Rating: 
Summary: I'll Never Forget It.
Review: Stephen King is a master at involving the reader in the story. As I was reading, I began to forget that I was detached from
the story. As I anticipated certain events, I felt fear. When
a character was "saved" from certain disaster, I felt relief.
The Stand is an incredible journey. The most scary thing about
it is that you begin to believe that "it could happen." I recommend the book highly; it's one of those books that you can't stand to put down because you are so anxious to see what happens, yet when you reach the end, you are sorry you
can't continue reading it.
Rating:
Summary: It's a fascinating apocaliptyc fight between good and evil.
Review: I have to say that it is a very large book (the uncut edition) but it's worth reading every page. In the beginning of the book a virus that escapes a secret laboratory in Texas kills almost all of the population, and the people left gathered either in Vegas (by the
dark man) or in Boulder, Colorado (by Abigail, an old lady who leads the good people in the fight against evil). After the people gather they prepare themselves for the final confrontation and all sort of things start to happen,
including the deceit of two of the persons that were in
Boulder who sell themselves to the devil, and are drawn by the dark man. Reading this book is a spellbounding
experience which you'll never forget.
Rating: 
Summary: The Stand
Review: The Stand was apretty good book but it is really long.Plus, there is a lot of boring parts int the book, yet there are more exciting ones. The only real problem I had was the ending. Itwas so dissapointing. I would recommend this book though. It's one of King's best. Another really good one but really long is IT by king.
Rating:
Summary: A story so believable, that it COULD happen!
Review: For a book written twenty years ago, and republished uncutseven years ago, it is perhaps one of the most imaginablenovels ever written. A great story that has compelling characters (Stu, Larry, Randall Flagg, et al), a flawless plotline that is King's version of the Book of Revelations, and just when the situation is at its bleakest, good overcomes. Never have I read a book that constantly makes me find out more each time I read it...something new sticks out. Many of the characters actually became my friends as I read---Mother Abigail, Larry, Stu,Harold, Glen, Ralph, and many many others---and I CARED about what happened to them. For Harold, I felt pity for a boy who is mislead, for Mother Abigail, I felt love..When Larry, Glenn, Ralph, and Stu begin their walk---knowing that one of them won't make Vegas, I was concerned. For Mr. King to evoke emotions as vivid as these from me throughout the reading is a God given gift...not many authors can do such a thing
Rating: 
Summary: Making my Stand!
Review: The Stand by Stephen King has been considered by many to be one of his greatest works. Sadly in my opinion this is very far from the truth. The enormous novel starts off as a simple story of catastrophe. The human race is infected by a plague is is quickly dieing at the waysides. Without giving too much away, this does not remain to be the main premise of the book and eventually it shifts to a story about the battle between the force of God and an a dark force led by "the walking dude".I will get the good comments out of the way to begin with. The original premise of mankind dealing with a horrible plague is quite terrifying and Stephen King does depict this quite well. The does make the first 400 pages of the book go by quite fast. His character development is phenomenal to the point of pain, giving long-winded chapters describing characters that end up being unimportant and "short" living. That is my biggest complaint, the story was simply to long. Comprised of three books ranging from 200 to 500 pages a piece, it seems as though King cannot decide what story he is trying to tell. He pulls in new characters whenever he pleases and then just as quickly trows them into the trash bin. King makes the reader watch character after character grow and change and work , only to see them die abruptly and accomplish little to nothing. He spends hundreds of pages on seemingly pointless details, only to have major plot twists whizz by in a page or less. I found the ending most discouraging, which left the reader with the vague feeling that nothing of any significance had occurred in the last 1150 pages. Simply put, I would not suggest this book to anyone who I cared for in the least bit. I found it time consuming and pointless, and the only redeeming quality I have unearthed is that I managed to read five other books while trudging through this monstrosity. So if you wish to read King, I would suggest the Gunslinger instead.
Rating:
Summary: readability should be required for publication
Review: I've never read any of Stephen King's other novels, but I tried to read The Stand since I like apocalyptic stories. I plodded through the beginnings, always turning the pages in hopes that the book would become better-written farther on.
No such luck. I gave up halfway through in disgust.
Perhaps his horror novels are better, but that shouldn't be too hard here.
I could only say that the loose, rambling, sloppy writing is meant to be paid by the word, not by the quality of writing.
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.
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