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A review by dnandrews797
The Stand by Stephen King
2.0
I’ve read two or three of Stephen King’s books in the past and have always admired his way of building suspense and creating a plot that roars along and teaches a lesson at the the end. This book was not that. The first third of the book regarding the plague “Captain Trips” was exciting and what I expect King to deliver in his books. From there things went downhill.
First let’s talk characters: A lot of times for me characters can make or break a book and I couldn’t care less about the entire cast he introduced. There are no POC characters in this book aside from the “mystical black person sent to guide the white main characters” who comes in the form of mother Abigail. Which leads to another critique: the women. All of the women in this book are treated as weak, evil, stupid or all of the above. The one exception being Frannie who receives the “righteous woman chosen by god” role with comparisons to the Virgin Mary. In other words: they’re all caricatures, not real people. The rest of the characters are also incredibly two dimensional with barely any backstory or way to connect with them.
Next there’s the pacing. The first section was a little bit slow with heavy gore descriptions, but overall was a nice little jog in the park compared to the slog through okefenoke swamp that was the exposition in the middle. It was about 700 pages of them just wandering around, describing cars, traveling and then standing around in colorado. If I had to tell you what happened in those pages I couldn’t recall because it was honestly that bland.
Another problem with this book that I found a little alarming is how frighteningly anti-intellectual it seemed at times. Scientists are demonized for imprisoning Stewart and attempting to find a cure while participating in some truly heinous acts that no self respecting scientist acquainted with the CDER or CBER would ever participate in. It’s also implied that “rational thought” can influence you towards the devil’s control and you should trust you gut before all else. I didn’t appreciate the demonization of Harold’s character over time without any other intellectual characters to act as a foil to this line of thinking.
The ending was lackluster as well and incredibly anticlimactic.
I honestly don’t know how this could be a fan favourite when there are so many other excellent King novels. It was a tremendous let down compared with Carrie, Firestarter, The Shining, Pet Semetery. But this? This was a waste of time as soon as I got to the second part.
First let’s talk characters: A lot of times for me characters can make or break a book and I couldn’t care less about the entire cast he introduced. There are no POC characters in this book aside from the “mystical black person sent to guide the white main characters” who comes in the form of mother Abigail. Which leads to another critique: the women. All of the women in this book are treated as weak, evil, stupid or all of the above. The one exception being Frannie who receives the “righteous woman chosen by god” role with comparisons to the Virgin Mary. In other words: they’re all caricatures, not real people. The rest of the characters are also incredibly two dimensional with barely any backstory or way to connect with them.
Next there’s the pacing. The first section was a little bit slow with heavy gore descriptions, but overall was a nice little jog in the park compared to the slog through okefenoke swamp that was the exposition in the middle. It was about 700 pages of them just wandering around, describing cars, traveling and then standing around in colorado. If I had to tell you what happened in those pages I couldn’t recall because it was honestly that bland.
Another problem with this book that I found a little alarming is how frighteningly anti-intellectual it seemed at times. Scientists are demonized for imprisoning Stewart and attempting to find a cure while participating in some truly heinous acts that no self respecting scientist acquainted with the CDER or CBER would ever participate in. It’s also implied that “rational thought” can influence you towards the devil’s control and you should trust you gut before all else. I didn’t appreciate the demonization of Harold’s character over time without any other intellectual characters to act as a foil to this line of thinking.
The ending was lackluster as well and incredibly anticlimactic.
I honestly don’t know how this could be a fan favourite when there are so many other excellent King novels. It was a tremendous let down compared with Carrie, Firestarter, The Shining, Pet Semetery. But this? This was a waste of time as soon as I got to the second part.