At the end of the world after a pandemic, the forces of good and evil gather for a final showdown. This, to me, is the most over-rated Stephen King book. I struggled to get through it when I first read it, then read the expanded edition in case I was missing something, but, nope - I struggled to get into it. It might be because of my own personal beliefs, but I think it was just way too long. This book is loved by many King fans; my opinion of this book saw me hounded out of a King fan forum in the early days of the Internet.

I could not get into the characters, found the bad guy to be comically bad, the good woman to be too good and the whole felt more like a parody than a horror or thriller story, just without any humour.

Fans, I guess. But a lot of people like it for whatever reason.

The initial descriptions of the pandemic and how it affected the world. Takes on a different feeling now, though!

A lot of the characters and the interminable length.

Read something short and funny.

Bored.

King has written so much stuff over the years (including my favourite ever book - "Christine"  ) that some things were bound to end up not as good as others. So I let this slide as one of his few misses and move onto the next one.

I cannot really recommend or not recommend this as I think my opinion is too different, but I found this long and boring.

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of The Stand   from Amazon.Com!

Created Oct 06, 2025 at 1:31am • Submit your own review...