*Content Warning: This post discusses sexual violence and may be triggering for some people. Spoilers ahead!
Holy shitballs y'all, this is a long book. I haven't managed to finish a 1300 page book before, but if they were all as good as this one, I'd be reading monsters like this all the time.
I began really reading Stephen King about a year ago now, and because I've enjoyed his novels so much, I've decided to read at least one Stephen King a year. I don't prescribe to the intellectual elitists who don't appreciate King's work because it doesn't have enough purple prose for them. If I read a book that enraptures me, then I really don't care if some stuffy old white dude with 5 doctorates approves.
This isn't the first apocalyptic book I've read. I actually took a class as an undergrad called "Post-Apocalyptic Fiction." (I always wondered at the need for post, as if someone is only going to detail the actual apocalypse itself and then stop: During-Apocalyptic Fiction. And since I'm being pedantic, this technically means all other genres fall into "Pre-Apocalyptic Fiction.") In that class we read a few different novels. The two I remember the most were on different sides of spectrum. One was about giant, radioactive rats that took over the city and began eating people and the other was about a small group of people trying to live without cable TV. Neither of them changed my life.
The Stand, however, is truly great storytelling. The book starts off with the inciting incident of the plague: turns out the U.S. government has been creating different strains of viruses to use for biological warfare. In a biological testing site, some guy (I'm assuming it's a dude, that may have been clarified in the novel but I can't quite remember. But let's be real--if anyone is going to be responsible for the end of human civilization, it will probably be men. Don't @ me.) makes a huge mistake and a deadly virus is unleashed on the United States--little close to home these days.
King does a great job of really taking the reader through the effects of the plague realistically. I feel like it would be very easy for other writers (me) to simply comb over all that detail and just get to the part where most people are dead. That's one of the reasons the book is so long, though, King organized it in a way where it didn't feel like there were any stones left unturned. In this section of the novel, we begin to see our main characters emerge. Because they're all in different places in the U.S., King gives us snippets at a time of each person's story, so even if there is just one character you're obsessed with, you have to continue reading for the sake of finding out what happens to them.
I'm not going to go over every character in this post because frankly, there are a lot. But there are characters that I really liked and became attached to. By the way, prepare to be saddened at the end of this book because nearly everyone dies--99% of the population and then most of the characters that are lucky enough to be in the 1%. Stu Redman is a well rounded protagonist and I enjoyed seeing his arch throughout the story. Other characters I loved were Kojak, a dog and very good boy, and Tom Collins, a mentally challenged man endearing enough to keep you smiling through a dark story.
Even the villains in the story were intriguing. Actually, I thought the antagonist, Randall Flagg was the least interesting character in the book. But beyond that, King creates these wildly sinister characters like Trash Can Man and The Kid--one of the most disdainful characters I've read. At one point in the novel, The Kid sexually assaults the Trash Can Man by pushing the barrel of his revolver into his anus, a part I found to be not just disturbing, but unnecessary. At that point, you already hate The Kid enough so the assault just comes off as torture porn. We also meet a convict named Larry who spends several days locked in a jail cell without food and begins to cannibalize the dead man in the cell next to him. Again, did King really need to take it this far? Probably not, but he is a horror writer and the gruesome details of Lloyd starving in a cage have the desired effect on the reader. Lloyd, although choosing to align himself with Flagg, actually develops into a relatable and even empathic character.
My favorite villain is Harold Lauder, an overweight, pimple faced nerd who tries and fails to seduce the one other person in his town who survived--his sister's friend Frannie. Harold is the equivalent of a modern day incel--a virgin dead set on the idea that every bit of his misery is caused by someone else, but especially by the the bitchy sluts who reject him. King manages to make Harold so unlikeable that you begin to fantasize about what horrible death must be in store for him. He gets his comeuppance and although it wasn't the abhorrent end I was counting on for Harold, his exit to the left is nonetheless satisfying.
Nadine, the woman destined to be Randall Flagg's bride and baby incubator, is one of the villains I was disappointed by. She has what starts off as an intriguing character arch--she goes from maternal, altruistic teacher to the literal devil's wife--but then her end comes suddenly and pointlessly. The entire reason Flagg made sure to hunt for Nadine was because she is suppose to have his demon spawn and it turns out she nags him too much so he throws her off a roof. It was one of the moments (and there are few in this grim tale) that actually made me laugh. But perhaps Nadine's purpose was more to help reveal Flagg's eventual unravelling?
Once we have a thorough introduction and background story for each of our main characters, King brings them together into two separate camps--basically, GOOD VS. EVIL. Although this is a conventional literary theme, it is nevertheless a respectably timeless one. What follows in the second half of the novel is the farming of two distinct societies, a democratic and an authoritarian one. The sociopolitical viewpoints in the novel, often provided through the voice of Glenn Bateman are captivating--how do societies form and what are the patterns which always emerge in forming them?
In the end, the members of the democratic camp must find a way to stop Randall Flagg before he comes to eliminate them all. In one of the greatest comebacks of all time, Trash Can Man reappears at the end of the story only to nuke Flagg's entire base.
Overall, this book was unputdownable. Stephen King's books, the ones I've read at least, are all like this. King has a way of engrossing his readers in a way that keeps them running all the way to the end of 1300 pages.
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