Rating: 
Summary: It's Just Not Fair
Review: Wow. This book is too good. It's just not fair. Come on, Stephen King, let somebody else get a chance at the great ideas. If you take them all, what are the rest of us to do?
Rating:
Summary: King's Finest
Review: The Stand explores a nightmare vision of a post-apocalyptic America and it will draw you in from the beginning. This was a book I read in three days because I could not put it down. The plot and characters are believable enough that you will be left wondering, "What if...?" for weeks.The U.S. government unintentionally releases a virus on the world that kills 99% of the human population and an empty shell of civilization is left behind for the survivors to resurrect. People are drawn to darkness, embodied by the creepy Randall Flagg, or light, embodied by a 108 year-old black woman in Nebraska, based on the deepest instincts of their souls. The conflict between these camps captures King's vision of good vs. evil in his most powerful way. Can Amazon lend me a few extra stars? I can't recommend this book highly enough with the five I have here.
Rating:
Summary: A Modern Day Epic
Review: I just began reading Stephen King's works this past summer, and in these last six months, he has grown to be my favorite author. In my opinion, King is one of the greatest story tellers of the modern age, and The Stand is one of the greatest stories of our time. Actually, I shouldn't really describe The Stand as a story for it is so much more than that. The Stand is truly a modern day epic, equatable to the Iliad and Odyssey. King doesn't just present us with the idea of world wide desolation, he makes it real. The characters he creates dwell not within the pages of the novel, but rather in our minds and hearts. Finally, King paints the ultimate picture of a battle between good and evil; a battle that you will be drawn into wholly. If you buy The Stand you will not be dissappointed.
Rating:
Summary: A truly magnificant good VS evil novel
Review: Now before we get started on this review i'd just like to say this novel is amazing and will be a favorite of mine for a very long time. Now as 99% of the world is dead and 50% of the remaining 1%( hope im not counfusing you here) are making a happy town and everybody seems happy but the other 50% of the remaining humans have other plans and what do you get when you mix them together? well a classic Good VS evil novel, and even though this novel has been out for nearly 25 years and its still a loved classic now what does this tell you? that this novel is timeless. Now this novel is long about 1,179(pages) or something around there(uncut version) and if you can't get into this novel it will take a long time to finish but i don't think you will have a problem with not getting into it and now that we have the setting lets move on to the characters. The characters are probably the most realistic and superb personalities. The villian is realisic yet scary as hell. Which makes for a great villian of course. So in conclusion this is a magnifigant novel and if you are an s.k. fan you will probably love this or if your just a bookwork looking for a really good book buy this.
Rating: 
Summary: The Stand (Uncut Edition)
Review: I've read many Stephen King novels and many of them I totally liked. In fact I thought I would never read a book of his and not like it. The Stand was an excception. I found it to drag and I really saw no reason as to why some of the things happened the way they did.It took me about 4 months to read this because it was just not interesting enough to capture my attention. However, even with all of that overall I thought it was good and I would recommend it to only the fans of Stephen Kings. If you just happen to pick it up, it wouldn't really be a good book to read.
Rating: 
Summary: A frightening, realistic epic
Review: This is the story of a group of people, each carefully drawn, travelling across the United States after an apocalyptic epidemic. In the expanded version, you get a few scenes showing how the apocalypse was released from its bottle. You also get a lot more background on the principal characters. The characters gather together and, as they try to rebuild their lives, they realize they have to confront a supernatural evil if they are going to survive. I always liked this novel becuase, as I read it, I could tell that Stephen King believed every word of it. He doesn't stop to apologize for his wild ideas, or to explain how any of this could happen. When the survivors try to build a community, King explores frontier democracy through them. He doesn't flinch for an instant, doubting that he can switch from horror to politics. He just keeps going. The expanded edition makes the ending much better. A few characters have to take a journey into the badlands to take their stand. In this edition, you get the whole journey, which gives the climax more context. I highly recommend this book to anyone, especially people who have never read Stephen King before.
Rating:
Summary: Yet another amazing novel by Stephen King
Review: You are walking down the aisle at your favorite supermarket, when someone an aisle over sneezes. The sneeze goes unnoticed by you and everyone else in the store. It is just a sneeze after all, just an everyday symptom to the common cold. Or is it? What if this time it is not just a common sneeze, but a gateway to one of the most highly contagious, and deadliest diseases known to man. This is the very concept that Stephen King uses in The Stand, to induce fear into his readers minds.
The Stand is one of the best books I have ever read. It is creative, suspenseful, and it has everything you could ever want in a book. King incorporates such themes, in The Stand, as; survival and adaptation, when the entire human race is almost completely erased, and the remainder of the population is dealing with the loss of friends and loved ones, as well as trying to survive on their own without the modern technology of the world they used to know. King uses the classic good versus evil theme throughout the entire book, as the survivors of death, move toward one of two designated locations, one for the good and one for the evil. Governmental domination and deception is a major theme in the book, and the government officials do everything in their power to conceal the deadly disease, even if it means killing those who speak out about their concerns pertaining to the disease. There are even a few love stories throughout the book, as well. The many different stories and plotlines flow together smoothly from one to another, and it really gives a variety of storylines, that anyone could enjoy reading.
When reading The Stand it is not always easy to distinguish fiction from reality. King has a way of making his readers feel as though they are a part of the actual story, by encompassing the reader in a world he has created with his words, and making them forget the world going on around them. King also has a way of making his fictional stories feel real by writing so, it seems as though the events occurring in the book could actually really happen in the our own real world. This, I believe, is the thing that frightens readers the most.
So if you want to get away from the hustle and bustle of the real world, and you just want to get lost in a good book, The Stand is for you. Just make sure you have some free time on your hands, because the novel is over 1100 pages long, but it is all definitely worth reading. I myself could not put the book down, and I never wanted the story to end. The Stand is yet another one of Stephen King's amazingly imaginative writings, and in my opinion, the best of all of his creations, so far.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring Long Drawn out potboiler!!!
Review: Good GOD! This book is stupid. It's long, drawn out, boring and totally contrived. Like the majority of his work it's populated by the typical Stephen King stock(blue collar village idiot's) character's and a cheesy redneck devil like villian. Stupid and predictable...tedious and incondite!!!! and a total waste of my time.
Rating:
Summary: King¿s End of the World Epic Stands and Delivers
Review: Stephen King is an author whose work has diversified enough through the years that he is considered not just a top of the line horror writer, but a first-rate author able to succeed in any given genre. With classics like "Salem's Lot" and "Carrie," King established his horror credentials. In stories like "The Body" and "Hearts In Atlantis," he captures the essence of childhood. In tales such as "Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption" and "Dolores Claiborne," he coaxes misery and hope in equal parts out of everyday reality. "The Stand," one of Stephen King's earliest novels, incorporates all these aspects of King's range and much more beyond that. It is epic in both scope and accomplishment. The story itself, much like the Biblical flood or Homer's Iliad, is not the focus, but simply the backdrop - the conditions under which the many characters are tested. In this case, King's novel concerns an engineered virus breaking loose and its subsequent destruction of the human race. "The Stand" is a fable of good and evil, but the narrative is about choices made and the Journey. I capitalize the "J" in journey, because I imagine if King were discussing this book, he would, too. There are many paths traveled in this tale, and so much of what defines the characters and the weave of the story are meditations about whether or not to turn off the road. Is it possible? Is it too late? Is it worth it? These are the questions constantly posed to and by the characters, and we turn each page in anticipation of their answers. In the desolation and brutality of the scenario, King's horror achieves numbing omnipresence. The characters embody all the earthy quirks and human foibles that have proven to be King's most distinctive feature and gift. Life, death, good, evil, youth, old age, politics - all are grappled with by the characters, and in ways that we instinctively believe are how those characters would respond. "The Stand" has something for everyone, but each reader must make a choice to immerse themselves in this unique experience. It a long book containing a deep world, defined by black and white, populated by grays. To read "The Stand" is to explore how deep or light your own shade of gray is. Are you ready for the Journey?
Rating:
Summary: A Flawed Diamond
Review: 3.5 stars. This isn't one of King's typical horror stories. This book goes beyond that; it takes on some of the most important religous, psychological, and social issues of our time. There's a double meaning behind the title: Stephen King himself is taking a Stand on these issues that we've all been debating. Because of the implications, this novel is vast in scope and stretches beyond the borders of its covers. But is it King's best? No. Here's why: First off, the novel is slow. The beginning of the book is dedicated to the spread of the plague. Then it shows the survivors grouping under two leaders: Randall Flagg in the west and a 108-year-old black woman named Mother Abagail in the east. It's a long while before the heroes actually depart to make their Stand against Flagg. And also, the novel is filled with too much talking to my liking, mostly philosophical stuff (In other words, not enough action). (SPOILER SECTION) Secondly, I HATE deus ex machina, and that is what this ending is. Thirdly, the very end makes everything that happened in this book seem for nothing. It basically said that time is circular. The last sentence of the book went something like this: "Time was a wheel, and it always came around to the same place again." Time is linear, it is it is IT IS! Just look at our own history and you can see as much. Fourthly, there are many abandoned plot threads: 1)There's a scene in which Mother Abagail realizes that an Eye(Flagg) is looking for everybody that would come to her, and one little girl. Who was this little girl? We never find out. At first I thought it might be Frannie's baby, but no, that turned out to be a male. 2)What was so important about the child Flagg conceived on Nadine? We never find that out, either. 3)Why was Flagg losing his powers toward the end? This is never revealed, unless it's just deus ex machina again. Also, Flagg's psyche is never fully explored; I can only get a vague picture of him. 4)What happened to Leo Rockway that turned him into a murdering savage? And why did he have such a special perception? The book doesn't say. 5)Toward the end, it seemed that Tom Cullen had an important part to play, but he didn't. Yeah he saved Stu but it didn't change anything major in the story. We never find out what was so special about him or how he relates to the moon, M-O-O-N, that spells abandoned plot threads, and an author isn't supposed to abandon his plot threads, laws yes, everybody knows that! 6)And more important than any of the others, WHAT stand was there? If everyone had stayed in Boulder the outcome would have been the same, because it was Trashcan Man that did everything. Basically, Larry, Glen, and Ralph all died for nothing. (END OF SPOILER SECTION) Those things listed above greatly flawed this novel. But, the depth of the story and King's great characterization would not allow me to drop the rating to less than 3.5 stars. This book had the potential to be his brightest gem, but, in the end, it just didn't cut it. I think King knew how to start this story but he just didn't know how to finish it properly.
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