The Stand: Expanded Edition: For the First Time Complete and Uncut (Signet)

The Stand: Expanded Edition: For the First Time Complete and Uncut (Signet) | Stephen King | This could really happen...

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The Stand: Expande...

	The Stand: Expanded Edition: For the First Time Complete and Uncut (Signet) Stephen King Signet, 1991 - 1141 pages average customer review:based on 933 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great condition and great service

This was a great purchase! arrived on time and in excellent condition! Would definately recommend this seller and would do business again! Book is exactly all i thought it would be! Thank You for the great service! Grade A 5 + stars across the boards!

This could really happen...

The Stand was one of the greatest pieces of literature I've ever read. I first read The Stand back in 1982 and immediately re-read it because it was so massive. When the complete and uncut version was released in 1990, I read it again. The concept is a simple one - the government accidentally releases a plague and most of the population is wiped out. This is frightening for the simple reason that an accident like that could happen at any time. As far as the writing is concerned, the characters are extremely vivid - you feel as if you've known these people for years. The graphic descriptions of events as the world as we know it is winding down and expiring are breathtaking in their magnitude. You are there! Mr. King was quite young when he wrote this masterpiece and, as big a fan as I am of his, I don't believe he has yet created anything more powerful than The Stand.
The Cydronium Chronicles
Swan Song

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King's Best, Apart From the Dark Tower

The Stand is a novel written by Stephen King. In the introduction to a newly released edition, the author admits that though it has never been his favorite novel, it is usually The Stand that his fans feel most strongly about. Generally, the readers fall into either one of two categories of emotional reaction: they love it or they hate it. Before I explain which side of the fence I'm on and why, here is a synopsis of the book's storyline.

A virus cooked up in some secret government laboratory (Mr. Tripps is the name of the disease), escapes the confines of its quarantine and begins to infect the world. By the time its viral rampage is over, Mr. Tripps has been fatal for most of the world's population. In the United States, where the events of the novel take place, those with an unexplained immunity to the virus begin to have mysterious dreams that lead them either to Las Vegas, Nevada or Boulder, Colorado. The Stand is a classic good versus evil tale. The good guys trek to Boulder and the bad to Las Vegas, where they prepare for a final, climactic showdown.

I enjoyed this book to a certain extent. It is a very long novel, so there was ample room for character development, which meant that even if I could not relate, I still did care about what happened to them.

I enjoyed King's vision of the apocalypse, which seemed quite original, considering when he wrote the novel. If written a couple of years ago, it would seem cliché. I have since seen The Stand's influence in other end-of-the-world tales. I also liked the way he switches points-of-view between the good and the bad guys. It made me care about the fate of some of the antagonists.

My complaints about the novel are that it is too long, minor characters are too well developed, and that the final, climactic showdown I mentioned earlier was anything but climactic. Concerning the book's length: I have come to tolerate this kind of rambling from King, and so skim over parts which are boring, so it was not really that much of a problem. Regarding the over-developed minor characters: This also I have come to expect and ignore. As the virus rampages through the land, King, with way too much detail, explains the lives of several victims caught in its pestilent snare. I cannot name any of them because they die so suddenly and the novel moves on as if nothing happened.

However, the thought occurred to me that perhaps King, by making these smaller characters familiar to the reader, makes their deaths a little more disturbing and affecting. I think perhaps he was trying to get past the common practice in novels or action movies of making death to be something trivial or unimportant. I think, though, that he forgot that to the general reader fictionalized death will always be trivial and unimportant. It takes real life for the finality of death to hit close to home. Entertainment can never do it so he should have refrained. I must admit though, that I read the unabridged edition. It is still telling that an editor would not allow all of that extra sub-plot in the original.

As for the anti-climactic climax: it seems to me that King gave up on the tale or else had a deadline he had to keep. I will not spoil the ending by divulging it, though it needs no more help in that area.

And my final judgment? Excluding the Dark Tower series, it's my favorite of King's.

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Difficult book to review.

This book has some points that deserve 5 stars, others that deserve two stars.

Reasons to make it a five-stars book:

-The way the author describes characters, world and action is outstanding. You literally see the world Stephen King has created for you. This is without doubt the result of research and study.

-Even though the author uses many characters the story is still interesting enough to keep reading. This is important because it is a well known fact that the more characters you have in a story the least impact you will have in the audience, unless... you are skillful as is Mr. King at presenting so many characters long enough to entertain us but not so long to bore us.

-There are spots of sheer genius in the narrative. Some images are painted with such creativity and impact that they are worth reading twice. Also some comments, insights and descriptions stay far away from clichés and are very very "nice" or entertaining to read.

Reasons to make it a two stars book:

-The book is too long. Longer that it should have been in my opinion. Sometimes the author describes too much about things that aren't very important or relevant to the action of the story. Sometimes he tries to give us everyone's biography -I didn't see the point of that. It is alright to have some good point of reference about character's lifes but when the author starts speaking about the father of the father of the father (he doesn't exactly do it this way, but that's how it felt to me). The problem with this descriptions is that the whole point of the story, the action of the story, the problem of the story is delayed. This makes reading difficult some times.

-Now, the main reason this book SHOULD be given a two stars status is that the climax is an absolute disapointment. I read hour after hour of this long long book because of the promise of a good climax. Through out the narrative the author paints us an all powerfull villian that will be devastating and it paints very weack heroes to face the villian. We -as readers- are anxious to see how this turns out... I don't want to spoil it for you, but the climax does not live up to the promises. Actually, I wouldn't even call it a climax.

To sum up, King's work is most of the time fast, creative and captivating. I guess we should thank the author for this, because the end of the book was such a big dissapointment that the only reason to read it at all was the beginning and the middle of it. I would like to sit in front of the author and ask him, what the heck were you thinking when you wrote that climax. Did you know in advance that's how it was going to be and you still wrote it? Why? Why? Why? It's beyond me.

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Deus Ex Machina! ***Spoiler Alert***

I just finished "The Stand" for the third (and possibly last) time. It's one of those books that I pick up every 5 or 10 years (since I was 12!) to return to King's vision of a world decimated by a "superflu." There's so much to like in the first 1000 pages--love, hate, tragedy--that I keep hoping the ending will somehow change or become more palatable to my tastes.

Unfortunately, King wraps up the big showdown between good and evil in a couple of pages with, quite literally, the "hand of God." Probably the most disappointing "deus ex machina" of all time. And don't get me started on the superflu that somehow returns to attack the survivors' newborn children--if it really was such a killer "superflu," it should have burned itself out with the last of the victims months before. How can the newborns catch it, then? Is it just floating around in the air? And, if the child of an immune person and a non-immune person has a sort of "half-immunity," then shouldn't there have been thousands (millions?) of people that met these same criteria ALREADY AT THE START OF THE BOOK?

Great build-up, but toss all logic out the window after you turn the 1,000th page.

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