The Stand (Uncut) by Stephen King

Stephen King 

“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.” 

“People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.” 

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.  Or you don't.” 

            This is a long and good book. As stated above, the complete and uncut version of The Stand is over 1150 pages.  It took me the last couple weeks of one summer, and then an additional week or so to finish it up because it was too long to finish before school started up again. I have heard and read that the edited and original version of the novel is just as good as the uncut version, if not better.  Having only read the uncut version I am completely satisfied and  amazed with the quality of the novel.  This is the only King book that I have ever read, and I feel guilty because  I know that all of his others are probably just as good as this one.  Character and plot development is the most important and frequent part of this work as King delves deep into the past lives of every main character, until you feel that you know them as well as you do any of your best buds.  He portrays how each of these characters were completely ordinary, but in their own way extraordinary given the dire circumstances. One event leading to another the world as we know it came to an end and people started gathering into two groups: good and bad.  The most intriguing part of this novel was that he made almost everything believable, realistic and easy to conceptualize. However, the leaders of both these groups had super natural powers that created an eerie and out of the ordinary feeling while reading. The antagonist was a satanical creature who had human form but had a deep evil within him that King usually described through his twisted and scheming smile.  One of the few books that I have ever read that has given me goose bumps while reading, from what I have heard King's other novels offer just the same. An epic story in both length and nature, a true page turner. 4.5/5