I just finished reading Richard Bachman's The Long Walk. It is actually by Stephen King because Richard Bachman is an alias he used. I read about the book on Wiki about a year-ish ago and it caught my interest because of the general idea.
One hundred boys walk to their death, the last one standing wins. They get ticketed for a list of offenses and once you get 3 tickets, you're a target to be killed by the soldiers. If you manage to walk 3 hours, you lose those tickets. If you fall under the minimum speed or do any of the other offenses, you get shot.
Yes. It sounds ... horrible. I started reading it last night and 206 pages later, I finished reading the last sentence and whispered to myself one word.
Wow.
Some might think its not that interesting because nearly the whole damn book is about those boys walking, and walking. But Stephen King managed to make it so interesting I read about half of the book last night.
I knew how it was going to end, thanks to Wikipedia but it still hit me hard. The end came so abruptly. No explanation. Definitely no happily ever after. I'm awed. I feel like this book has just got itself into that list of Best Books Ever in my head.
If there's a book I wished I've written, apart from the HP series, is this book.
Now, I'm going to find more Richard Bachman's books to read.
2 comments:
This sounds to me like a less brutal version of Battle Royale. I might have to read it actually.
You have to. But if you don't like it, well, don't look for me.
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