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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐��
Genre: Horror + Fantasy

This is considered Stephen King’s Magnum Opus. His best work for all the right reasons. There are two TV shows adaptations that I have avoided watching until I read the book. Reading this book during this pandemic makes it even crazier than all the craziness this story exhibits. This post-apocalyptic story is truly disturbing. It exhibits the continuous battle between good and evil when a deadly virus is spread in the world and the whole society collapses.

“Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.��


The beautiful as usual in Stephen King’s writing is that he does not keep this battle on the outside only, but also inside each one of his characters. This uncut edition I have read is 1325 pages long. I have been reading it slowly, about 50 pages a day. During that time, I connected with these characters, I felt their worries, terror, desperation, and hope. The author obviously has put a lot of work into each one of these characters. They are well developed and you can feel the amount of growth in every single one of them. There are many characters in this story and I was worried that things will get mixed up for me and I might get confused distinguishing them. But that didn’t happen at all. These characters are so distinct. They feel so real and that is in itself frightening! They are very human.

“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.��


Don’t get intimated by the size of this book. The writing and the story are both awesome right from page one until the last page. I never felt any kind of boredom while I was reading it. On the contrary, I was wishing it won’t end. But it has to end for sure and the ending was terrific. I don’t have anything negative to say about The Stand. I tried hard to think about something negative but I couldn’t. I hope we also get rid of the current pandemic that we are all facing very soon. Do I recommend The Stand? YES, very very much. The only problem is that I don’t know if you will be able to read it right now with all that is happening in the world. It is terrifying. But if you can handle it then you should go for it for sure. I cannot recommend it enough.

“You just couldn't get hold of the things you had done and turn them right again. Such power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to men and women, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.��


Note: The Stand comes as a part of my reading of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. This is Book No.3 of 24 books I am going to read for this series.