By: Stephen King Publisher: Signet Average Rating: Binding: Mass Market Paperback Label: Signet Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 384 Publication Date: April 01, 1999
Product Description: On the first day of May, 100 teenage boys meet for a race known as “The Long Walk.” If you break the rules, you get three warnings. If you exceed your limit, what happens is absolutely terrifying...
Intensity Itself!!! Blood and Rain Blood for the Masses
The Long Walk By Stephen King
Reviewed By B.L.Morgan
5 Stars
The Long Walk was a novel that I read as a part of a collection of four ealier books written by Stephen King and released as The Bachman Books. I hadn't read a Stephen King book for some years and actually forgot how good he really is.
This is the story of the ultimate marathon and what happens to the contestants on that marathon.
The rules are simple: You keep walking until you cannot go on. When you stop soldiers shoot you. The winner gets whatever his heart desires.
Sounds simple right? Well, in the hands of an author of the calibre of Stephen King he makes it into an epic of human endurance and shows just how far a man will go to to survive.
I highly reccomnd this book. It is STRONG! If you don't like gross scenes you should stay at least ten miles away from it. But King uses the greusomeness of some of the death scenes to illustrate just how high the stakes are in this contest to the death.
I absolutely loved this book. It was almost hynotic in its ability to keep me abosorbed in the characters struggle to survive. If you want to read a novel that is guaranteed to keep you glued to the pages this is the one to grab.
Long live The King!!!
Best Bachman "by a mile" I am currently reading Stephen King's memoir "On Writing". In it he describes "The Long Walk" as probably the best of his early books. He is absolutely correct.
This book gives just another example of what he is able to do with character development. He doesn't use them as simple plot tools, but creates actual people that we develop a relationship with while reading their story.
In this book the main characters are a group of young men who have entered a contest that sounds ridiculously heinous to us, but has become the norm to them. (the story is unofficially set in a future and place not too far from where we now live)
When I first heard the premise of this book I was immediately interested. The author did not fail to exceed the expectations of this "constant reader". Whether you are a Stephen King fan or not I would recommend this book to you. It's brief, to the point, and extremely good.
Good quick read that will stick to your Ribs This book is about a contest in an alternate world where young boys start walking once a year, and basically whomever is left standing at the end is the winner. This details one specific contestant as he is about to begin his trek along with the other boys. It is a great read, a very easy book to pick up and finish, and the whole concept of the thing will stick in your brain. If you like Mr. King's books than I would highly recommend this one.
Highly entertaining I think King's greatest gift as a writer is that he often comes across as a good buddy telling you a wild story. The Long Walk is a perfect example of this. He excels at the detail level of character carmaraderie which pulls you into the story regardless of where it is headed. Here, it seems pretty clear, but we still don't want to stop listening.
Stephen King, Master of Surprise Endings Having grown up without the allowance of Stephen King within my household, I have only recently discovered the sheer genius of his writing. This one, written as an alter ego by the name of Richard Bachman (in the edition I read, there is an intro by King explaining this), strikes me as brilliant. First, the way that King creates his character profiles ever so slowly, with foreshadowing of what is to come of each of them based on their personality but never revealing everything at once, is the perfect way to intrigue a reader and draw him or her into the story from the beginning. King himself admits to having a dark side that he often represses when writing because in real life, so many things do have happy endings, and he wants his work to reflect real life. In reading this novel, which goes on and on at such a pace that you can't stand the thought of putting it down, you can see that happy ending from the very beginning. The Long Walk can have only one winner, and since the story is told through the eyes of Ray, a single individual, you know who is going to win from the first, despite a couple of really good scares when you think you are wrong. But remember, this isn't a King novel, it's a Bachman novel, and Bachman throws in a strange and incomprehensible surprise at the end. Well written as a King novel with the twist of a more morbid alter ego, The Long Walk is gripping and delightfully fear inspiring, and by far my favorite King read yet.
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