Book info

• Title The Stand
• Author Stephen King
• Year 1978
• Genre Horror

First come the days of the virus. Then come the dreams. Dark dreams that warn of the coming of the dark man. The apostate of death, his worn-down boot heels tramping the night roads. The warlord of the charnel house and Prince of Evil. His time is at hand. His empire grows in the west and the Apocalypse looms. When a man crashes his car into a petrol station, he brings with him the foul corpses of his wife and daughter. He dies and it doesn't take long for the virus which killed him to spread across America and the world.

Thoughts

I really loved this. I hadn’t known what to expect, and it wasn’t until I read the introduction from the author that I realised not only that this was a long book, but that I was also reading the Director’s Cut style version - extended even more.

I’m glad it was this version, though, because it made all the difference. All the extra details about the characters meant following them was a more emotional experience. The first half of the book was the best, in my eyes. Following how the outbreak of the superflu emerged, how quickly it spread, and the immediate aftermath of an empty country.

Once it became more about the shared dreams, the good versus evil, and the dark man, it was still a fantastic story, but less intriguing. The human aspect, though, how everyone reacted to their situations was the key to the story, and that’s the bit that spoke to me.

I found myself looking forward to reading it each and every day, keen to get through the chapters as quick as possible, despite the fact there were so many of them! My only complaint regarding the writing was the occasional end of scene sentence along the lines of “but they never spoke to him again.” It’s like completely unsubtle foreshadowing, and sometimes a bit of misdirection. The odd one or two sentences like that would be okay, but they were more and more frequent towards the end of the book.

It’s a minor quibble. The amount of work, time, effort, planning, and humanity that is plumbed into the book makes it top notch.

Rating: 5 / 5