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...
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Browse our Bookshelf Favorites store for big savings on popular fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and more. |
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
Stephen King (a.k.a. Richard Bachman) introduces and develops the characters of many of the boys in the event. As a reader, you get to learn about Garraty, Pete McVries, Hank Olson, Art Baker, Barkovitch, Stebbins, and others, who each have their own personality quirks and ways of looking at life. Each boy has entered the Long Walk for a different reason and I found their discussions about life and death to be quite interesting (a social statement by King, perhaps?). The reader is led along the course and each significant event is mentioned along the way, with some unexpected occurrences that may surprise you.
As the challenge narrows down from the original 100 competitors to less than 50, then to just a handful of boys remaining, the scenario becomes rather intense. Who will die next? How will he die? And most importantly, who will be left at the end to claim the Prize? Although the suspense builds slowly, it tends to add to the dramatic effect of the final moments and keep the reader wanting to read more to find out what happens (I was so eager to find out that I read the last half of the book in one sitting).
Although the story is interesting and held my attention, there are a couple of criticisms that knocked it down from 5 to 4 stars. First, the ending was too predictable. I had a feeling from the start of what would happen and being verified at the end tended to downplay the whole story. Second, some of the characters were killed off rather abruptly without much detail or explanation. I guess it just depends on what you are expecting and how you interpret the story.
Overall, I have to say that I enjoyed reading the Long Walk. It tests the limits of human endurance in a unique way and makes the reader think about life and death in a new light (or at least I did). Unlike many of King's other novels, the Long Walk is more of dramatic suspense story rather than a horror story, which is what I have noticed about his writing as Richard Bachman. It is a good read, however, and I recommend it to anyone, whether you are a fan of Stephen King or not.
The story is about an endurathon contest, where 100 boys just start walking, and if any competitor falls under 4 miles an hour, he is issued a warning. However, if a competitor slows down to under 4 miles after receiving 3 warnings...he is shot dead.
King introduces many unique characters to us, and we begin to almost feel their personalities, and the annoying little habits that they have. King does a masterful job of removing some of the characters from the story with not much detail, really placing an emphasis on the mental drain that is occuring with the competitors in The Long Walk, they are so tired they dont even notice how or when some of their friends are being killed.
The final surge towards the end of the walk is written quite ingeniously, and is even quite surprising.
Overall, I would highly recommend this short story. ALthough the book may be about an endurathon, it is certainly not an endurathon of a read, the pages will just fly by.