M-O-O-N that's how you spell Stephen King

Stephen King hardly needs any introduction on this earth. Almost no one has never heard of this master story teller, or never seen movies or series based on his stories. He has more than fifty novels to his name and a mountain of short stories. The Stand is his fourth published novel. This story first came out in 1978, so way before COVID struck, but in 2011 King revised this story to include multiple scenes he had to cut in 1978 in this, even for him, big book. This revised version is the one I am reading and counts 1325 pages. People will probably think about COVID and find that a harsh virus (it is, but): meet Captain Trips! This virus decimates earth's population by 99%. The people left find themselves in a world devoid of law or rules and need to survive by being creative. Law and order are no longer being enforced by the governments. Some people like to try and bring that back, while others want the chaos around them. ***How would you react to a population reduction of 99%?***In King's normal style he introduces the main players of the story to you at a leisurly pace, and at around a quarter of the story in, it really starts and at that point Captain Trips is decimating earth's population. Besides the main characters in these pages, he shows you people broken and on the brink of breaking, people coping with the situation around them, breaking down because of it. Again: how would you react? For the first (and only(?)) time Stephen King introduces new main characters halfway through the book, adding depth to the story he is already telling you. The depth of law and order versus chaos. Again the characters are the master piece of the story, where King shows you that everyone on this earth has his or her place, his or her needs and his or her wants. People are still tempted to stray from their path, some do, some don't. You never know. Some have doubts afterwards. But everyone in this story has value. This is also the story where Stepen King introduces you to his most versatile villain: Randall Flagg. A character that will return in later stories, as most of his stories are inter-connected in the Multiverse. Randall Flagg is trying to coerce everyone into following him on his path and bring him ...? He clings to chaos as an afterthought and unleashes that everywhere he goes. Although Randall Flagg is the villain of the story, he usually stays in the background, radiating fear to all. Don't think too much about the Multiverse when reading Stephen King, as all his stories can be read without knowing anything about it, and then sometimes you think: hey, isn't that the character/city from ... ? And you might be right. The chapters of The Stand are really long (on average 16 pages, but some of the chapters are more than 30 pages). This has caused me to somtimes stop in the middle of a chapter, because I really needed to sleep. Luckily the chapters itself are divided into different sections, which make it easier to pickup the storyline when you start to read again. For its size The Stand is a really slow story that concentrates on the character development. Although the book is 1325 pages (the edition I'm reading, that is) it takes King more than 1000 pages to get a little bit of (actual) excitement going and he really starts building toward the climax. Multiple times during these 1000 pages the reader thinks that the action is going to commence, but only after page 1000 the action starts going. Even then the pace he is delivering the action to you is a slow one, and totaly different from the books he presented to you before.