The story starts when a hundred boys from different states of America joined a yearly "Long walk" contest. The participants need to walk without decreasing their speeds and without stopping until they reach the finish line. Each time they fail sustaining their walks is equivalent to a ticket, they can only get three tickets, the next one will be a gunshot in their heads.

What made me buy this book is because it is in my favorite genre, Dystopia. Maybe, I expect too much when I'm about to read this book.
Many reviews gave it a 4 and 5 stars ratings, which means, it is one of the best dystopian novel. And besides, I read somewhere that
this is where Suzzanne Collins got her idea of her novel, The Hunger Games(One of my favorite novel).

I am disappointed when I finished the book. I felt like I wasted too much time reading the book. Though the premise of the book is
good, but I think it is poorly written. I'm not sure if King rushed the novel or if he lacks in idea when he is writing the novel.
The sub plots are so hollow that it felt that it is not really needed in the story, that they are just a filler to reach King's
word quota.

The novel is just an OK for me, nothing special or spectacular that happened in the story. I will not recommend this novel to those who are looking for a "hardcore dystopian novel".

I love King, but this is the most disappointing novel I have EVER read. I kept waiting for the story to develop beyond the surface story of walking. Nope. I kept waiting for their world to be explained. Nope. I literally threw the book down when I was done. I should have spent the time reading the instruction manual for my DVD player. It would have been just as entertaining yet more useful.

The Long Walk is a book by an elusive author named Richard Bachman—whom no one has ever met—about a bunch of kids being slaughtered in a near-future (or alternate reality) dystopian America. Which, been there, done that, right? Can’t unknown authors write about something that wouldn’t be covered again decades later? The lack of foresight here is really disappointing.

There are differences, though, between The Hunger Games and this book, particularly in that the kids in The Long Walk are mowed down by military officials rather than by each other, and that participation in this deadly event is strictly voluntary (whereas in The Hunger Games, there is little “choice” in the matter). And while I don’t think it is a bad thing necessarily for some of these teenagers to get their just desserts—seriously, have you met a teenager?—the voluntary aspect of this event is something that I had trouble with. Because we’re not just talking a few hundred mentally disturbed kids who cannot comprehend the meaning of a 99% mortality rate. We’re talking tens of thousands of kids across the country who seem to want to be chosen for competition, and whose family and friends seem even to encourage their participation. I am not sure how dystopian this dystopia is, other than that it appears to include a military-run government, but it certainly doesn’t leave one with the impression that laying low and avoiding the event entirely should be all that difficult to do, so what’s with all these idiots wanting to get themselves killed?

But still, the book is pretty good overall. It draws interesting conclusions about survival and what drives us to surpass that which we believe to be the limits of our physical capabilities (mind over matter) and it also addresses a point that I have always been able to relate to particularly, which is that it doesn’t take much more than a simple conversation sometimes to connect with another person, and in the case of The Long Walk, that connection can come to mean the difference between life and death for its characters. At the end of it all, though, it is a book that was hard to put down, and it makes one wonder why the author—whoever he is—has not been more prolific and has never broken free from relative obscurity.

Stephen Kings Schreibstil ist unglaublich. Irgendwie ist in diesem Buch ja nichts geschehen , bis auf das ein paar Jungs ununterbrochen laufen und trotzdem hab ich sowohl gelacht, als auch geweint! King ist einfach gut darin, Charaktere zu erschaffen und sie dem Leser nahe zu bringen, selbst wenn man sie unsympathisch findet, fiebert man mit. Hut ab :)

The Long Walk is a re-read for me that I picked back up for Book #7 of the Stephen King Challenge. It is also one of the original stories that King wrote as Richard Bachman. I found it funny in the prologue section entitled The Importance of Being Bachman, King writes that he used his secret alias for when he felt that he had a really dark story that needed to come out. Let me get this straight. King has stories inside him that are too dark and horrible to put his name on them? Wow! This I've got to read again.

The story reads like a combination of the inspiration of the Hunger Games and Survivor meets the Bataan Death March and a parody of the draft for the Vietnam War. It is also the first novel that King ever wrote, predating Carrie by eight years.

Ray Garrity and 98 other late-teens entrants, in the Long Walk, begin the contest in the northern tip of Presque Isle, Maine. The purpose of the The Long Walk or why anyone would want to do it is not clearly explained. As the story unfolds, we learn that the Walkers have to maintain 4 mph, stay on the road, and cannot interfere with the other Walkers progress. If any of these rules are violated, the Walker gets a warning. After 3 warnings, they are shot and killed by one of the soldiers that are shadowing them on the side of the road in a half-track. As the hours and miles pass into days and nights of hundreds of miles, we learn about the Walkers and their stories. Meanwhile, Walkers are dropping as the miles on the road unwind. How far can they push their bodies through fatigue, weather, injury, and the unraveling of the mind?

While it may not sound like much of a premise, King tells an absolutely terrific tale. The characters are fantastically described and fleshed out. We feel their pain, their anxiety, their fears. The dread and fatigue ratchet up to dizzying levels and I feel that the ending is near perfect, as is the story. Highly recommended.

5 Blistered and Swollen Feet out of 5


You can also follow my reviews at the following links:

https://kenmckinley.wordpress.com

http://intothemacabre.booklikes.com

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/A2J1...

Ansié devorar este libro desde que leí su sinopsis. Una suerte de futuro distopico donde el gobierno realiza una competición anual, una caminata, a la que los jóvenes se postulan de forma voluntaria por la promesa de fama y fortuna para quien salga vencedor. ¿Qué hay que hacer? Resistir. ¿Cuánto? Más que los otros 99 caminantes. ¿Las reglas? Nunca reducir la velocidad a menos de 6,5 km/h y nunca detenerse. ¿Y si no se puede? Entonces un obediente soldado te atraviesa el cráneo de un balazo. 100 jóvenes inician la marcha. 99 quedan en el camino. 1 lo obtiene todo.

Stephen King, con la habilidosa y retorcida prosa a la que nos tiene acostumbrados, nos hace parte del camino, nos incita a acompañar a estos jóvenes mientras establecen alianzas y enemistades, mientras se cuestionan su ambición, su anhelo de probarse a sí mismos, sus razones para someterse a una competencia tan macabra. A medida que avanzan las horas, los kilómetros y gana terreno el cansancio físico pero también emocional, vamos desnudando las intenciones, anhelos y conflictos del protagonista y sus contendientes en una aventura que inquieta, perturba, conmueve y jamás, realmente jamás, te deja indiferente.

Pero King no se limita a explorar el ansia de fortuna o ese voluntario coqueteo con la muerte porque la caminata no es un suceso socialmente despreciado, no, la larga marcha es un auténtico espectáculo que lleva a la gente a aglomerarse a los costados de las carreteras para verlos, vitorearlos y apostar a favor o en contra de ellos. King alza una crítica voraz y despiadada al morboso deleite colectivo por la miseria ajena, por la deshumanización que rige en los realitys que consumimos y cómo los consumimos.

Un libro que vale mucho la pena.

Full review:

5 Stars

Stephen King does it again! The Long Walk represents a true mastery in suspense storytelling, that will keep you engaged in a horrifying tale of survival!

It’s quite incredible how the mind of a brilliant author like Stephen King works. This guy has given us a plethora of amazing works, including killer clows (IT), post-apocalyptic fight for survival (The Stand), the horrifying minds of killers and their obsessions (The Shining, Mercedes Trilogy) and so on.

What most of those classic novels have in common is a wide range of amazing characters and a vast world to build on. I mean, SK’s imagination is built on steroids, and the results are staggering. Take for instance, ‘The Stand’, where a man-made weaponized virus wipes 98% of the world and the result is an apocalyptic world where millions of dead litter the streets, and survivors struggle to rebuild and fight an evil force.

What would happen if King would not be allowed to create any world building in his story?? This is exactly what he accomplishes in The Long Walk .


Stephen King does something extraordinary with the The Long Walk! There are only 2 elements at play here: the road and the walkers! The premise of the novel revolves around a yearly contest that involves 100 boys (from 12 to 17 years) who have one simple goal:


WALK OR DIE!





If you break the rules, you get three warnings. If you exceed your limit, what happens is absolutely terrifying, and sets in motion recurring theme of the book. Essentially, SK asks the reader the question: To what extent would a human go to ensure his own survival? Stephen King pulls all his punches and offers a guttural experience of survival at all costs.

This book is downright terrifying! Don’t get me wrong, the horror doesn’t come from killer clowns, zombies or psychopath killers! It comes from the unrelenting human spirit in its quest for survival. In the book we follow a 16 year old teenager named ‘Garraty’ who leaves his mother and girlfriend to face the long ‘abysmal’ walk. In reality, to be a part of the ‘walk’, there’s a stringent battery of psychological and physical tests, and only 1% of test takers get invited in. The ‘grand prize’, is very vague, but SK leads readers to believe the sole winner can have ‘any wish he wants’.

SK writing is fascinating here. The dialogue he creates between contestants is filled with comedy, tragedy and at times pure anger. Many different types of relationships between contestants are fostered. SK recreates the typical high-school drama that most of us have encountered. Different ‘cliques’ are established during the ‘walk’, and as many friendships as rivalries are formed. Ultimatelly, it is the transformation in all of the contestants during the walk, that is most felt by the reader.

The Long Walk represents a true embodiement of human survival in a horrifying contenst of life and death. SK gives us a psychological masterpiece, that is unique from many of his works, and should be a delight to read to most readers.

5 Stars

I kind of blame Stephen King for reality television.

That’s not fair because he certainly wasn't the first person to do stories about murderous games done as entertainment, and it’s not like he produced Survivor or Big Brother. However, two of the books he did under the Richard Bachman pen name before being outed are about death contests done to distract the masses in dystopian societies. So whenever I see an ad for those kinds of shows I can’t help but think that the people who make that trash read those books but saw them as great TV concepts rather than horrifying visions of the future.

The scenario here is that 100 teenage boys volunteer to be part of an annual event called The Long Walk. The rules are simple. You start walking and keep up a speed of 4 miles per hour. If you fall below that pace you get a few warnings. If you don’t get back up to speed immediately, you get shot. Easier than checkers, right? Here’s the real rub: You absolutely cannot stop. All 100 boys walk until 99 of them are killed. Last one still teetering around on whatever is left of their feet then wins the ultimate prize.

On the surface you could say that this concept that could seem silly or absurd. Why would anyone volunteer for this? Answering that question turns out to be one of the best parts of the book as King moves the walkers through stages while things get progressively worse for them on the road. What King tapped into here is that realization that deep down we all think we’re special, that things will always work out for us, and this is especially true when we’re teens with no real ideas about consequences and our own mortality.

While the story focuses on one character it really becomes about all of the walkers, and we get to know them through their conversations and how they deal with the death that is literally nipping at their heels. Eventually the grim reality of their situation sets in, and we also view how the boys react to realizing the true horror they signed up for. We also learn a bit about the world they live in, and it’s an interesting minor aspect established in a few stray bits that this is essentially some kind of alternate history where World War II played out somewhat differently.

I’d read this several times back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but hadn’t picked it up in the 21st century so it felt like there’s a dated element to the way that Long Walk functions. The boys essentially just show up in whatever clothes they have and they start walking with little fanfare. It almost seems like a contest at a county fair instead of something that captures the nation’s attention. There’s some explanation given about how they don’t want crowds or TV cameras around as distractions at the start until the walkers get settled into the routine.

However, that doesn’t seem to fit with the idea that the event is being orchestrated as a distraction and weird kind of motivational tool. If the story were told now there would be a lot more about the media coverage, and the whole thing would probably have a corporate sponsor. Plus, the walkers would have matching shoes and uniforms designed to look cool and keep them walking longer. They’d also probably have a more sophisticated method than soldiers with rifles and stopwatches dispatching the lollygaggers, too. This doesn’t hurt the story at all, though. Instead it gives the whole thing a kind of dated charm like watching a movie from the ‘70s where everyone is smoking and people have to wait by the phone.

One more note about Stephen King: The man really needs to have a spoiler warning branded on his forehead. I had to stop following him on Twitter after he spoiled major events on both Game of Thrones and Stranger Things. My friend Trudi had part of The Killer Inside Me ruined for her by King's introduction in which he described several key twists. I was listening to an audible version of this that had an intro from him talking about why he did the whole Richard Bachman thing. In it, he casually gives away the end of The Running Man novel. Fortunately for me I'd already read that one, but Uncle Stevie clearly just doesn't get the concept and why it pisses people off.

Overall, The Long Walk held up to my memories of it as one of the better King books as well as having a chilling idea at the heart of it. Sure, some might say that the idea of contest that dehumanizes people for entertainment to make things easier for a fascist ruler is far-fetched. On the other hand, this TV show will be premiering a few days after a certain orange pile of human shaped garbage takes power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTNZr...

It’s a Richard Bachman world, people. Get ready to walk. Or maybe run.

n  A dystopian world.
100 boys and A Long Walk.
1 simple rule : Keep walking.
If you stop, you'll be shot.
If you slow down, you'll be shot.
There's no finish line.
The Walk continues until 99 drop dead,
The last person standing walking is the winner.n


And we’re walking and walking… and walking… and walking...

The winner is supposed to get anything they want — money for the rest of their lives, their families taken care of. The losers get nothing.
It’s not until you actually see one of the Walkers receive a ticket that you realize this is a life or death situation — the ticket is being shot to death where you stand by soldiers who follow along in vehicles, ensuring the rules are kept. Each of the Walkers knows the risks they’re taking, albeit probably a bit more naively than they themselves think they do. The walk is lined with spectators through the small towns in Maine, lined up to cheer on their favorite, to watch, but I think mostly, a large number of the crowd want to see someone get their ticket, that bloody and gory spectacle.

Ray Garraty is our eyes and ears (and thoughts and memories) through the novel. At the beginning of the walk, groups form, friendships begin to develop, and we meet a number of the Walkers through him. Some are friends, some become foes, and some are in different. With one hundred people in the Walk, it’s difficult to keep track of everyone and people come and people go.

This is one of those novels where Stephen shows the strength of his writing — the fact that he gets into his character’s heads and stays there throughout the entire novel. This is Stephen balls-to-the-wall with his characters, where we are Ray Garraty throughout the book, where it feels that we, too, are on the Walk with him, watching him watch his friends die, to encourage those who he can, and ultimately realizing that in order to win, everyone else has to die.

The ease of Stephen’s prose doesn’t make this an easy book to read either. We learn about each person, we care about each person in Garraty’s circle, and we care about those outside the circle as well as Garraty expands his knowledge of others. I was enthralled with each person, fascinated as each person received their tickets, cheered on and perhaps slightly confused at the end.

Make no mistake: this is not a happy book, by any means. I have parts that I favored above the others, but to tell you about them will ruin the book for you.All I can say is that this time I loved them all and the end left me heartbroken. The end couldn't have been any better. It shook me and it still lingers in my ming fresh.

It does get a bit draggy at times which you could expect from such a premise and so I am taking away a star. Other than that, it's a brilliant read. Strong characterization and mesmerizing storytelling will make this book tug at your heartstrings and never forget it!!

Updated Review - Re-read May 2019

Have you ever been watching a movie in the middle of summer that takes place in the middle of a very cold winter? Even though it is 90 degrees outside you start to feel like you need to bundle up under a blanket. That happened to me with the movie The Day After Tomorrow. I had a similar response to The Long Walk. As I read, I could feel the exhaustion and I was waiting for my legs to cramp. When you can truly feel a book deep in your muscles and bones, you know it is a good one!

My audio re-read of The Long Walk in May of 2019 marks the 3rd or 4th time I have read it. It has always been one of my favorite dystopian novels and I have enjoyed it every single time. Long before the dystopian government in America (Panem) made Katniss battle it out in the Hunger Games, Ray Garraty was dragging his feet across the hot macadam of the backroads and turnpikes of Maine. All for what you ask? The honor of participating the the oppressive government's premier event, the entertainment of the people, and the always elusive fulfilment of all your heart's desires.

A few people that I recommended this to before didn't care for it, but it is definitely one of my top five favorite of King's - and my favorite of his Bachman books. Such great storytelling, character building, suspense, and dark narrative. I have just always been so awed by this book and how much it has pulled me in over and over again and won't let go!

Read this! But, you may want to avoid it if you are getting ready for a marathon or a big hike!

ORIGINAL REVIEW

This is one of my favorite King books; Suspenseful, unique, and all too possible. It is one of the few books that I have read more than once. Highly recommended for someone looking for a good place to start with King.

4.5

The first published novel by Stephen King was Carrie in 1974, but the first he wrote was The Long Walk, begun his freshman year at the University of Maine in 1966 and sneaked onto the mass paperback market in 1979 under the pseudonym of "Richard Bachman." Outed at the apex of his fame, King had this novella and three others he'd released under his alias republished in 1985 as The Bachman Books. Like much of King's early work, The Long Walk lacks finishing, as if the story was filed by a reporter racing against a deadline, but is compulsively readable and appropriately nihilistic for a young man writing as the U.S. war machine began chewing up and spitting out boys in Southeast Asia.

Set in an unspecified future, the story introduces 16-year-old Ray Garraty, a local boy from Pownal whose mother drops him off at a guarded parking lot near the Maine/Canada border in the early morning hours of May 1. Garraty joins ninety-nine other boys assembling to participate in an annual event known as the Walk. He quickly befriends a walker named Peter McVries, who later tells Garraty that he joined the contest in a post-breakup funk. Their group expands to include Art Baker, a Louisiana boy from a family of morticians and Hank Olson, who's cocky and full of information about the Walk.

The object of the Walk is to maintain a pace of 4 miles an hour. Walkers who fall under that speed or stop walking for more than 30 seconds are given a verbal warning, which they can repeal by walking one hour without another warning. Three warnings results in "buying a ticket." As the event gets under way, it becomes clear to the reader that "buying a ticket" means death by hail of gunfire from the soldiers who monitor the event from aboard halftracks, and a revered national figure known as The Major who often joins the event to supervise. The Walk continues until there is only one walker alive. The reward is The Prize, anything that walker wants for the rest of his life.

"I have no idea what I'll want if I do win this," McVries said. "There's nothing I really need. I mean, I don't have a sick old mother sitting at home or a father on a kidney machine, or anything. I don't even have a little brother dying gamely of leukemia." He laughed and unstrapped his canteen.

"You've got a point there," Garraty agreed.

"You mean I don't have a point there. The whole thing is pointless."

"You don't really mean that," Garraty said confidently. "If you had to do it all over again--"

"Yeah, yeah, I'd still do it, but--"

"Hey!" The boy ahead of them, Pearson, pointed. "Sidewalks!"

They were finally coming into the town proper. Handsome houses set back from the road looked down at them from the vantage of ascending green lawns. The lawns were crowded with people, waving and cheering. It seemed to Garraty that almost all of them were sitting down. Sitting on the ground, on lawn chairs like the old men back at the gas station, sitting on picnic tables. Even sitting on swings and porch gliders. He felt a touch of jealous anger.

Go ahead and wave your asses off. I'll be damned if I'll wave back anymore. Hint 13. Conserve energy whenever possible.

But finally he decided he was being foolish. People might decide he was getting snotty. He was, after all, "Maine's Own." He decided he would wave to all the people with GARRATY signs. And to all the pretty girls.

Other contestants slip in and out of Garraty's circle. Stebbins is a skinny boy wearing a bright green sweater and purple pants who keeps to himself but seems to have the most information on how to survive the Walk. Barkovitch is a loudmouth ostracized by the others after he instigates a fight with another walker that results in that boy buying a ticket. Scramm is much more likable despite being the Vegas favorite to win the Walk due to his athletic stamina but draws the bemusement of his peers when he reveals that he has a young wife at home. Spectators come from all over the nation to watch from the roadside.

Garraty is determined to stay in the walk to reach his hometown, where his girlfriend Jan and his mother will be waiting to cheer him on. Thirsty walkers can ask the soldiers for a fresh canteen of water, but once they eat the lunches they started with and finish the concentrates they're provided, go without food. Only four boys are shot in the first eight and a half hours and as darkness falls, most of the contestants figure out how to half-walk and half-doze. One of the boys develops an unfortunate case of diarrhea. A steep grade in the road 12 hours into the Walk earns three boys a ticket. Soles of shoes come off. Then walkers start to lose their minds.

"I can't walk much further," Olson croaked. His face was a white blur in the darkness. No one answered him.

The darkness. Goddam the darkness. It seemed to Garraty they had been buried alive in it. Immured in it. Dawn was a century away. Many of them would never see the dawn. Or the sun. They were buried six feet deep in the darkness. All they needed was the monotonous chanting of the priest, his voice muffled but not entirely obscured by the new-packed darkness, above which the mourners stood. The mourners were not even aware that they were here, they werealive, they were screaming, and scratching and clawing at the coffin-lid darkness, the air was flaking and rusting away, the air was turning into poison gas, hope fading until hope itself was a darkness, and above all of it the nodding, chapel-bell voice of the priest and the impatient, shuffling feet of mourners anxious to be off into the warm May sunshine. Then, overmastering that, the sighing, shuffling chorus of the bugs and beetles, squirming their way through the earth, come for the feast.

I could go crazy, Garraty thought. I could go right the fuck off my rocker.

My first reaction, as I found myself up late totally absorbed in the storytelling, is that The Long Walk is a tremendous work of white-knuckled suspense. There's not a boring page in it. King has a natural ability to make his characters instantly relatable as human beings. Their thoughts and fears are a real boy's thoughts and fears, not characters acting out a plot. He also has a gift for throwing his reader into the cogs of whatever nightmare he's constructed, one from which there's no escape. The world is reduced to very stark terms. Stop walking, you die. Leave the road, you die.

There were no warnings. Percy had forfeited his right to them when his right foot passed over the verge of the shoulder. Percy had left the road, and the soldiers had known all along. Old Percy What's-His-Name hadn't been fooling anybody. There was one sharp, clean report, and Garraty jerked his eyes from Percy to the soldier standing on the back deck of the halftrack. The soldier was a sculpture in clean, angular lines, the rifle nestled into the hollow of his shoulder, his head half-cocked along the barrel.

Then his head swiveled back to Percy again. Percy was a real show, wasn't he? Percy was standing with both his feet on the weedy border of the pine forest now. He was as frozen and has sculpted as the man who had shot him. The two of them together would have been a subject for Michaelangelo, Garraty thought. Percy stood utterly still under a blue springtime sky. One hand was pressed to his chest, like a poet about to speak. His eyes were wide, and somehow ecstatic.

A bright seepage of blood ran through his fingers, shining in the sunlight. Old Percy What's-Your-Name. Hey Percy, your mother's calling. Hey Percy, does your mother know you're out? Hey Percy, what kind of silly sissy name is that, Percy. Percy, aren't you cute? Percy transformed into a bright, sunlit Adonis counterpointed by the savage, duncolored huntsman. And one, two, three coin-shaped splatters of blood fell on Percy's travel-dusty black shoes, and all of it happened in a space of only three seconds. Garraty did not even take two full steps and he was not warned, and oh Percy, what is your mother going to say? Do you, tell me, do you really have the nerve to die?

I saw this story as a parable for Vietnam through and through, with the sheer pointlessness of what the boys had signed up for not dawning on them until it was too late. There's a recurrent desire in many of the young men to take on the world, to sign up and join a cause bigger than themselves or the towns they come from. The bonds they form in the foxhole felt like a war story. My criticism of The Long Walk is that there's too much talking to make this a believable war story, given the grueling nature of the walk once it gets going. I don't know if an internalized version of this story would've been any better, though, considering how gripping the final product turned out.

Length: 84,610 words