The Stand: Complete & Uncut Edition by Stephen King
Doubleday - May 1990
1153 pages
The goverment has messed up, and a deadly superflu virus was released. As planned in the case of this event, the building of contamination was put on lockdown. And yet, Charles Campion managed to evade this and became patient zero of a disease that would be responsible. Nineteen days later, and the superflu virus, known as "Captain Trips", has killed 99.4% of the population. The survivors receive dreams of two figures: ultimate good comes in the form of a 108-year-old woman named Abagail Freemantle, where evil is embodied in the man who calls himself Randall Flagg.
Do not read this book if you are not up for some heavy reading. As I said, it is 1153 pages. There are a few full-page pictures, but the picture does not count as a page in King's world. I also will start by saying that I had high expectations for this novel. It was dystopian and contained one of the staples of high fantasy: the ultimate battle of good versus evil. However, what I did not care for was the attribution of certain animals to evil. The "good" animals died in the plague, and those are dogs and horses, which I am fine with, but apparently my favorite animals survived. I liked this until it was revealed that they were not killed because they are "evil": wolves, crows, and cats. These animals have all had bad reputations, but it is unfair, in today's age, to say that they are servants of the devil, or even the devil's imp. As for the characters, some had their flaws, but others were archetypes. Unfortunately, the archetypes were the ones that survived.
Grade: B
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