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I loved this book. I read the uncut version years back when I lived in the States, maybe in 2002. I loved everything about it except the ending. I'm a big fan of Stephen King and have 23 of his books on my shelf. Stephen King can only write a good ending to a book by chance. That said, the first 95% of his books is generally so good that I can forgive the ending.

One of the things I like best about King's writing is the way he breathes life into characters and every day settings. For a horror writer this is crucial. You have to make everything utterly believable so that when the monster comes and the stakes are raised the reader feels it's all real and cares about what's at stake. The short story, The Body, on which the film Stand By Me is based is a great example of King's genius at making complicated, flawed, awkward, real characters.

Anyway, The Stand, is not typical King as the main core of it is an apocalypse, and the super natural horror element is rather secondary and low key for most of the story. The apocalypse is a believable one, a flu pandemic with a mortality rate so high that only a tiny fraction of the population survives. King tears the world down in terrifying slow motion and playing on our fears of pandemics it is at once horrifying, touching, and fascinating. King is great at slowly pulling everyday reality apart.

The cast of characters who survive this catastrophe is sizeable, diverse, and interesting. A pyromaniac with an array of mental issues, a man with learning disabilities, a singer who was in the act of breaking big, others more ordinary but no less fascinating under pressure.

The literary institutions of this world sniff at horror writers as much as they do fantasy writers but I find King's prose and insights into the human condition to be as powerful as those in many of the more plodding works of literary fiction I've read. Readers often don't notice it because it's not what they came for. But King is interested in people and how pressure acts on them.

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don't.��

King shows us the inception of the disaster, plots its course through his scattered and varied cast, and slowly brings those actors together into two communities in the aftermath.

The two communities we focus on centre on the supernatural aspect of the book, one of them is home to the 'good' folk, and the other to the 'bad'. The bad camp is ruled over by Randal Flagg who roams through the pages of quite a few of King's books, The Dark Tower in particular.

The book concludes with the fight between these two camps and ultimately the ending was a touch unsatisfying for me, though not awful by any means. The journey to that ending however was a fascinating thrill ride and well worth the price of entry!

If you've not tried Stephen King before then this is a fine place to jump in - be warned though, it is perhaps the longest of his books with a page count to rival GRRM at his most long winded.







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