 Hello everybody! E here. Welcome back to another Stephen King book review and if you're sitting there going, hey, he's reviewed all of Stephen King's books up until this point, you are drastically wrong. I'm kidding. I'm actually speaking for myself because I thought I had and I'm missing about 50 reviews, the Thursday theorists and all of the newer content from Sleeping Beauties onward. I have reviews for those but I don't have reviews for a lot of them. So today we are starting with The Stand. The original edition, it's like 800, let's see here, I'm going to go through here real quick, 800 and 17, let's see here, 823 pages long. So this version of The Stand is much, much shorter than the 1994, I believe it was, reissue that incorporated all of the stuff that Stephen King had to cut, double day made him cut because they simply could not produce a book of that length at that time. Another thing to note is this is the first edition of the book and it is considerably smaller than other, it's not a book club edition, it is the same size as a book club edition, but when his first four or five books were released, I'm talking about Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand and Night Shift, all of those books, double day didn't really have a whole lot of confidence in him, so they released them in the same size as the book club edition and the only difference was, of course, one of them was marked book club edition. But this is the story of the survivors of a disease called Captain Trips. It has been adapted twice, both times, many series. The first one, I believe, was Mick Garris, the second one. One of the show leaders was Josh Boone, numerous people worked on the most recent one, but Josh Boone was one of the show runners. Now the story for me works for the most part up until they get to Boulder, my only, I still give this book five stars, but you know me, I'm all about the criticisms, so by the time it gets to Boulder, I really get tired of reading about the reconstruction, the rebuilding of society. I much prefer the stuff in Las Vegas during that timeframe. The main antagonist here is Randall Flagg, who is all throughout the Dark Tower series. I've already done my Thursday theorist for this book, I did it quite some time ago. So Randall Flagg is bringing on, well I don't know that he brought it on, but he is amassing a group of bad guys to wage war on Boulder, where the, Boulder, Colorado, where Mother Abigail and all of the other good survivors, the protagonists of the story, are gathering. And then they rebuild society, but my only criticism about this book is that section of the book. Now talking about characters, my favorite character in this book is Nick Andros, Tom Cullen is second on that list, and their interactions are my favorite parts of the book. I'm not going into spoiler territory, I don't want to go into spoiler territory here, but if you would like a spoiler review of this book, let me know. Also, the reason I'm redoing these reviews, well not redoing, doing, finally doing video reviews, all of my written reviews are up on Goodreads, but I want these reviews on the channel also, and I want to make very clear that yes, these are old books. Also I'm not a huge fan of Old King, I know that's crazy, some of my, I would say pre-80s King, and some of the 80s stuff also, but I'm a much bigger fan of his work now, and I also like the extended edition better. The reason for that is most of, I think all of the content concerning the kid, Trash Can Man, and you know, the kid is absent from this version of the book. There's a lot of great content in here, especially the traveling sections at the beginning when Captain Trips is wiping everything out, a standout section is of course the tunnel, one of my favorite parts of the book, then later on when they're road tripping again, where the, when the good guys are traveling to Las Vegas to have the, to stand, you know, to have the final standoff, that was a huge, that was another favorite part of mine, but the book is never as good as the beginning, and that's of course my own subjective opinion, and the ending, it can be said that the ending of the book is phoned in, and it's just a huge duest machina, I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that right, I try to stay away from that term because of that, but it can say that it was phoned in or that it did not, it didn't fit with everything else, it can be said that it does fit because of the huge theme of religion circulating throughout the book, I personally don't like the ending, I know many people do, but me personally I do not like the ending, but that's not to say that this book isn't amazing, the book is great, it is a feat to behold that he was able to make the book interesting throughout the entirety of it, this one I will be reviewing the uncut version when we get to it, I plan on going in order across here, but if you have not read this, and it doesn't matter what genre you like, because all the genres are in here, you have horror, you have love and romance, you have damn there anything you could possibly think of, even some science fiction and even some fantasy in the sections where they're all dreaming, so you have some surreal aspects, some real aspects, but where King shines as he always balances the surreal aspects with the, you know, what is it, the corporeal aspects, the real-life aspects, and this is a fantastic book, it's not one of my favorites, but it is a fantastic book and I highly recommend that you read it, if you have not, or reread it if you want to, I'm not sure if I have the time for this or not, but I've been thinking about this for a long time, reading the original version and reading the uncut version back to back or at the same time and finding all the differences, I'm hoping all that will be included in the Cemetery Dance Double Day gift edition that I'll be receiving at some point in time, they're so slow with these things, but if you guys want to see me do a side-by-side comparison to the original version, this one, and the 1994 uncut version, let me know down there in the doobly-doo. Also, let me know whether or not you love this book, whether or not you hate it, whether or not you felt meh about it, I'd love to hear from you, but tell me why you felt that way about the book so that we can have a discussion. Until next time, I have been E, you have been U, this has been another Stephen King review, I'll talk to you guys later, bye-bye.