What would you do if you were one of the last people left on the planet after a devastating epidemic washed away most of the life on it? Would you be happy that you were still be alive? Sure you would.
But what if this wasn't the end of the story and you knew that the real story was far beyond just simple survival? There is an evil that is vying for power over all the survivors.
This is the Dark Man.
That could be a problem.
Let's start out at the beginning.
The basic idea of the plot of The Stand is a simple one.
In an Army lab, research was taking place dealing with biological warfare.
Of course, in all stories like this, we know that there is going to be an accident.
And there certainly is one.
A virus manages to break out of the isolation barrier and quickly spreads across the entire facility, effectively killing everybody in its wake.
One survivor manages to make his escape from the facility and back to his family where he makes a mad dash to escape with them.
They all hop in the car and take off towards Texas.
But unfortunately, by the time they reach a gas station in Texas, the man is sick beyond all reason, and his wife and daughter have already died.
Now they are bloated, horribly blackened and they have a strange smelling funk about them.
Well, as you may have guessed, those at the gas station who discovered this horrible scene become contaminated with the virus that the man carried out with him from the Army facility.
From here, the virus spreads like wild fire as it reaches all the way east to Maine, as well as to the west, reaching the likes of Los Angeles.
Once infected, the virus acts like any other cold, giving you a runny nose and a case of the sneezes.
The virus then really takes hold and causes pain, a burning fever, and eventually, death.
So after millions of deaths later, you have your key set of characters to fill out the rotund cast of The Stand.
Thus, the story continues.
I won't go into any detail at this point, because I don't want to ruin anything and the details of the book as a whole is overwhelming.
I mean this in a good way, of course.
The Stand is Stephen King's fourth novel.
This novel is massive.
I mean massive as in over one thousand pages of massive.
The Stand is the kind of book that I love because it doesn't just get to the nitty gritty of the story.
You see details about characters and events that you wouldn't see in a lot of other novels.
King presents the characters with background that you can really sink your teeth into and chew it up like a nice piece of steak.
After I finished this behemoth of a book, I honestly sat back and thought how good this story really was.
I had really enjoyed it.
I would venture to say this is by far my favorite novel from Stephen King.
On a downside in my opinion, like a lot of really big novels like The Stand, there are many times when things seem a little long winded.
As I was reading through the book, there were many times I thought to myself, boy, when am I going to get to some of the action here? It seems to be a little bit of a double bladed sword.
Having a lot of details and background is great, because it gives you some real information about the characters, and thus, you really feel for these individuals.
Yet, it's the same amount of details that really causes things to slow down when you're reading it.
I guess it's almost a grain of salt situation.
There is another trend I seem to notice as I read through the book.
The musical references.
Luckily, when he uses these references to classic music, it's not forced or strained.
He'll refer to the Beatles as an example.
In this case, it'll create a great deal of nostalgia for some readers.
It harkens back to the sixties and really attribute to the sense of nostalgia that the characters are feeling in the horrible world that they now find themselves.
Ultimately, I think that The Stand is a well written book and deserves a look through.
It's really entertaining and I feel that it, as I mentioned before, is one of my favorite books in the King collection of works.
Give it a go and see what you think.