Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: The Stand (complete & uncut edition) by Stephen King ::
by William the Bloody
You got to love the American government. Keeping us safe and fed and breeding super germ weapons. Oh, didn't you know? Good ol' U S of A has tucked away a lovely research lab where they make super deadly versions of seemingly mundane diseases, but don't worry: it's very safe and secure. Or, it was. The clock changed from green to red and the guy at the security desk noticed and got the hell out of there.... carrying the Super Flu with him. As he fled the military base with his family just ahead of the lock down, he just drove East, the opposite of the wind praying to avoid the disease, not knowing that they already had it. This family of three died on a road in Texas just as their car careened into a gas station in the small town of Arnette. The station was occupied by a small group of beer buddies who called the paramedics for the doomed family. No doctor in the county knew what illness the three poor souls fell victim to, so calls went out to people higher up in the medical field and the folks who knew what it was were military. A state trooper went by the gas station to warn the owner, his cousin, that some military types might come around regarding the dead family, not realizing that in doing so, the super flu, which was now living in those beer buddies, had now jumped onto him as well. And it was then, that an outbreak of a deadly flu which may have been contained to a small town in Texas was spread by one state trooper to every person he pulled over in the whole county, and those people passed it on to everyone they spoke to, and on and on and on until it spidered out across the country in a web of death. The military, still hoping to get a bead on the flu, transported the initially infected Texans to a disease research facility in Atlanta in order to track symptoms, take vital signs, and generally poke and prod them with the vain hope of finding a vaccine. Unfortunately, every case is the same with no joy. That is, except for Stu Redman. Stu, who was one of the beer swilling buddies at the gas station has managed to stay symptom free and outlive everyone else in the town of Arnette and the military disease specialists are stumped. They even secretly injected him with the virus and he remained fresh as a daisy. Too bad all the doctors and nurses with their disease suits and clean rooms weren't so lucky. But even if every researcher in the facility kicked it, Stu Redman was just fine so there must be others, right? And indeed there are, scattered around the country of the dead there are survivors, but if out-living one nightmare weren't enough, now these folks are plagued by dreams: one of a kindly old woman living in Nebraska and another of a faceless tall, sinister man who beckons them to Las Vegas. You'd think if you had to choose which one to listen to, deciding between a sweet old woman and a grim spectre of evil, would be a no-brainer, but you'd be wrong. Just as many people are interested in following the faceless man as there are those looking for the old woman, maybe even more. But since everyone is having the same dreams, no matter which side you choose, you know the other one is out there, too. You'd think the two groups of people might be able to get on just fine without even giving the other a second look, but you'd also be wrong. See the tall man is Randall Flagg and he aims to wipe those self-righteous goody-two-shoes right off the face of the Earth, and the sooner, the better. It will be all the good people who rallied around the old woman can do to avoid the wrath of Flagg and make a stand.
The Good: Let me say up front that this is the VERY FIRST Stephen King novel I have ever read. I'm over 30 years old and it took me this long, I know, I know. But let me add that from this experience it is very easy to see why he is so famous and widely read. His style seems to have a very natural flow to it, is very easy to read and understand, and most of the chapters are short, which makes it easy to read only when one has a few moments' free time. He uses every day language, but don't misunderstand me: he does not talk down to his reader and dumb it up. In this book there is a character by the name of Glen Bateman who was a sociology professor and also served the purpose of explaining some complex ideas in an easy fashion to other characters, thusly explaining it us, but it doesn't come off plot-device-y because Glen and Stu Redman compliment each other well as intellectual opposites but moral sames and bounce off each other well as friends. The way King wrote this novel (and I'm told he writes in general, so this is in case you don't know) is that each chapter, or chapter section was a particular character-centric. It wasn't from their first person point of view, no, it was consistently third person, but the terminology, jargon, and style used in the narrative changed depending on which character we were focused on at the time, which, even though it wasn't first person, still showed us their perspective better than your typical "sterile" third person POV. You can really get a feel for the "head" of the characters when they are put in this focus, without actually being in their head. It's pretty neat. And I really did like and care about most of the main characters the more I got to read of them. However, having said that, my two favourite chapters were the ones describing the spread of the flu and the military response, which were both done in broad terms and didn't linger too long on single characters. I just think they really helped to paint the picture on a grander scale, since it was happening to everyone, everywhere and not just the dozen main characters.
The Bad: I was kind of let down by the ending. I don't know, it simply felt anticlimatic, and some bits in the dénouement seemed to drag on beyond the point of my caring about them. I feel I have to go on record as to saying I don't like the character of Frannie Goldsmith. The moment in the book which took her beyond redemption in my eyes was when she was involved in a committee meeting and her man Stu is on the committee as well and at first he voted "Aye" and she voted "Nay" but then she changed her mind because she didn't want to vote against Stu! I'm sorry, but that came off as a a rather weak-willed female type moment along the lines of "I'm sorry honey, I'll agree with whatever you want." Blegh. Stephen King also comes off as up his own ass about Randall Flagg. Do you want me to leave you two alone to make out, Stephen? Oh, and I noticed some weird bits that some editor somewhere must have slept through when they "updated" the book to take place from 1980 (original version) to 1990 (complete & uncut edition), especially one of the Texas ladies remarking how much nicer her soap operas looked on her neighbour's color television. Um... who in 1990 still had a black and white set? No one I knew and I wasn't rich. Hey, this is a Stephen King novel not some swill by Stephanie Meyer! Wake up!!
Overall, it was my first King book, and I think I picked a good one for it, although I will admit to the possibility of being disenchanted with his style if I were to read another novel, but it definitely did work for him here. There were many characters, but I had genuine feelings for many of them especially Tom Cullen, Nick Andros and Lloyd Henreid (poor, poor Lloyd). A lot of the communicable disease stuff as well as the depiction of a post mortem America were all fascinating reads. It was a pretty keen little 1,153 page book.
A-
