Read: The Stand by Stephen King

So I kept expecting a clown to pop up somewhere and ruin it all. But it didn’t happen and the novel ended in a not entirely bizarre manner. Was this really Stephen King?*

The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition is essentially an end-of-the-world story. A superflu virus more or less wipes out the human race, except for some survivors who find themselves headed either to the west, to Las Vegas and the haunt of the  ’dark man’, or to Nebraska where 108-year-old ‘Mother Abigail’ resides. Most of the novel traces the spread of the virus, the painful deaths of many, and the cross-country treks of the survivors.

While the plot moved along at a decent enough clip, it was the characters that really appealed to me. Many of them were very believable and quite likeable – ordinary people who find themselves thrown into situations where they have to lead their band of survivors, often reluctantly but courageously.

While The Stand isn’t a creep show the likes of Guillermo Del Toro’s vampire fest The Strain, it is a horror story for our time, and one that is quite plausible.

(*As I thought about it a bit more, King has written some pretty amazing stories like The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me. I just made that mistake of reading It many years ago, and stayed far away from any King novels since then. While I am glad I stuck through this 1000+ page novel, it’s highly unlikely that I will reach for another Stephen King novel again – there are just too many other books out there!).

Source: Library

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