Reviews

In its 1978 incarnation, The Stand was a healthy, hefty 823-pager. Now, King and Doubleday are republishing The Stand in the gigantic version in which, according to King, it was originally written. Not true . The same excellent tale of the walking dude, the chemical warfare weapon called superflu and the confrontation between its survivors has been updated to 1990, so references to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Reagan years, Roger Rabbit and AIDS are unnecessarily forced into the mouths of King's late-'70s characters. That said, the extra 400 or so pages of subplots, character development, conversation, interior dialogue, spiritual soul-searching, blood, bone and gristle make King's best novel better still. A new beginning adds verisimilitude to an already frighteningly believable story, while a new ending opens up possibilities for a sequel. Sheer size makes an Everest of the whole deal. BOMC selection, QPB main selection. (May)

Released in 1978, King's apocalyptic novel, even at a whopping 1200-plus pages, had been trimmed by 150,000 words. A restored version followed in 1990, and that unexpurgated text here makes its audiobook debut-and it's well worth the wait. The story offers the author's signature scenes of horror, but King devotes much time to describing a world gone mad and the people left to populate it after a virus wipes out most of the planet's population. Even though there are hundreds of characters, only a handful are primary, and King shows his skill at making them real, as the uncanny talent of narrator Grover Gardner brings them to life. His reading is flawless, his timing is spot-on, and his slightly Southern accent makes even curse words sound amusing. VERDICT Despite the price and the daunting listening time, this audiobook belongs in every library.-Joseph L. Carlson, Vandenberg Air Force Base Lib., Lompoc, CA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.