New York at the summer time. If this meeting is not possible, I'll be glad to receive a mail from him.
Rating: 
Summary: Stand (by what you believe)
Review: There are two ways to read this book: 1) As a great, epic story with rich characters, a catchy plotline and a brilliant basic idea. 2) As just another dull, unimaginative preaching about how we must make sacrifices for the good to win. Now that I've read The Stand twice, I'm almost ready to agree with the latter opinion. Almost. The problem is, even if the philosophical side of the book is pure nonsense, I can't deny the strength of the plot, the writing, the ideas. This is a real magnum opus, something that many authors want to write but only few ever will. King had the guts to do it, and he did it well. That's worth a little respect. Still, the end, the last few hundred pages... Like King had decided to re-write Lord Of The Rings - badly. The stupid concept of those four guys _having_ to go out to Las Vegas and get themselves killed, because THAT IS WHAT GOD WANTS THEM TO DO. My rational mind says that for the author, this is just an easy way out. King couldn't solve the problem in any less awkward way. Or if he didn't want to, that would make it all the worse. The end could spoil the whole book, if King hadn't saved a last little cynical surprise for the very last pages. After the apocalypse, the Good People of America start doing it all over again, building the same society that basically led to that apocalypse. I think that's quite refreshing. Call me a cynic, because that's what I am. The Stand isn't maybe the book for a cynic, but it _is_ a significant piece of literature. Maybe not in terms of style or technique, but in terms of sociological and political vision, certainly.
Rating:
Summary: King outdoes himself with The Stand!
Review: Stephen King is masterful and this is his best novel ever. It is the ultimate novel of horror and terror because it could really happen in the end times of Armageddon! Superbly written!
Rating: 
Summary: YAWWWN
Review: I could not finish this book. I got to 800 or so and simply could not go any further it was dragging on and on. I still do not understand how people can find this book so wonderful, nor Stephen King. I like very few of his books but if you insist on reading his work I reccomend The Green Mile or The Regulators (written as Richard Bachman)
Rating:
Summary: All of you detractors-You're missing the meaning of the book
Review: This is driving me crazy. I've read both versions of the book AND watched the miniseries. It's not King's lack of imagination, it's the readers' who have gotten used to neat Hollywood endings. The baddies didn't blow themselvse up. The 'Hand of God' did. The Stand is not some big fistfight ala Schwartznegger (sp?). It is the stand between good and evil that each individual makes in their heart. When they draw the line and say, "I don't care what you do to me, I will not give in to evil, I won't take the easy way out." That is what God was looking for. You could even say that he unloosed the plague to start over. He was looking to see how strong a man is when faced with evil. Will he give in? Or will he stand tall. Unfortunately, God seems to require people to follow through with their stand instead of rescuing them. But hey, this isn't a Hollywood ending, thank god. This is one of my fave books of all time, partly b/c it is so long. You really get to kow the characters and for a few days or weeks, they become your family and when the story is over you miss them. You gte really involved in their lives. I really can't say that about most other books I've read, regardless of genre.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books ever
Review: The Stand in my opinion is truly one of the greastest books of the century its up there with the shining and the lord of the rings.
Rating: 
Summary: Warning: spoilers
Review: I feel compelled to respond to Chris from Canada. It's not just 'people with no imagination' who are turned off by this book. People with imagination are the ones who realize exactly how good this book might have been. In fact, imagination is exactly what the story lacks for the last 500 pages or so. It DOES end with explosions, mass murder AND the hero getting the girl. The "stand" here is nothing more than four guys going to meet the enemy reluctantly, against their will, because they think that's what God wants them to do. This message comes from a starving, dying, delirious woman. And, might I add, they accomplish nothing except getting themselves killed for no reason at all. This is the problem so many of us have with the book. The animosity is set up and grows for 600 pages.. and then, out of nowhere, the bad guys just blow themselves up? What kind of conflict is that? Stephen King can be fantastic at shorter works (Skeleton Crew, Different Seasons), but he's remarkably consistent with his 'epic' works in that he never knows how to resolve them. Save your time.
| 
