“[Charlie] was hunched tensely over the steering wheel, his face drawn in the dim glow of the dashboard instruments. ‘If the gates are closed, I’m gonna try to crash through.’ And he meant it. [Sally] could tell. Suddenly her knees felt watery…But there was no need for such desperate measures. The base gates were standing open. One guard was nodding over a magazine. She couldn’t see the other; perhaps he was in the head. This was the outer part of the base, a conventional army vehicle depot. What went on at the hub of the base was of no concern to these fellows…I looked up and saw the clock had gone red…She shivered again and put her hand on his leg. Baby LaVon was sleeping again. Charlie pattered her hand briefly and said: ‘It’s going to be all right, hon.’ By dawn they were running east across Nevada and Charlie was coughing steadily…”
-tStephen King, The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition

A lot of authors have attempted to narrate the end of the world. None quite manage to do so like Stephen King. This is a big book, and as subtle as a sledgehammer, but the end of the world requires a large canvas, and subtlety is not a necessity for this type of material. In short, this is a near-perfect melding of genre and author.

King’s premise for The Stand is firmly rooted in an old-fashioned distrust of the government. In the opening pages, a highly contagious virus – the superflu – escapes from a U.S. Army biological weapons facility. Despite drastic, murderous attempts to quarantine and suppress, the virus spreads the world over. Most people fall victim to this lethal bug; however, a small number of folks, for mysterious reasons, are immune.

King tells this story in the only way he knows how: voluminously. This fully restored, unabridged “author’s cut” weighs in at 1,141 pages.

(I read this is mass market paperback, which was a true test of my aging eyes. I suppose it’s shorter in other versions, but it’s no novella, no matter what way you slice it!).

This length is partially an indulgence, something you can get away with if you are an international bestselling author. Yet King also uses the space to construct a vivid, consistent, and painfully real portrait of a country gone to hell: highways clogged with vehicles; the power gone; bodies littering fields; simple medical procedures turned lethally serious. King has given himself the latitude to not only show the macro effects of the plague, but also the smaller, telling details, such as the fact that all the beverages the characters drink are warm.

(That would be the real tragedy of the situation. All those Diet Dr. Peppers, all of them room temperature and spicy as hell. One shudders to think of it).

The Stand is a deliberately paced novel. It is a thriller with extreme patience. The first 300 pages or so is all set up, following various, unconnected characters whom – it turns out – are impervious to the superflu. During the middle portions of the book, these characters, including East Texan Stu Redman, music star Larry Underwood, pregnant girl Frannie Goldsmith, and fat guy Harold Lauder, start to make their way towards each other.

(And yes, my facile descriptions of these characters are intended to make a point. Despite certain attempts at shading, especially in making putative hero Larry a bit of an ass, all of King’s characters start to meld together. They aren’t distinct as human beings. Even at the end, I was trying to keep certain individuals separate in my mind. King has created some memorable characters in his career, but this is not a character piece).

King has taken his share of literary criticism (while reaping popular success), but he is an undisputed master storyteller. He writes in the third-person omniscient, taking a Gods-eye view of the world he has created and destroyed. His style is one that would burst the blood vessels of most creative writing professors. His prose veers from formal to slangy, often within a single paragraph. His writing is peppered with idioms, pop cultural references (old television shows, movies, and even commercial jingles), snatches of music, and contains an annoying level of puns and malapropisms. King is a product of a culture that valued the collection of trivia over standard intellectualism. He is, therefore, easily accessible to others of that same culture. On the upside, the prose is easy and fun and effortlessly maintains interest. On the downside, The Stand was first published in 1978, so many of the references are hopelessly dated. (The natural consequence of being up-to-the-minute is that the minute passes so quickly).

Besides the time-capsule references, the other disadvantage of King’s voice is that it tends to overwhelm the characters and the situations. It has a homogenizing influence. Everyone talks the same and thinks the same. In one conceit, King excerpts the minutes of a council meeting in the Boulder Free Zone (where survivors have congregated); unsurprisingly, the tone of these “minutes” sound remarkably like King himself. The author and the characters almost become one. This is a disheartening prospect, when the narrator is describing a sex scene and all you can picture is Stephen King’s photograph.

A great deal of time is spent giving depth and detail to a post-civilized landscape. There is a very real-seeming, Swiss Family Robinson-like aspect to the proceedings, as various survivors find ways to carry on in an environment bereft of government and modern conveniences. King goes to extremes to remind you on every page of the conditions his protagonists face. Indeed, there is an entire section in the book devoted to one-off characters dying in relatively mundane fashion, underscoring the heightened dangers you face when the safety net of community has been cut away.

The realistic grounding is necessary, because Stephen King (being Stephen King) also has some supernatural elements to add to the mix.

All the survivors, immune from the superflu, begin having shared dreams. Actually, there are two dreams. One dream, the good dream, leads people to an old black woman in Nebraska, Mother Abigail (Here, King indulges an unfortunate propensity for mystical black characters). Another dream, the evil dream, leads people to a Satan-like figure known by several names, but mainly as Randall Flagg (a recurring character in the King canon).

The two dreams lead to a coalescing of flu survivors into separate camps. The good guys, including Larry, Stu, a deaf-mute named Nick Andros, and a low-functioning man named Tom Cullen, gather in Boulder, Colorado, and attempt to rebuild society. The bad guys, including a spree killer named Lloyd, make camp in Las Vegas (naturally!).

As you might have gathered, it is these two forces, good and evil, that must eventually come to conflict. And it is the good people of Boulder who will eventually make the titular stand.

This biblical setup gives King ample opportunity for pop philosophizing. He even creates a character, sociologist Glen Bateman, for the sole purpose of soliloquizing on topics such as community dynamics and embryonic democracy. At this point, King’s reality, which he has worked so hard to create, begins to dissipate. It is replaced by cheap symbolism and on-the-nose commentary.

For instance, with Glen’s help, Randall Flagg is tagged as a fascist, who crucifies anyone who dares cross him; yet his brand of leadership is efficient at getting the lights turned on. Meanwhile, the Boulder folk start committee after committee, strangling themselves in bureaucracy; but at least they have free will and a voice and the constitution.

The Bible 101 also gets to be a bit much. I got that Mother Abigail was supposed to be Christ-like before she wandered off alone into the wilderness.

All this adds up to an endgame disappoints. (Minor, non-specific grousing behind the tag).

Instead of all the plotlines connecting and driving towards a thundering climax, the story just meanders along, studded with tepid monologues and cutaways to emotionally unfulfilling romantic interludes. As I reached the last few hundred pages, my interest waned dramatically. I stopped caring what would happen; I got distracted and started reading other books. I finally had to force myself to finish the damn thing, and frankly, there wasn’t much of a payoff. The actual “stand” of the title, the final battle of good and evil (and literally between white and black), is disposed of in less than twenty pages. I won’t spoil it, but the resolution relies more on deus ex machina than clockwork plotting.

With that aside, The Stand’s virtues more than make up for any shortcomings. My chief complaint is the eyestrain associated with any mass market paperback. Of course, the eyestrain was worth it. The Stand is a fine mess: an ambitious, overstuffed epic that gleefully spills out in every direction. While it lacks the forcefully-focused storytelling of King’s best works, it will definitely remain a landmark against which other world-destroying writers will have to contend.

Were the 1427 pages worth it? Laws yes!

I decided to start reading The Stand when I started my new course at university – one much harder than one the previous. The last two months have consisted of late nights, copious amounts of coffee and naps during physiology class. But The Stand has been my constant and loyal companion; one that I have used as a pillow in the aforementioned physiology class. Finishing the book felt like saying goodbye to a friend that had not once let me down. I’d like to salute Stephen King for giving me Mother Abagail, Nick Andros, Glen Bateman, Kojak, Stu Redman, Fran Goldsmith and one of the most beautiful journeys I’ve ever been on.

Full review now posted!
Original review can be found at Booknest.

Rating: 6/5 stars.

Yes, you read that right. Six out of five stars. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. M-O-O-N, that spells phenomenal.

Going into this book can be intimidating. It’s 1153 pages in its complete and uncut edition, making it one of King’s largest books. It is also considered by many King fans to be his best work. There’s disagreement, of course. Some swear by King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower, while others hale IT as their favorite book of all time, while still others hold up various of King’s other works as their personal favorites. I have yet to read The Dark Tower and thus might change my mind on this, but so far I’m firmly in the camp that The Stand is King’s masterpiece. Within this massive book mingle so many genres. The setting is an apocalyptic dystopia, but there is romance and adventure and humor and theology and satire and fantasy. If I could only re-read five books for the rest of my life, this would be one of those five because it gives its readers so much.

“Can you dig that happy crappy? Do you believe that happy crappy?”

There were some fantastically well-developed characters in this book, and they all joined the side of one of the two most charismatic characters of all: Mother Abigail and Randall Flagg. Mother Abigail is a 108 year-old black woman who has been appointed by God to lead the side of good. Randall Flagg is the dark man, the tall man, the Walkin’ Dude, and he is the face of evil in this brave new world that’s been wrought by Captain Trips, the worse plague to ever sweep the earth. With 99 percent of the earth’s population wiped out at the hand of man, those remaining face off as they try to remake the world, for good or for ill. Though Flagg and Mother Abigail lead their respective sides, their followers are just as well-developed, of not more so. Honestly, there are too many amazing characters to list. But I think that the star of the show is Tom Cullen, a mentally handicapped man who accomplishes more than anyone would have believed possible. Tom made my heart squishy with his innocence and his belief in his friends. Every character King crafted within this story felt special and real and relatable, but Tom shone.

One thing I really loved about this book was King’s decision to portray “good” characters and “bad” characters in such a human way. Those who sided with Flagg were still sympathetic and relatable, while those who sided with Mother Abigail were still fallible and petty at times. There were no perfect protagonists here, and no flat cardboard antagonists who are easy to hate. These were all people, real people, and I connected with them all.

Besides the characters, my absolute favorite thing about this novel was its religious commentary. There was a level of theological depth here that’s not present in most religious fiction. I knew going into this book that it was a post-apocalyptic war between good and evil, but I had no idea that it would impact my thinking this much. Take this quote from Mother Abigail’s thoughts, for instance:

"They filed in through the gate that Ralph opened and she felt her sin, the one she thought of as the mother of sin. The father of sin was theft; every one of the Ten Commandments boiled down to “Thou shalt not steal.” Murder was the theft of a life, adultery the theft of a wife, covetousness the secret, slinking theft that took place in the cave of the heart. Blasphemy was the theft of God’s name, swiped from the House of the Lord and set out to walk the streets like a strutting whore. She had never been much of a thief; a minor pilferer from time to time at worst. The mother of sin was pride. Pride was the female side of Satan in the human race, the quiet egg of sin, always fertile.”

See? That’s some deep stuff, man. And this book was chock-full of it! Characters who didn’t believe in a Higher Power at all were faced with His probability, and watching them struggle between the rejection and acceptance of that knowledge was fascinating. The theological debates between characters and within their own thoughts was incredibly thought-provoking, and I would read this book again just for that. But there were so many more facets to this story. I was actually even okay with the ending here, which is often lacking in King’s novels; I felt like this one delivered.
I highly recommend this book. If you’re going to read one Stephen King book, I wholeheartedly believe that this should be the top contender. It’s a commitment, true, but incredibly worth it.

"The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there … and still on your feet.”

My first buddy read with my wonderful friend Caleb!

“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet.”

How is it even possible for me to condense my thoughts on The Stand into one review. I don’t know. But I’ll try!

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my reread of The Stand. Revisiting these characters reminded me of reconnecting me with old friends you haven’t seen in a while - you don’t realise how much you’ve missed them until you see them again. And the characters are what make The Stand so epic, for me personally.

But... I’ll get this out of the way early - it didn’t break into my top 10 King books. Yes, I love it, but some parts are bloody painful. That first section is mostly fantastic, I love reading about the outbreak of Captain Trips, a deadly flu that kills 99.4% of the population, but some chapters are a real drag. The Trashcan Man, for example. Yes, he is a crucial character, but good god, reading about him in the first section is like pulling teeth.

But truly, what would The Stand be without the epic cast of characters and the terrifying villain? My top 3 are Stu, the everyday man who proves a leader in such challenging times, Tom Cullen, a sweet innocent character who is impossible not to love, and Kojak, the goodest boy I ever did see, but there’s just sooo many that are fascinating to read about - from Harold to Nadine to Fran to Glen to Mother Abigail to the main man, Randall Flagg himself. And his scary penis. But a special shout-out to the often-forgotten Dayna Jurgens. She is the very definition of a BADASS.

The Stand is the ultimate battle of Good vs Evil, accelerated by a terrifying pandemic. It was quite scary to read during the time of COVID, and I can only be thankful that it never got quite this bad!

M-O-O-N spells EPIC. The greatest post-apocalyptic novel ever written, in my humble opinion.

Reread: March 2024. I still love this book but there’s just too many boring parts that take me out of the story. 4 stars.

You know what’s really scary? Getting sick while you’re reading the first part of The Stand. Just try running a fever, going through a box of tissues and guzzling the better part of a bottle of NyQuil while Stephen King describes the grisly deaths of almost every one on Earth from a superflu. On top of feeling like crap, you'll be terrified. Bonus!

After a bio-engineered virus that acts like a revved up cold escapes from a U.S. government lab, it takes only weeks for almost all of humanity to succumb to the disease. A handful of survivors are mysteriously immune and begin having strange dreams, some of which are about a very old woman called Mother Abigail asking them to come see her. More disturbing are nightmares about a mysterious figure named Randall Flagg also known as the Dark Man or the Walkin’ Dude.

As they make their way through an America almost entirely devoid of people, the survivors begin to unite and realize that the flu was just the beginning of their problems. While some are drawn to the saintly Mother Abigail in Boulder Colorado who tells them that they have been chosen by God, others have flocked to Flagg in Las Vegas who is determined to annihilate all those who refuse to pledge their allegiance to him.

If King would have just written a book about a world destroyed by plague and a small number of people struggling in the aftermath, it probably would have been a compelling story. What sets this one apart is the supernatural element. Flagg is the embodiment of evil and chaos. He's a mysterious figure who has been giving the wrong people the push needed for them to make things worse for everyone, and he sees the plague as his chance to fulfill his own destiny as a wrecker of humanity.

And on the other side, we have God. Yep, that God. The Big Cheese himself. But this isn’t some kindly figure in a white robe with a white beard or George Burns or Morgan Freeman. This is the Old Testament God who demands obedience and worship while usually rewarding his most faithful servants with gruesome deaths.

King calls this a tale of dark Christianity in his forward, and one of the things I love about this book is that it does feel like a Biblical story, complete with contradictions and a moves-in-mysterious-ways factor. Stories don’t get much more epic than this, and King does a great job of depicting the meltdown of the world through the stories of a variety of relateable characters. (Larry Underwood remains among my favorite King creations.)

One of my few complaints is that this features a lot of King’s anti-technology themes that he’d use in several books like Cell or The Dark Tower series. We’re told repeatedly that the ‘old ways’ like trying to get the power back on in Boulder are a ‘death trip’. The good guys gather in the Rocky Mountains, but if they try to get the juice going so they won’t freeze to death in the winter, they’re somehow acting in defiance of God’s will and returning to the bad habits? Not all tech is bad tech, Mr. King. Nature is a bitch and will kill your ass quicker than the superflu.

Here’s another thing I’m not wild about. When this was published in the late ‘70s, the bean counters at King’s publishers had decided that the book as written would be too pricey in hardback and no one would pay a whopping $13 for a Stephen King hardback. So King cut about three hundred pages.

Around 1990 after it had become apparent that King could publish his shopping list as a best seller, he put those pages back in and released the uncut version. Which I’m fine with. The original stuff was cut for a financial reason, not an editorial one, and there’s some very nice bits of story added in. If King would have stopped there, we would have had a great definitive final version as originally created by the author.

Unfortunately, he seemed to catch a case of Lucasitis and decided to update the story a bit and change its original time frame from 1980 to 1990. I’m not sure why that seemed necessary to him. Yes, the book was a bit dated by then, but it was of its time. He didn’t rewrite the text (Which I’m grateful for.), but just stuck in some references to Madonna and Ronald Reagan and Spuds McKenzie.

This led to a whole bunch of anachronisms. Would students in 1990 call soldiers ’war pigs’? Someone in New York picks up a phone book to look up the number to call an ambulance instead of dialing 911? A song called Baby, Can You Dig Your Man is a huge hit? None of it quite fits together. There's also a layer of male chauvinism and lack of diversity that you can overlook in a book written in the late '70s, but seems out of place for a book set and updated for 1990.

The things that irritate me are still far outweighed by one of my favorite stories of an apocalyptic battle between good and evil.

I’m also glad to get a long overdue audio edition of this book. Great narration and 40+ hours of end of the world horror make for a damn fine listening experience.

The Stand, Stephen King

Publication date: October 3, 1978.

The Stand is a post-apocalyptic horror/fantasy novel by American author Stephen King.

It expands upon the scenario of his earlier short story "Night Surf" and outlines the total breakdown of society after the accidental release of a strain of influenza that had been modified for biological warfare causes an apocalyptic pandemic, which kills off the majority of the world's human population.

King dedicated the book to his wife, Tabitha: n  "For Tabby: This dark chest of wonders."n

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز یازدهم ماه اک��بر سال 2005میلادی

عنوان: ابلیس (ایستادگی)؛ اثر: استیون (استیفن) کینگ؛ مترجم: نرسی خلیلی فر؛ تهران، واژه آرا، 1383، در دو جلد، 1252ص، شابک دوره9646498566، شابک جلد نخست 9646498647؛ شابک جلد دو 9646498655؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده ی 20م

در روز بیست و سوم ژوئن، وحشتی مرگبار سراسر «آمریکا» را فرامیگیرد؛ بازماندگان در گورستانی، به وسعت دنیا، در تلاش برای بقا، و در کابوسی دائمی سرگردان هستند؛ آنها که زنده مانده اند، یا به سوی پیرزنی میروند، که نماد خوبی و نیکویی است، یا به سمت مردی تاریک، که نماد شیطان است

کتاب «ابلیس»، رمانی پساآخرالزمانی و فانتزی، نوشتاری از نویسنده ی نامدار «آمریکایی»، «استیون(استیفن) کینگ» است؛ آنگاه که مردی از یک آزمایشگاه بیولوژیک فرار میکند، زنجیره ای از رویدادهای مرگبار، به هم میپیوندند، و ویروسی جهش یافته، منتشر میشود، که در طی چند هفته، نود و نه درصد انسانها را از بین میبرد؛ آنها که از مهلکه جان سالم به در میبرند، در ترس و سردرگمی به سر میبرند، و به شدت به یک رهبر نیاز دارند؛ با پیشروی داستان، دو نفر برای رهبری و هدایت جامعه ی کوچک، پا پیش میگذارند، زنی یکصدوهشت ساله و خوش قلب به نام «مادر آباگیل»، که از بازماندگان میخواهد جامعه ای در ایالت «کلرادو» بسازند؛ و مردی شرور به نام «راندال فلگ» که از آشوب و خشونت لذت میبرد

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 14/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 10/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

I’ve hated the last 1200 pages of this book’s 1200. And some may say, but Susana, it’s an apocalypse, you love apocalypses. Well this here is the exception that proves the rule.

It lacks all the details I love in this kind of fiction. The logistics of feeding, cleaning and keeping safe millions of survivors are not even mentioned. All they care about is looting guns and bikes. All these characters carry more guns than Jayne from Firefly. All? No! The girls don’t get more than a derringer. I find it really strange how 20 minutes after the Fall of Civilisation normal men become walking tanks, while the girls’ more peaceful option would be, I think, the clever one. Except their male friends get all “don’t go there, you’ll totally get raped”. And then they go there, and they do. Therefore, in my opinion, girls really ought to get the bigger guns.

Since we’re talking about men and guns, our military chums from this book mess up in the most boring way possible. I can’t phantom why Stephen King wishes to waste so many perfectly good pages on reactionary, useless fossils. I already know that that’s what they are. They're military, for crying out loud. Perhaps americans find this revelation more striking.

I kept waiting for something that would be of any interest or relevance to me through the following sections:
t- Character building and beginning of the flu
t- They get their shit together and go on the road
- Road movie
- Settling in Boulder
t- Everybody who matters leaves for Vegas (or Heaven). Bro road movie.
t- Ending, better known as Deux Ex Machina The Size Of Canada.
During the 4th, I thought I would finally –finally- get to see an organization for survival. But not at all! No bloody fear; Stephen King’s only interest lays in the social and political aspect of apocalypse, he doesn’t really care about the technical one. After all, techies are people who like order and are therefore Lucifer’s spawn. And thus that’s the second time this month I’ve been called the Enemy. The first time was in a hippie village. They don't seem to like engineers much.

Mercifully, it doesn’t concern techies alone: there is a disturbing mistrust of knowledge, any knowledge. Among the heroes, Glen Bateman represents the university professor and his analysis is supposed to explain the situation to the reader, but he’s in fact a way more unreliable narrator than Stuart and Nick, the down to earth mid-western types. They do the explaining of the real important stuff. Glen, instead, is crafty, devious, and all the synonyms of clever that rhyme with dishonest. He doesn’t get to be a leader, and he’s the most susceptible to be tempted by the dark man – same as Harold, who’s also the more knowledgeable, curious one. Harold famously gives in to temptation.

That happens for a reason - the thesis of the book seems to be that “rationalism” defined as “the idea we can ever understand anything about the state of being” is the source of all evils. In any case, it’s said to be the guiding principle of the dark man’s world. He himself is called “the last magician of rational thought, gathering the tools of technology against us”. What the hell? Why? The urge to explain things, to organize and catalogue, rational thought in short, is GOOD, damn it. I’m not afraid of technology. There isn’t a deep fear in me that Stephen King can tap with this. There just isn’t.

Let’s get to the social aspect. Apocalypse in The Stand translates in an insufferable perpetuation of the traditional roles of the sexes. By part 2 I had understood that women were mainly baby-making machines. “Babies are our most important product”, says the doctor. Subtle. Not to mention that both female characters whose names are worth remembering are mother figures. Mother Abagail, could not be more explicit in her motherliness, and Fran is pregnant. Let’s put a quote on that:

“All right. Only next washday it’s my turn, you hear?”
“Sure.” She smiled a little slyly. “And how long does that last? Until I deliver?”
“Until we get the power back on,” Stu said. “Then I’m going to bring you the biggest, shiniest washer you ever saw, and hook it up myself.”
“Offer accepted.” She kissed him firmly…

And I can only guess that then she gets all:

It could be worse; at least they’re intelligent and brave. Of course, they utterly lack initiative in all non womanly matters, are mainly seen as potential sex, their moral status is defined by how much they love their families, and they’re not techies so they’re not Satan’s spawn (so there's that).

As exceptions to the rule, there is the Mata Hari and the frenchie Virgin Bride/Black Widow, and boy, do I hate Nadine’s character. They’re both seen as dysfunctional. But really in general the role of women is taken for granted. An illustration: Fran goes to the library to read up on gardening and finds a bespectacled young man poring over a book called “Seven Independent Power Sources for Your Home”... and a pretty blond girl with “600 Simple recipes”. The whole world has bitten the dust, the political committee is meeting up, and what do women do for them? Brownies. Brownies are the answer.

Not to mention that the pattern for introducing characters is troubling: girls get physical descriptions and boys moral ones. Every single time.
Stuart: “who was perhaps the quietest man in Arnette”
Fran: “She was a tall girl with chestnut hair that fell halfway down the back of the buff-colored shift she was wearing. Good figure. Long legs that got appreciative glances. Prime stuff was the correct frathouse term, she believed”.

And let’s talk small town values. I was pretty sure that the term applied to The Stand, but I looked up a definition anyway. I’ve copied it because it’s hilarious:

Yahoo Answers: Small town values mean people stick together through hard times and prosperity. When someone needs help, the whole town pitches in. We actually have doctors that donate healthcare to the uninsured, because they are human and care about each other. We look after each other, and stand up for what we believe in. We mow each others lawns and keep each other safe.

From Conservapedia (That apparently is a thing): Small town values do not require the help of an overbearing government and are often tied into family values. They reflect the selfless values of hard-working, independent conservatives who prefer to help each other out than ask for a handout from the government. Those who do not agree with these small town values sometimes mock those who hold them.

The characters from The Stand supposedly come from all over the States, but the model supported is the apple pie, family, girls-make-babies, free will thing. The last people on earth in the ultimate melting pot, have morals of petit bled, of hicksville. They could have chosen any philosopher that ever said anything about an ideal society as leading figure, from Plato to Engels, but Stephen King sticks to a future Sarah Palin.

And then it turns out The Stand is about politics: a confrontation between Good and Evil, in an extremely american-flavoured way. Good’s first act is to ratify the Declaration of Independence, but not before singing the National Anthem. I would have preferred baking brownies; at least they’re practical. Then again, I’m a woman (with short chestnut hair and reasonable figure. If you must know).
Evil’s first act goes unmentioned, but I’m guessing it is to crucify some folks for good measure. It’s just as true as bad guys being bad in bed and all girls pissing herselves when they’re afraid. Guys can be afraid too, but they learnt to control their bladder when they were 4 years old.

In short, the allegory falls flat for me. I can’t see why The Boulder Free Zone would represent irrationalism, why that would be better than rationalism, why rationalism equals nazism, why rational thought sucks so much.

All that said, and said at length, I hated The Stand because of reasons, not because it’s a truly bad book. The writing is alright, the characters are well defined and most relationships reasonably deep. Even the plot is ok if you’re into political and supernatural mumbo jumbo.

Another flashback Saturday and I’m holding unabridged author’s cut version which weighs in at 1141 pages. Yes I know, only holding a book that you started equals to about 5 hours training exercise is challenging thing and of course reading a book about highly contagious superflu which escaped from US Army biological weapons facility in the middle of the pandemic makes you think I’m out of my mind. ( Of course I am! If you check a few reviews of mine, you already found out my true mental state!)

I know I’m doing the wrong thing at the worst time but I honestly say: this is my favorite King book and at least rereading first 250 pages ( in my opinion those are the best parts of the book) made me remember why Mr. King earned his throne at the literature kingdom.

The first edition of the book was published on 1978 and at the new editions, the cultural references have been changed to connect with the new generation readers. ( I also read most of the editions) This is my routine at the 8 to 12 hours international flights: I cannot sleep during the flight so I carry another edition with me to enjoy my vacation accompanied with lots of Bloody Mary.

When I dive into the chapters and read about Texan Stu, very pregnant Frannie, chubby Harold, rising star Larry, I start to feel at home. ( I don’t know why a biblical story made me feel like that but this layered multi character driven story telling always help me get lost in the extremely creative taste of literature. )

This is a group of survivors’ story who are immune to the virus and suffer from strange dreams. At those disturbing Mother Abigail summons them or a very dangerous dark figure Randall Flagg wants to join him at the dark side.

Eventually as some of the dreamers join to Mother Abigail at Boulder Colorado who tells them, they’re chosen people, the others go to Sin City to join Mr. Flagg for his big annihilation plan.

I think the biggest challenge is not reading this book. The filmmakers who are brave enough to adapt this into series accepted the biggest challenge. After 1994’s series adaptation with Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald, Rob Lowe, the producers have been working on a better version to adapt this masterpiece properly into 10 episodes streaming series.

From Ben Affleck, David Yates to Scott Cooper, too many directors wanted to be on board but later dropped out because of creative differences, schedule conflicts. And finally Josh Boone became a director and started to work on dreamy cast: Christian Bale as Stu and McConaughey as Randall Flagg. Yeap, unfortunately it didn’t happen but don’t worry we still have satisfying cast : James Marsden as Stu and Pennyweise’s real life brother as Randall Flagg.

I am curious about series even though I have questions about the challenges of adapting something so good and struggles to reflect those layered characters we read at the pages into scripts ( at least King’s young son Owen is one of the screenwriters) but before finding out, I guess I’m getting one more long ride with this apocalyptic, outstanding novel one more time!

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Want to catch the flu? Read The Stand.

I caught it twice in the month it took me to read this book. Twice! I'm rarely sick so it's clearly a thing.

Post-apocalyptic book where most people die from a super flu. That part was my favorite.

It then becomes a battle between Good and Evil. Some fantasy elements were included. This part was still solid. I liked how we got to follow the characters and get to know them. I felt some similarities to Station Eleven so if you like The Stand I would give this one a shot too!

Somewhere between a 3 and 3.5 stars for me, this book was an experience, that’s for sure. Here’s my reading vlog including spoilers for this book: https://youtu.be/DAam7dR751c

I haven't read this since I was just out of high school, so it was nice to revisit it and finally experience the uncut edition with all the extra details. I must admit that during the first 500 pages, I wondered if I regretted the extra details, but then I was totally immersed again and welcomed them. I am very excited to have this be reimaged into another miniseries soon, which helped me revisit the series.

As always, this is an epic novel by King, but I am always left wondering what happened in the rest of the world—an exemplary delivery of a fairly basic speculative question between good and evil.

5 stars from me

4.5 stars

The Stand is fantastic. Imagine an flue outbreak, not unlike our very own COVID-19, except this one is deadlier. It kills 99% of all population. And those left behind start having almost prophetic dreams of a 108-year old black woman called Mother Abagail, a symbol of safety, and the dark man who goes by the name Randall Flagg, chaos incarnate. As two societies form, all of old USA's survivors will have to pick a side with whom to stand and determine the future of what remains of humanity. Pretty epic.

n  “No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don't.”n

There is so much that I loved about King's fifth novel. The thing that is talked about the most is the character work, which I must say absolutely lives up to the hype. Harold Lauder, Glen Bateman, Stu Redman, Tom Cullen, and Trashcan Man are just a few who really stood out to me. You got your good guys who you can't help but root for, you have your dude who was treated so wrong all this time and is spiralling downwards and downwards, yet you still have hope for redemption, a pyromaniac who steals your heart with his story of torment and abuse. Everything! Character driven readers will have a blast, and even if you aren't one, you'll have these characters stick with you for a long time.

n  “Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”n

Another element that is great is criticism of society and military/government. The latter occurs largely at the beginning and end of the novel, while the former is fairly consistent throughout. This area of the book was the most thought provoking, in my opinion. Sure the themes are pretty explicit but they are shown through different angles, whether it is through Stu and Glen's musings, Mother Abagail and Flagg's societies, or how the superflu outbreak was first [mis]handled. There is conversation relating to this that surrounds the nature of humanity and societies: if they are good or evil, and does it really matter. You can see it in the way that the two major hubs are: the similarities and differences, but that will be discussed more thoroughly in the spoiler section.

The trend of using racial slurs and derogatory (usually insensitive) descriptions to indicate who is a "bad character" is becoming more and more apparent with King's earlier works (I hope it doesn't continue still). Although it may have been accepted back in the 1970s, seeing this method of showing who the bad guy makes me uncomfortable and wrong. There are other ways to do this, especially since at times it is really in your face.

Another thing that bothered me a tiny bit was the actual showdown and pacing in some areas, but once again, that shall be discussed in the spoiler section. All I'm gonna say is, King likes to get wordy. For the most part, this didn't distract though. I enjoyed just hanging out with the gang.

Overall, I understand why The Stand is such a beloved novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though moments did feel like teeny let downs or made me uncomfortable. This is a novel I'd recommend to anyone who is not afraid of big books and definitely to every king fan.



Firstly let's address the ending: I thought is ok but a let down. I loved Trashy's development and motivation. All that was great. When everyone stopped to see him roll the atomic bomb into Vegas was a great scene. HOWEVER, I wish it wasn't by divine intervention that it exploded. I wish Trashy would have shown his master his new toy, just like he liked to demonstrate his other finds. I think it would have been in character and a better ending. That being said, I cried through the aftermath. Tom finding Stu and them getting back to Boulder together was great.

The theme of good/evil in society is what the novel finishes off with: Stu asks Frannie if she thinks humanity will learn from its mistakes. After all, people in the Zone are already showing signs of picking up all of old-earth's toys which are just up for the taking. She replies that she doesn't know. I love that King left this open ended and for you to make your own choice. During the novel this theme of a good and evil society is shown and destroyed constantly by the observations of the spies in Vegas. They all remark that the atmosphere there is different, but the people are fine people! And that the society there is not that different from the one in Boulder. So why is one society evil and the other one not? Is it who leads them? Is it their ideology? Thought provoking stuff. And will the Zone learn from what happened at Vegas? Who knows? (I guess the whole idea about "does God or Satanic intervention excuse our actions" ties into this too).

Something that has me hyped is the fact that I think I am spotting first connections to the Stephen King Multiverse. All the people who survive, to some measure, have the Shine. It is even specifically named that by Mother Abagail. Another thing is Randall Flagg. He is set up, but not fully explored. I know there will be more to come from him. In Carrie it is said that her Carrie's mother chased off the dark man (or was it Man in Black?). Could this be Flagg? In The Dark Tower series, I know that the main antagonist is also called something similar... could this be good old Randy Flagg? Hmmm. I'm hypeeeed.

So far this is my fave King novel. Boy do I need to watch the adaptation. If you're still reading this, wow thanks, and plez tell me if the adaptation is good (if you watched it) thanks!