Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The Stand

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

The Stand by Stephen King

55 reviews

thssmysrnm's review against another edition

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challenging dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

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_leitmotif_'s review against another edition

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i’d never read a steven king book before, and this one seems to be considered his best/fan’s favorite. it was a slow week in my libby holds and it was available for an immediate borrow.

writing style and story are so engaging, i get why king has such a rabid fan base…AND NO ONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK.

it is deeply racist and misogynistic to its core. like grossly, blatantly so. casually, ‘i definitely meant to do this/it’s so rooted in me i also didn’t even notice’ so. and it’s not just the relentless use of racial slurs in the dialog, and the description of women’s bodies and gross sexualized pov’s written for some of the female characters, it’s how the Black and brown characters are written and the positionality they take up in the story; covering all bases; from ‘thug’ to ‘magical being’, all as foils to the white characters.

oh, and this book is ALSO riddled with horrible ablism and fatphobia. all around fucking trash.

he wrote this in the 70’s. i get it, people felt REAL free to be super open with their white supremacy and misogyny. perhaps he’s grown? and even if so, where is the rewrite/updated version of this story or the disavowal?

disgusting.

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calypso_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Definitely in my Top 5 for favorite books. It’s got everything you could want from a book: mystery, romance, adventure, magic. Well worth the 1k+ pages

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xcinnamonsugar's review against another edition

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adventurous dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

According to my Kobo, it took me 20 reading hours to finish this tome. I've DNF-ed books a fraction of The Stand's length without hesitation, so yes this book is engaging enough to stick to despite being over 1000 pages long (I read the uncut/extended version).

The Stand is divided into three parts:

Book I sets the stage. A deadly flu way more contagious and lethal than Covid spreads rapidly throughout the United States and kills 99% of the population.
Book II focuses on the 1% of survivors. They all have recurring supernatural dreams of two people: "good" is incarnated in an elderly black lady named Mother Abagail, while "evil" takes shape in a man named Randall Flagg. All survivors gravitate toward one of these two people, making gruelling cross-country pilgrimages that claim a few more lives in the process.
Book III is the cinematic good-versus-evil conclusion to this epic story. Despite juggling an ambitious number of character arcs, everything ties in together nicely at the end.

Book I was probably the dullest to get through, given that we've already had first-hand experience with a global pandemic. Reading about quarantines and an overwhelmed public system felt a little too on the nose. There are also separate chapters introducing at least twenty different characters, which can feel a little disorienting. However, I've read enough Stephen King to realise that his books tend to start off very slowly, giving even the NPCs a well-rounded backstory.

Book II is where it gets interesting, since you begin to see how King hypothesises each of the myriad characters in our society makes their choice. One of the characters, Glen Bateman, is a sociologist. His little monologues theorising how human behaviour would inevitably lead to a certain pattern of progression in these little scrappy survivor communities was one of my favourite parts of this book.

Book III was pretty intense, but all's well that ends well. Many main characters died, but I thought the ways that each of them met their deaths was rather poetic and satisfying, even if a little sad.

Knocked a star off because, for all King's storytelling prowess, I cannot in good faith give 5 stars to any book with this much graphic sexual assault and objectification of the female body.

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scipio_africanus's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Damn good story. My first time reading Stephen King, and he didnt disappoint. From the synopsis I went in expecting it to be overly sentimental, corny, cartoonish, or just plain weak the way The Postman ended up being but was pleasantly surprised with the direction King took the story and the characters. I see why King is so successful. Great writing and a great time. Will def be exploring him more.

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