The Stand

By Stephen King

Review by Scott Cook

I don’t know about you, but if a man escaped from a testing facility with a strand of flu that’s contagious to anyone and could potentially wipe out 99 percent of humanity within weeks, I’d be scared. In the novel The Stand, the only way to gain hope for an afterlife, to rebuild a community you’ve once created so many memories in and starting all over. The survivors face problems and conflict with dialogue and emotion throughout. As Stephen King makes you feel as if you were there right along with the problems, you become hooked with cliff hangers and a thrilling story line.

All the characters and mainly Charlie and Sally, really helped drag me in. The dialogue and details of the scenery makes the readers realize this could actually become reality. Being in the 1980s this isn’t something you’d be alright with, There’s no vaccine or cures for this contagious flu.

Let me tell you about the author for a second; Stephen King has written a very high amount of novels and short stories. He was nominated for a “world fantasy award for best novel “in 1979! And this book actually became a television miniseries. The television mini-series was published by Modern Marvel Comics playing on ABC. Also this novel was dedicated to his wife, Tabitha “for tabby: This dark chest of widows.”

The novel The Stand was actually published in 1979 and sold well but then fell off the shelves and later republished in 1990 and gained attention everywhere. And as I mentioned before in 1994 the novel The Stand also was written as a teleplay, creating a series directed by Mick Garris.

Also filled with character’s that come from all different types of backgrounds. The characters relate and conflict between each other just like people in today’s communities. They are just tragically trying to restart and start over because they’re humanity’s only hope. Fighting the infections between close character’s, and creating suspense at an impeccable level.

Making you think you could actually be going through this in your life. And if the dangerous strand of flu had broken out, what would happen? Within a very short amount of time the flu beginning to spread all over the world killing 99 percent of humanity. And that one group of less than 1 percent was lucky to survive and come together as an alliance; this is an amazing fictional novel.

As a new group trying to rebuild, they decide they need a leader and mother Abigail who is a 108 year old woman, and a man named Randell Flagg known as the notorious “dark man”, And seemed to be delighted by violence and chaos.

Even though the characters did have their differences, they had to work together and put them aside for their sake. And to keep their life’s they must defend from some of those criminals that want to steal or rob from them maybe even threaten most of our chances for a new beginning. Sending emotion through characters as if you were there and listing to their every word.

They need food and water to survive, so as they become a larger group that means they need more recourse. And not to mention they might really not have enough. This is a must read book. It’s filled with problems that keep you reading and wondering how the life after humanity begins to restart. Through all this chaos, do they survive?

I think just reading this novel, that could possibly impact your life someday may intrigue you as a reader and with constant cliff hangers and conflict around every corner. That’s what makes this novel that much better.

And being in the later 1970s this could have been a new worrisome subject for them to think about. Knowing this could actually happen. And with nothing they can do to stop it, making it that much worse to endure. Just try reading the novel, The Stand.