#4 in Horror
The Stand
- 1,153
- Pages
- about 21 h
- Reading time
- Series 1994 +1
- On screen
- NPR Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books
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Our view
“The Stand” earns its size through its people. A plague empties the world, the survivors drift towards two camps, and King gives even minor figures enough room to become distinct, so the confrontation between good and evil carries weight. The demand is real: well over a thousand pages and a great many storylines to hold in mind, in a dark and often tense register. For readers who want to settle into a long book.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Stand is an epic post-apocalyptic dark fantasy novel written by American author Stephen King and first published in 1978 by Doubleday. The plot centers on a deadly pandemic of weaponized influenza and its aftermath, in which some of the few surviving humans gather into factions that are each led by a personification of either good or evil and seem fated to clash with each other. King started writing the story in February 1975, seeking to create an epic in the spirit of The Lord of the Rings. The book was difficult for him to write because of the large number of characters and storylines. The novel marks the first appearance of Randall Flagg, King's recurring antagonist, whom King would reintroduce several times in his later writings.
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen 2 times — from 1994 to 2020.
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.4 across 1,956 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 93% of the weight and the score stays at 8.4 — the Horror average of 7.5 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.6 | 90 | 5% |
| Hardcover | 8.4 | 1.9K | 95% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Stand?
It has 1,153 pages — longer than 99% of the ranked books in Horror.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Horror — with scores between 7.5 and 8.6, closest to this book.
