Ana V.

intially:

After a 9 hour, 400 page of small type printing marathon, I finished this in 2013.

Hell yeah.

Review to come... in 2014.

review:

this is just going to be a silly opinion until I come up with something better or I read the book again. don't mind me, just strolling along.

some time ago, I read in King's "On Writing" that in general, readers deem "The Stand" to be his best work, as in "his best work ever". he made a joke of it, saying that it doesn't really make you feel good when you know your best work is something you've written 30 years ago, and anything you worked on after fades when compared to that.

after reading it, I can't say this is the best work of it. the plot is generous, the characters are well developed (sometimes a bit too much) there's action, there's character to character incursions, there's a linear feeling to the whole she-bang, there's a lot of soul put into this.

but...

it's not the best he can do.

I've seen what he can do in Dark Tower. the sheer amount of passion and self put into that book is mind-blowing. i'm not here to advertise that particular work, i'm just saying that I don't see Stand as his finest piece.

that being said, it's still an awesome book.

also, a massive thang. my edition has 1325 pages in fuckin' small type printing. do you know that type of page? that takes you three times longer to read because you're actually squinting in order to read it and you can't do too much of that at night, because of the artificial lighting? yup. that kind of edition.

(note: i bought mine in Paris, in August of 2013, out of my own money, on Rue de Rivoli. how's that for romantic setting while buying a book??!)

also, the edition i have is the "Uncut" version of the story, where King restored some of the original story, as opposed to the first version of Stand to go on print, where it was half of what it had to be. even longer, yay.

if you want to know the plot, give it a google search. it has thousands upon thousands of versions, spoiler free and all that shit.

what I liked: the political innuendo scattered everywhere along the book, the dystopian feel, Randall Flagg (all hail the ever present dark ghost of King's writing, the Crimson King), the tension.

dislikes: nuffin? maybe that it was a tad long. just.. a bit.