As part of my efforts to read the entirety of The Dark Tower series and it's related properties, I recently finished 'The Stand.' reading this book was quite the endeavor, and took me the better part of two weeks due to it's massive length. This was without a doubt the longest novel I've ever read, but somehow left me feeling as if it should've been longer. Which is something I'm still not sure as to if it's a good or bad thing.
SPOILERS AHEAD
When I first started reading this behemoth I was somewhat uninterested. The constant character shifts were jarring, and the heavy development of characters which would only die 10 or 20 pages later irritated me. I would get invested in the story line I was reading, only for it to shift to another character who I couldn't possibly care any less for. I wanted to read about Larry, Nick, or Frannie. Not these random government executives or some redneck Stuart Redman in a testing facility (which is laughable as he became one of my favorite characters). However as the story went on and began to both stick with a smaller roster of people, illustrating the breakdown of society, I was hooked in.
I really enjoyed this book, but it wasn't a perfect story. It started off too slow for my tastes, although as it went on it became one of the most intriguing story lines I've ever experienced on any medium. I feel as if some of the introductions to our main characters could have been handled in a better way. I wasn't a fan of the intro's to Frannie and Stu in particular. I thought that her story didn't pick up until she linked up with Harold for the first time when burying her father. I was completely apathetic to Stu for an even longer amount of time, all the way until he met Harold and Frannie on the road. Before that I couldn't possibly care any less about his character.
On the other hand, I was on board with Larry, Nick, and Lloyd from the very beginning, especially Larry. I think that New York City was the perfect setting to witness the world ending. His experience watching his mother and everyone else around him slowly die was expertly written, and the time he had escaping the city was so fascinating I didn't put down the book for hours just to see that resolution. Nicks short lived career as a small town deputy and Lloyd's murderous journey across the country with his deranged friend were awesome too.
The characters really carry 'The Stand.' Sure the setting is cool, and the plot is good. It's just that the people King chose to populate his post apocalyptic world with overshadow all of that, despite it's high quality. Every person is so wildly different as an individual from their peers, and each bring something completely necessary and unique to the table that you really feel as if you know them. They range from endearing (Tom Cullen) to horrific (Randall Flagg) and there's such a wide array of them that there's something for every reader to identify with.
Both my biggest praise and largest gripe with this book was that as I got closer and closer to it's eventual ending, it felt incomplete. Even before I reached the final page. I wanted the already mammoth of a story to be a good 400 pages longer, and despite how big of an accomplishment that is it's also a problem. It seemed as if the story in retrospect was a near perfect slow burn to what should have been an incredible conclusion, but suddenly in the end everything kinda stops in it's tracks and zooms to the conclusion. A lot of people took issue with the end, however I actually liked it (Except for Frannie's "lets go back to Maine!!!" bullshit at the end, give me a break), it was mainly the transition from the meat of the story to the climax with I felt could have been longer. Mother Abigail should have been gone for a longer amount of time and gotten at least a couple of chapters dedicated to her time away from Boulder, there should have been more to our heroes' journey westward, and most importantly we should have gotten a more in depth look at the situation in Vegas. They went from being a well oiled machine to a collapsing shit show too quickly, the transition should have been more gradual. Slowly showing Flagg losing his grip on things, but we didn't get that. Which disappointed me.
You can look at it one of two ways. As an accomplishment due to me wanting the book to be even longer, despite it's already huge size. Or as a flaw since I think certain arcs could have been fleshed out more. I see it as both.
I really liked The Stand. Overall I'd say that while I enjoyed it more than The Drawing of the Three, it's not overall as good of a story. Edit: Also, one more very small gripe. I reaaaaaaally wanted Larry to tell everyone he was the one who sung "Baby can you dig your man." I thought he was going to do it when they were all talking about it during the committee meeting and was extremely upset that he didn't. I won't let such a small thing affect my rating though.
4/5
Just because of how amazing these characters were I'm going to end this by naming off some of my favorites:
Larry
Frannie
Stu
Harold
Nick
Tom
Lloyd
Glen