I just read the Stand! (spoilahz)

[xanaphia]

I just finished the book The Stand by Stephen King. It's like the most epic book ever.

I feel I need to debrief.

Okay. I was sad when Nick died. He was my favorite character, and I just loved the scene where he meets Tom. He just won everything. Normally when books prove that Anyone Can Die, I am impressed. However, this time, I was just really sad. You bastard, Harold.

I loved the climax. "I will fear no evil I will f"

The other thing I particularly liked was the foreshadowing throughout. It's a literary technique I'm not really used to. For instance, when Stu and Frannie are going through Harold's house, and they spot the walkie talkies, and Stu says, "It's probably nothing" and then the next line is "Stu would look back later on that statement as the greatest mistake of his life."

Randall Flagg was very scary. I loved his conversation with Glen at the end.

I didn't quite understand how the book relates to Christianity, though.

Finally, Trashcan Man is cool. He smelled a nuke.

[thubby]

i loved the first 1/2-2/3. then it's like king just went "i don't want to write this anymore" and had god walk in and have the good guys win.

the walkin man be satan.

[Matar]

I love this book soooo much.

I just wish King would put less sex in his books. Not that I imind that kind of stuff, of course. My large collection of lemons proves that I don't mind that kind of stuff at all.

Buuuuut, he's just so bad at it. It just seems to take away from the story.

[thubby]

it's a good way to eat pages without really meaning anything for the characters. king took the zerg approach to book writing.

[Finn Solomon]

I love this book soooo much.

I just wish King would put less sex in his books. Not that I imind that kind of stuff, of course. My large collection of lemons proves that I don't mind that kind of stuff at all.

Buuuuut, he's just so bad at it. It just seems to take away from the story.

He's not completely bad at it, it's just that he's only good at describing twisted, warped deviant sex, like between Larry Underwood and that old woman in the middle of a city full of corpses, or dying of a heart attack halfway in Gerald's Game. Relatively normal, loving sex is not something he can write. Like in the Dark Tower with Eddie and Susannah, their love scenes were given like only a couple of sentences.

As for how the book relates to Christianity, I like how King makes Mother Abigail question her faith. It makes her more real somehow, when she's privately complaining about the fact that she's lived about a hundred and eight years and God still had massively important work for her left to be done.

Characters without meaning? I disagree entirely. In Frannie Goldsmith I find a marvellously accurate portrayal of a young single mother caught between warring parents. Nick Andros is one of his most likeable heroes in his entire career, and of course Flagg the Walkin Man grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go.

[Drakyn]

If I'm allowed to be mean, didn't the end feel a bit arbitrary to you? It sort of happened independantly of anything the good guys did or were supposed to do, and made me feel like you could've removed half of them from the story without making any real difference in the book beyond slimming it down a lot.

[averagejoe]

The other thing I particularly liked was the foreshadowing throughout. It's a literary technique I'm not really used to. For instance, when Stu and Frannie are going through Harold's house, and they spot the walkie talkies, and Stu says, "It's probably nothing" and then the next line is "Stu would look back later on that statement as the greatest mistake of his life."

This is actually something that fascinates me about King in general. For many authors, the knowledge that such and such dies, or whatever, will ruin the book. King, on the other hand, will flat out tell you when someone's going to die, and it still works.

[Mewtarthio]

If I'm allowed to be mean, didn't the end feel a bit arbitrary to you? It sort of happened independantly of anything the good guys did or were supposed to do, and made me feel like you could've removed half of them from the story without making any real difference in the book beyond slimming it down a lot.

I've always held the belief that Flagg is exactly as dangerous as everyone thinks he is. Note how, for instance, the woman sent to spy hears enough about Flagg's evil that she has a very tough fight with him in which she just barely manages to commit suicide, while the Judge is highly resistant to Flagg's hypnosis and very nearly kills him, and Tom Cullen, who is incapable of conceiving of evil, can't even be scried upon.

The heroes actually played a crucial role in the climax: They gathered all of Flagg's forces within the blast radius, and they provided the impetus for that one man to briefly challenge Flagg. When he became scared enough to believe that Flagg was "a devil or somethin'," Flagg was able to use his flashy ball lighting. When Trashcan Man then showed up with the nuke, the entire crowd's fear was focused on the bomb. Since Flagg's powers are fear-based, he lost control of the lightning, which focused on the source of everyone's fear: Namely, that the bomb would explode and kill everyone. And so it did.

[JonestheSpy]

i loved the first 1/2-2/3. then it's like king just went "i don't want to write this anymore" and had god walk in and have the good guys win.



My feelings pretty much. And really, I didn't thinking nuking half the survivors of the plague was really such a great moral uplift. It's not like they were all psychopaths - there were some relative innocents like Jenny Engstrom who just seemed to fall in with the wrong people.