At 1150 pages plus, hardcover, this is a big book. It’s going to take you a while to wade through it.
Fortunately, the water’s fine. The Stand is widely regarded as King’s best fictional work, and I won’t disagree with that opinion. The cast of characters is large, the issues larger, and while he didn’t invent the whole post-apocalyptic thing, it’s done better here than anywhere else I’ve seen. There is also a good dose of both religion and mysticism injected as well, and it makes for an interesting counter-point to the usual SF “scientific” treatment of such themes.
The first third of King’s book will be very very familiar; the novel starts out with common people doing common things, and then builds smoothly as plague hits and the pressures of survival turn them into heroes and villians. It builds into a final showdown between good and evil, with an unbelievable number of twists and turns along the way.
The Stand was originally published in 1978, in a heavily abridged version that the publisher undoubtedly thought would sell better than the full manuscript; King reissued it in 1990 with not only the cut parts reinstated but new sections as well. And I’m glad he did. Despite the length, I never did get tired of either the story or the writing, and if there were a Volume II of the same size I’d gladly go out and buy it. My only recommendation would be to try to find an edition that doesn’t have the interior illustrations. The one I have has twelve ink drawings by Bernie Wrightson, and much as I like his work in comic books (he absolutely owns Swamp Thing), I felt that they detracted from the story here. King’s writing is easily vivid enough that readers can supply their own (mental) pictures; having someone else’s interpretation – especially when that interpretation is often overly muscular – just gets in the way.
This is a book that I feel comfortable recommending in hardback. I have the feeling that you can read it, put it on a shelf for a couple of decades and then come back to it and get an entirely new experience out of it. Also, like many of John D. MacDonald and Raymond Chandler’s books, King’s eye for detail will make The Stand something of a cultural time capsule. One of his characters has a diary in which she records things that she wants to remember about the pre-plague world; this book will help us all remember what life was like in the 1980s.
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