Was it a good book? A bad book? Or somewhere in between? What did you think of the ending?
What are your thoughts on the Stephen King book The Stand?
- Thread starter Joe Washington
- Start date
Have you read the original or the uncut version?
I read it when it first came out, and I love the book in all its sprawling glory.. I also read the extended one when that came out and liked it even better.
I think the ending works... evil never truly dies, it just comes back in another form a few elections, lifetimes, or ages of the world later.
..and it's perhaps the only book ever written which is best read with a cold.
I read it when it first came out, and I love the book in all its sprawling glory.. I also read the extended one when that came out and liked it even better.
I think the ending works... evil never truly dies, it just comes back in another form a few elections, lifetimes, or ages of the world later.
..and it's perhaps the only book ever written which is best read with a cold.
It's great until the actual Stand happens and we get one of the most ridiculous climaxes I've ever read.
One of my all time favorite books from any author. Love the whole epic feel to it, especially the expanded/uncut version. Probably my favorite single book by King, though the Dark Tower as a whole is probably a bit better (though the last 3 books almost make an argument to the contrary).
The ending was reasonably decent but reminded my of the Dark Tower or IT in that it wasn't the best ending he could have hoped for. However, I loved the good vs. evil conflict, the early horror parts are tense and very interesting......all in all an excellent read.
Judging from "The Mist" Frank Darabonte should have written the ending, but The Stand is mostly full of win.
My mother got a first edition--the pages hadn't even been cut properly, and I read it when I was in 6th or 7th grade. It impressed the hell out of me when I was in junior high, so I'll always have great affection for it.
But his best work? No. But a damn fun read just the same. I just loved the sprawling, epic feel to it and I adored the strange collection of characters. I'd say 7.5 out of 10.
But his best work? No. But a damn fun read just the same. I just loved the sprawling, epic feel to it and I adored the strange collection of characters. I'd say 7.5 out of 10.
It's been probably 25 years or more since I read it, so I don't recall many details, but I do recall that I didn't like it much. As I recall, it was simplistic good vs evil stuff with the good guys being nice religious people who like old-fashioned ways and the bad guys being people who aren't religious and like technology. Guess I would have been on the wrong side in that one.
I really liked The Stand - it was the second King book I had ever read (back in college in 1989)... he's obviously developed quite a bit as an author over the years, but to me The Stand feels more like one of his later-years books than one of his earlier ones.
The extended version's addition of an entire chapter of people who died of something OTHER than Captain Trips - survivors who nonetheless were done in - I found that one chapter very very interesting... while some of the new material was probably unnecessary and distracting, this single chapter adds a lot, IMHO
The extended version's addition of an entire chapter of people who died of something OTHER than Captain Trips - survivors who nonetheless were done in - I found that one chapter very very interesting... while some of the new material was probably unnecessary and distracting, this single chapter adds a lot, IMHO
I read it. Perhaps my perspective is skewed since I've read scifi avidly all of my life but I found it bloated, full of end-of-the-world cliches and , in the end, poorly executed. King very obviously got tired of telling the tale about 2/3-3/4 of the way in. The sheer monotony of the story grated on my nerves but I pushed through to the ludicrous end. If it was a fantasy, it dragged thru too much scifi to hold true to the form, and if it was scifi it was just a crappy, predictable mess with an ending formed from the prattling of children that dragged it away from any realistic scifi tale. In that respect it reminded me of The Postman by Brin-the story just implodes at the very end. Try A Canticle For Liebowitz, Alas Babylon or Earth Abides to see how to end the world correctly. IMO.
Read it about two years ago and enjoyed it, but it isn't a perfect book. The first third is superb, with some incredibly creepy and disturbing sequences - in particular the survivors walking through a corpse-filled Lincoln Tunnel. The middle section is an interesting depiction of survivors coming together after the apocalypse, and trying to create a stable society that might allow the human race to continue. The final section is pretty underwhelming in some ways - Randall Flagg came across as a pretty disappointing villain in my eyes, and the "Hand of God" business was lame.
It definitely wasn't that simplistic. It wasn't emphasised that Flagg's people were irreligious, or that the people in Boulder rejected technology.
I checked out descriptions of those books on Wiki and they sound pretty interesting. I might check them out
My first experience with The Stand was seeing the mini-series in junior high at a sleep over. It absolutely blew my mind. I hadn't seen much as far as end-of-the-world stories and the epic scope of this true good vs evil story stretching across the US just really had me enthralled. What exactly constitutes "good" or "evil" in a person? Sometime later I read the 1141 page novel (don't know why that number has always stuck with me) and was again very captivated. Without getting into spoilers, the logic of the ending can be a little bit difficult to wrap one's head around but I feel it still works and the entire story is well worth it. If you decide against reading it, check out the miniseries which will always have a special significance to me.
To me, The Stand always felt like two different novels sandwiched together. There is a disconnect between the two halves of the stories. I'm not a huge SK fan but I will read his new stuff when it comes out and most I find to be, meh. However, I actually love the Stand, so I will often just read one half. Then put it down for a while, give it some time and then finish it.
There were a number of references to people of a more technical mindset congregating to Las Vegas, because they restore power, police, etc., where Denver has a more down-home, good old boy flavour to it. Still, it wasn't always clear-cut; one of the Denver's leaders was an atheist, as I recall, and I always felt that a number of people on Flagg's side could have been good, decent people had they not been forced into the Manichean division of the world. And that, I think, is a critical point: no-one in this book got to choose what side they were on; what you might prefer is irrelevant, because you discover that the events were predestined years before they ever happened, including--via dreams and other psychic commands--who got assigned to which camp. (A number of Flagg's people, after all, were able to defy his rule as his psychic influence waned towards the end.) I don't think it's so much a book that simply has a Manichean split so much as a book about what happens when the world is divided that way.
In that sense, I wonder about the Cold War influence here. You've got two groups of people who have been driven to such enmity that the only solution is one wiping out the other, and facing each other down across the Rockies (Berlin Wall?). They have no choice in whether they even want this conflict--that is in the hands of higher entities (the nation), which places victory above common humanity; nor can they really choose what side they want to be on, since that is determined by birth (if not before), while the psychic control Flagg and God execise over their respective followers stands in for the ideological, propagandistic nature of the conflict. One does apperceive that one side is better than the other (because one is the 'Free Zone', the other a totalitarian technocracy), but the controlling entities on both sides are just as callous in their disregard of human life, each as willing to sacrifice their own people in the name of the ideological pissing contest being waged between them. And, of course, it begins with an incident of germ warfare part of the American/Soviet arms race and ends with a nuclear explosion, using the arsenal of that conflict.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
The book was written in 1979 even if set 10 years later so the cold war was probably an influence. One of the things I found very disturbing and very much cold war like was early on where certain elements within the U.S intelligence community decide to release Captain Trips in Russian. The rationale being if the U.S was doing down they weren't going to leave the Russians as victors.
I remember being scared during the first 1/3 of the book because I was aware that something like that really could possibly happen. The second 1/3 was more of a "After the smoke cleared..." sort of thing. But the final 1/3 had me going "WTF?" more than a few times...
I did think it was rather nutty for the TV version to have the Army release the Superflu to the entire freaking planet, I mean seriously why take your friends and allies down with you? Or was he just nuts by that point.
And the whole "Flagg's energy bolt" thing at the end when he killed one of his own followers. I thought it would have worked out better if there was no sign of Flagg having real power like that at all, that his power came from manipulating others. Then again, that same energy blast was manipulated by God into blowing up the nuke so maybe Flagg broke the rules by using power and God broke the rules to counter Flagg's actions.
And the whole "Flagg's energy bolt" thing at the end when he killed one of his own followers. I thought it would have worked out better if there was no sign of Flagg having real power like that at all, that his power came from manipulating others. Then again, that same energy blast was manipulated by God into blowing up the nuke so maybe Flagg broke the rules by using power and God broke the rules to counter Flagg's actions.
Similar threads
