The Stand

Edit: Spoilers here if you haven't read, well, quasi-spoilers?

It's so good. So good, I love all the characters. I'm part way into it - where the Trashcan Man meets the Kid in his truck 'Don't tell me I'll tell you' uughhh what a disgusting man
That's exactly where I've left off, as Flagg comes walking up towards him with that demonic grin and those blazing eyes, and the Trashcan Man follows him like Marius after the Dark Wanderer. So good

But yeah to answer your question I'm convinced Flagg is Satan himself. God's fallen angel, mighty and mighty wicked, walking the earth and pulling strings and sowing terror. Like the descriptions of how the women he had sex with felt afterwards? Ugghhh And how he intervenes in the backroom of that 1920's farmhouse performance, and how he's on photos in the backgrounds of all kinds of massacres and atrocities, the way Stephen King sets him up makes me shit myself

And yes, almost certainly, there are military facilities and organizations entirely dedicated to biological warfare, aka diseases. Countries all across the world from Brazil to Norway to North Korea have the same kind of facilities, and some countries actively use disease in warfare. Scary as fuck, huh?

 

Flagg is a representative of Evil on one side of the Coin; then there is the all seeing grandma that represents the Good. A Classic spiritual battle is driven as a message throughout the Book, and the End of the story leaves no such justification to be found as for who wins, or who loses... it is just left hanging. Such is Life itself; the Classic tale of Mankind itself.... is it good?

As for Super diseases... we had them on the planet. It is World History. It will happen again.

 

Trash can man represents angst on the way out of a whimpering society. You are seeing that happening today among the Anarchy Crowd. In their view... Let it burn.

 

Sorta. I started it and then got bogged down in the middle then restarted it

edit: @Tonika if you haven't read the Dark Tower series yet by the same author I really recommend it

And more of the same kind of spirit but even better in my opinion is the Joe Pitt series by Charlie Huston. If you see Already Dead anywhere, it's the first book, don't do yourself a disservice by walking by without buying it

 

Firestarter is great :3 I read it as a teen, that alongside Cormac McCarthy's The Road gave me great insights into fatherhood.

Dark Tower is the opposite of that, right off the bat, in the first book, there's a setup for a fatherhood feelgood moral story that King just bleeds all over. There's a lot of sorry, I can't, I must seek the Dark Tower. Randall Flagg is in this series, and is the main bad guy of the very first book.* My personal favorite of the series so far, without spoiling too much, features an amazing love story in a fascinating culture with a tragic climax, but it sorta shows what the protagonist is made of and willing to do in order to get to that god damn Dark Tower get to the Tower with your Kha-Tet, Roland!

King himself describes it as sort of the American Lord of the Rings. Knights are called Gunslingers, of which Roland is one, and everything's gone to shit ages ago in a massive world war between the old powers of stability and the Sauron-type, a Hitlerian man-o-the-people called 'The Good Man'. The world is filled with AI demons, radiated monstrosities, sorcerers and tech-geniuses alike.
In a really cool way, it is an American Lord of the Rings. It's full of hip little twists, time travel (the main chars are from 1900's USA, save Roland), it's dark as fuck, violent, brutal, every single character, town, village, community you meet in the book is a twist on the imagination, and the protagonists are powerful. Roland himself, in particular. Hell of a guy, for good and for bad. Think the Clint Eastwood stereotype from that original western series he was such a hunk in, just, jacked up way past the maximum and set in an Alice the Wonderland meets Mad Max world.

* 'Randall Flagg', The Dark Man, 'Walter', all the same dude, seen here in the moment where Roland the Gunslinger has left a boy to plunge to his death to catch Flagg. That great moment in many good hero tales where the good guy has to face the fact that he's got some bad guy in him, too.


It's a bad ass bookseries. Committment tho, it's seven books and a couple thou' pages.

Edit: Flagg is so creepy, more Dark Man art:



Walter the Sorcerer



The Walkin' Dude

 

The Stand is an amazing book. I also enjoyed a book he wrote called The Eyes of the Dragon.

 

There was a movie made out of that book. Stephen King obviosly does not trust the milatary. He has used that idea in other stories too like The Mist. Yes Randall Flagg represented the devil without actually saying it. It's a showdown of good vs. evil.

 

if you like the stand, try salem's lot next. its a perfect example of small town life, especially in maine (i would know, i grew up in and still live in the same small town in maine). its about how a vampire would rise to power in a small town. very eerie. i read this every time i lose power (lose power a lot, for extended periods of time).

 

Nobody liked Tommy knockers? Lol
Also the Dome i thought was pretty decent. Long read like the stand though.

 

Not sure if it's still in print in its original form but Monkey Shines by Bachman (pseudonym for Mr King) is a great collection of short stories ranging from horror to dystopian futures.

Another book along the same vein as The Stand is Swans Song.. I forget the author offhand but it's a really cool take on good vs evil during the end of the world.

 

The author of Swan Song is Robert R. McCammon. Great Author in his own right.
I loved Mystery Walk and Baal, as well.