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A review by reebzzz
The Stand by Stephen King
3.0
It was such a pain to get through this, and I have mixed feelings. There are certain aspects I liked. The character arcs of the few characters I managed to remember, the vivid descriptions of some moments that had me totally immersed. But the plot was fairly simple and basic: Good vs Bad, God vs Satan. And I might have a personal bias but as an agnostic person I found the religious aspect extremely annoying. There certainly wasn't anything so amazing and mindblowing about The Stand that begged a page count of more than 1300.
And I could take the religious stuff if it didn't make the plot so meaningless. All the main characters do nothing. The defeat of the main villain has nothing to do with the actions of the main characters. They talk about free will but follow the instructions that make no sense and come out of the mouth of an 100+ year old woman who represents God. The people that die, die for no reason. Their actions have no consequences, even though we are led to believe they do. However if all the "good" characters were taken away, the story would continue in the exact same way, there would be 0 change.
I usually like Stephen King's work and had heard that The Stand was one of his best works, however I was slightly disappointed. Half of the book was spent describing the backstories of so many characters who's entire family/friend circles ended up dying that I just stopped caring midway. It could be argued that that was character development, and I'd disagree. It was just too dragged out, burdened with too many characters, and hinged upon a very feeble idea. Maybe the bridged version might have been more tolerable.
You might like this book if you like reading about people in general, I guess? There's not a lot going on other than that.
And I could take the religious stuff if it didn't make the plot so meaningless. All the main characters do nothing. The defeat of the main villain has nothing to do with the actions of the main characters. They talk about free will but follow the instructions that make no sense and come out of the mouth of an 100+ year old woman who represents God. The people that die, die for no reason. Their actions have no consequences, even though we are led to believe they do. However if all the "good" characters were taken away, the story would continue in the exact same way, there would be 0 change.
I usually like Stephen King's work and had heard that The Stand was one of his best works, however I was slightly disappointed. Half of the book was spent describing the backstories of so many characters who's entire family/friend circles ended up dying that I just stopped caring midway. It could be argued that that was character development, and I'd disagree. It was just too dragged out, burdened with too many characters, and hinged upon a very feeble idea. Maybe the bridged version might have been more tolerable.
You might like this book if you like reading about people in general, I guess? There's not a lot going on other than that.