When I used to see The Stand on bookstore shelves, I'd just think of it as "That really really long Stephen King book". I'd expected it to be filled with pages and pages of obscure, nightmare-like dream sequences, hard to follow and difficult to read. Oh boy was I wrong.

I've got to thank Linda for making me read the "complete and uncut" version. Some of my favorite parts (like chapter 38) are parts I'm sure were omitted from the book's original abridged publication.

The Stand is a story of good versus evil, a story not about storybook heroes but regular everyday folks, and a story about a government-engineered superflu that wipes out 94% of the world's populace.

The book is very very well written, and I love the constant references King makes to other literature: Lord of the Rings, Flowers for Algernon, Watership Down, The Andromeda Strain, and several excellent and subtle references to Poe's The Raven.

"Captain Tripps", as it came to be called, does its nasty work in the first third of the book. The story has detailed accounts of the story's main characters as everyone they know dies of it, and accounts of other characters who cannot be main characters because they do not survive.

The book's middle third details the bands of survivors, and we watch the groups assemble and the characters meet and organize. A new society is being formed; a new civilization. We watch them struggle with the things we take for granted - food, electricity, automobiles.

In the final third of the book, a confrontation takes place between good and evil. I will say no more.