Fantastic novel. I was surprised, having watched the modern TV Prime series, I expected the book to be vastly different - I was wrong. There are extra bits added in the series and lots of extra bits in the book missing from the TV series. Both compliment each other very well. 10/10 ( )

Really good book. Didn't expect a story this rich in characters, and this well written. Only slight nitpick I can see someone having is that the plot just happens because God wills it, just like the Dark Tower series for that matter. But to me, that is just so typically King. ( )

Zu langatmig, es passiert nix. Ich warte noch auf "Das letzte Gefecht"! ( )

finally read this cement block sized book and wow. this was amazing as expected.

just some backstory about me and this book was that i tried to read this book as a teenager but it was too hard for me at the time but i was always fascinated with its story. but now after all this time i finally did it and damn was this book amazing.

i wont go over everything as there is a ton to talk about but i will say that the most impressive part of this book for me was pacing was really good for a book with such a high page count. i was expecting it to have a few slow moments but almost nothing felt like a drag to get through and was very entertaining. love all the characters and situations that took place with many different emotions. but probably my favorite characters if i had to pick 3 would be Nick, Tom and Stu.

anyways its considered as a classic for a reason and im happy to have finally read it after all this time ( )

Auch beim zweiten Lesen hat es mich wieder total gepackt! Manch einer findet unnötige Längen in dem Buch - ich habe jeden einzelnen Satz genossen! Ich mag es sehr, wie geruhsam Stephen King die einzelnen Fäden zusammenführt. Wie sich ganz langsam erst ein größeres Bild ergibt.
Dazu beigetragen hat sicher auch David Nathan, der mir große Teile des Buches vorgelesen hat. ( )

I'd read The Stand over 30 years ago and remembered virtually nothing, save for about three pages early on where we see the virus jumping from person to person, country to country. THAT was scary (little did I know...). This version is 400 pages longer than the original and the immediate impact of the virus (and its contagiousness) wasn't nearly as impactful.

Still, this is an excellent book that was hard to put down. There's no one who writes like King; his dialogue is nearly perfect and the characters are pretty well rounded.

Well worth it. ( )

By far my favorite King novel. This is the second time I’ve read this, the first being back ‘08. It was even better the second time and I caught things I either missed or glossed over the first.

I love the way King weaves multiple themes and ideals together that make not just an interesting story but one that makes the reader actually think. ( )

One of my favorite books I have ever read. I reread it every few years, because it is so long, but it's just as good as the first time I read it. ( )

I first read The Stand in high school. It was a revelatory experience then, what with its fascinating characters, grotesque horror, and overt fantasy. But revisiting now, over a decade later, has given this book a new color.

Not just because of the pandemic, though the parallels are eerily prescient, but because I understand these characters better than I did when I was fifteen. I understand their motivations, and I am in awe of King's extensive backstory and character work. Even the villains are multidimensional people. That's what made me fall in love with King's work back then, and that's why I still love it now. ( )

Amazing writing and development, but it was so lengthy that the good bits got lost in a sea of utter crap. Not worth reading. Ending is quite disappointing. I was going to give it two stars for it wasn't that horrible really, but it wasted a lot of my precious time and therefore it gets one star. Nothing more.


Old review (back when it was unfinished):
I finished about half of this book (which is a million pages), and I am suddenly feeling very unmotivated to finish it. Don't get me wrong, Stephen King is a WONDERFUL writer, but the story seemed to drag on and on and on. At times, I felt like I could easily give this book a 5-star rating, and at other times, I felt like throwing it from a 10-story building. If this book was shorter, and if SK wasn't so attached to ALL the crap he writes, and if he believed in deleting CHAPTERS that aren't necessary/important nor related to the plot, then this would have been, indeed, a great book.

I don't want this to stop you from reading it, though. I have a lot of other books I'd like to read before ever continuing reading this. ( )

So this book was crazy, but I loved it. I always have a hard time reading Stephen King because of how descriptive he can be at times and I lose focus. This book did not do that to me at all. I loved all of it. Tom is my favorite character and I had to actually ask my husband and cousin if anything bad was going to happen or I wasn't going to read the book. LOL. (They refused to tell me.) ( )

This book was very character driven. It was rich with character development for all the main players. The best character in my opinion was Kojack, but I'm a sucker for a dog. I found that the first section and the third section were more my speed. The story was driven forward in leaps and bounds in these sections. The second section was a little flat in terms of action, but deep in terms of character building. The end felt a little lackluster, but very appropriate. ( )

A LENGTHY book, but I kept tuning back in for more. It was a bit hard to keep track of everyone, but eventually you get used to all the people. And there wee a lot, and a lot of them came and went as they were introduced and then died. The supernatural part of the story - the spiritualist black elder, the stand-in for Satan, the wolves, etc, was almost unnecessary to the story. It added an overriding conflict, but I'd love to have read the story without this element, and just seen man vs. man played out.

Part of what makes a post-apocalyptic story so interesting is all the details about how life changes, and King was pretty good about showing this. Life would indeed be very hard for many people. Also interesting to read it in the post-covid era - we all got a little taste of what it's like to live through a pandemic, albeit one that was far less fatal. King has a really good ear for dialogue and for the unique voices each of his characters carries. He can write a very convincing hillbilly, and an equally good college professor. That isn't an easy thing to do.

I read the 'restored' original version of this one, which has lot of the edits put back in. Read the introduction - King is playful and funny - but I think I'd have been just as happy with the shorter version. I have no regrets, however. ( )

Rilettura a distanza di troppi anni, tanto da ricordarne davvero poco. ( )

My first Stephen King novel, I think I should have read something smaller, it didn't totally click but I did like some of the characters, Tom and Nick in particular, but some aspects of the story didn't click for me, without going into spoilers I think some story tropes didn't go like I thought. Still there where some great moments, some that I saw in my minds eye and really liked, but for the length it is a solid 3/5. I do know some characters belong to other series. And in all honestly for someone called The Man in Black, and his powers, they where not all that super amazing or scary. He however did have an amazing presence, specially at the start of the story, it feels like dread, and mysterious, but then you realize he is just another character at the end, which goes a long with the story I guess. ( )

Did not expect THAT to happen. And also, for that certain character to do as he did. ( )

like always, some elements of king's books can be problematic, but this book is really important to me. ( )

Not sure what to say about Stephen King. To ignore the fact that he is extremely popular and that he is very adept at the genre he represents would be ludicrous. He can write. He can carry you a long distance on his storytelling prowess. But, in the end, this is not a genre I enjoy and he is not a writer I would hope to read again.

The story began much better than I had expected, with a premise that all of us could agree is a nightmare possibility...the government developing a dangerous biologic that is accidentally released into the population and kills 90% of the population. At some point, however, I was sick of the graphic descriptions of people dying from this plague. He needs to embrace the idea that less is more. I became just as tired of the endless descriptions of the after-plague bodies, piled up on interstates and pouring out of houses.

When the supernatural element takes complete hold of the book, King loses me. It is unbelievable to me and when I cannot suspend my disbelief it is harder to enjoy the movement of the novel. King does develop some interesting characters...some of them quite evil...but for the most part they did not become real for me. I was amazed at how so many of these people were the lone survivor of their entire town, but they seemed to recover from that so easily, put loss behind them inexplicably, and tie up with other survivors in deep, committed relationships overnight. They have some superior fearlessness in going out unarmed to confront the evil, when I believe their situation would leave them nothing if not consumed with fears. Even the bravest among us might feel lost in this situation.

Then there is the ending. It is as if King just knew he had reached the end of the tether and needed to tie it off. After all this angst, happily ever after? After all this effort, let's go back East where there are no other people and the electricity doesn't work and there aren't any doctors? Really? One realistic thing about the end is that man is ready to screw it up all over again and the authoritarians are waiting in the wings to take over.

I know that part of the disappointment with this novel for me was that I wanted it to surprise me. I believed I was not a Stephen King kind of reader, but I wanted him to prove me wrong. I wanted to like unexpectedly, the way I like the movies The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption. I think King might translate better into movies than he reads for a person like myself. I wanted to rate it higher, but that would have been giving credit because of what other people think of his writing, not because of what I thought of the book.

Is it strange to say that I am glad I read it...all 1100 pages...because I can now say with conviction that Stephen King is not an author I want to spend time with. I need to go wallow in the joys of authors that speak to me instead. To all who do enjoy him, this is what is wonderful about reading, there is something for everyone and none of us is wrong to choose the works that speak to them. Now I need a double-dose of Charles Dickens.
( )

Re-read one of my all-time favorites and still love it.

I listened to the author's uncut version, where Stephen King restored about 400 pages of text. Mostly backgrounds for many of the characters, and I think it really did round out the story.

An engineered super-flu escapes a military facility and kills most of the population, presumably across the earth. As the survivors start to find each other, they all seem to have the same two dreams. The first dream is an elderly black woman - at 108 years old she's certainly now the oldest woman alive. The other dream is of a cowboy-boot wearing, tall, dark man.

Survivors set out to find either the old woman or the dark man - either drawn by good or evil. And then there is a final "stand" of good vs evil.

Classic post apocalypse distopia, with the kind of supernatural twist that Stephen King is so well known for. Long book, but worth the time to read. ( )

One of my all-time favorite books. I've reread it many times. ( )

my first book by king
1400 pages and never felt boring
fantasy elements starts -400 pages in
absolutely engaging characters, stunning book ( )

I've been itching to reread (or listen) to The Stand since reading the heavy references throughout the DT series. The Stand continues to be one of my favorite King books, and possibly one of my all time favorites. The character development throughout is what always draws me back. ( )

I first read this, I think, around the time the complete version came out in paperback. That was 25 or so years ago and at a time in my life that wasn't great and my recollection of the book was scant. I remembered Mother Abagail and the religious theme and that was about it.
Reading it again I absolutely loved it. It's ridiculously long, but King manages to justify the length by filling it with believable, living characters who you grow to care about. ( )

Epic journey into the nature of society

First of all, I highly recommend The Stand to everyone, high school and upwards. Unsurprisingly, you will be treated to spellbinding story-telling and fascinating characters. However, its treatment of issues such as the nature of good and evil, the structure and fragility of society, and the need for community is nearly unmatched in English fiction, in my experience. You will not regret reading it for one minute and you will struggle to put it down. ( )

Long but good. ( )