Stephen King: The Long Walk

Hi everyone

The Long Walk is a Stephen King novel written under his pseudonym of Richard Bachman.
My copy has 370 pages and I got it from Bol.
You can find all my Stephen King reviews here.

 “Every year, on the first day of May, one hundred teenage boys meet for an event known throughout the country as "The Long Walk." Among this year's chosen crop is sixteen-year-old Ray Garraty. He knows the rules: that warnings are issued if you fall under speed, stumble, sit down. That after three warnings... you get your ticket. And what happens then serves as a chilling reminder that there can be only one winner in the Walk - the one that survives...”

I kept this book for one of those moments I needed something I knew I would love. There are quite a few of these types of books on my TBR.
After disliking Jonas Jonasson’s The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden I needed that assurance of something good.

The Long Walk is very well written. It is raw, dark, creepy, sometimes thoughtprovoking, disturbing and really bleak. The book is solely about The Walk. There’s no world-building, no background. The Walk is all there is and it is good that way because to them, it’s all there is.
The characters are interesting and very diverse. I could see them all before me. They change during the walk. Some become philosophical or spiritual, others simply go mad. They weren’t likeable but I still cared for some of them. Their intereactions especially were complex and interesting.
From the very beginning you’re pretty sure how it’s going to end and that’s not a bad thing. What got to me was the unexpectedness and the not-knowing of who was next and why.

What disturbs me most is the fact that these boys choose to do this. It’s their own choice even though they know 99 out of 100 boys will die. You can’t blame anyone else for this because they did it to themselves.

I loved the book.

5 STARS

Happy reading!
Helena

Lazy Sunday.