"Perhaps one of the reasons I'm almost glad to have her gone is because I'm such a rational old curmudgeon. I like to creep through my daily round, to water my garden - (...) - to read my books, to write my notes for my own book about the plague. I like to do all those things and then have a glass of wine at bedtime and fall asleep with an untroubled mind. Yes. None of us want to see portents and omens, no matter how much we like our ghost stories and the spooky films. None of us want to really see a Star in the East or a pillar of fire by night. We want peace and rationality and routine. If we have to see a God in the black face of an old woman, it's bound to remind us that there's a devil for every god - and our devil may be closer than we line to think." (King 928)
I'm impressed with myself and the fact that I managed to finish Stephen King's epic The Stand in two weeks, but then it is a Stephen King book, which means that it is very readable and very entertaining. So the fact that it's 1200 pages long does not really count.
The Stand is about an apocalyptic virus which kills off most of the world population. A small group survives and they form two communities in the US. One is based in the West and is overseen by Randall Flagg (the dark man) and the other one is overseen in the East by Mother Abigail. The criminals and the darker minded people in the US flock towards the East, where Flagg treats his community like a totalitarian state. The others move to the East, where Nick (a deaf-mute guy), Stu, Glen (a sociologist), Larry (a musician), Frannie (a pregnant girl) and others try to rebuild civilization by forming a council.
As the title states; at some point of the story the East has to make a Stand against the evil powers of the West, before the Nazi-like regime takes over and a second wave of mass destruction comes there way. The novel never loses sight of the Biblical implications of such an apocalypse and the reforming of society, but this fact never becomes overbearing. It's a pity I read Under the Dome first, which is written later but is so much more powerful than The Stand, this means I couldn't appreciate The Stand fully because I know now that King can do better. However, this is still an amazing book to read and it should therefore definitely be on King's top 10 list.
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