The Long Walk

One of the best books i've ever read. An instant new favourite and a book i know i'll read over and over again as i age.

If you like The Hunger Games then you'll looove this. So many similarities but also so uniqually different.

You'll go crazy reading this, it feels like your walking until you collapse and die, you get so tired reading this and you can feel every ache and pain the characters are feeling.

It's a short book but it's also a Stephen King book so the characters are so well written and you feel like you've known them for your whole life. Some of these characters will stick with me for ages, especially McVries. He is one of Kings best characters.

This was a really interesting book. The development of the characters (especially the main character) is awesome. How fast the mindset can change from happy and excited to pure horror is really relatable. That's what makes this book so scary. You can almost feel the physical pain that they are going through.

It's starts pretty slow and gets a bit dull in the middle though.

I don't know how to rate this. Super ambiguous ending (which made me mad) not a lot of backstory and world building (which I also don't like) but it's still so....good. I think Stephen King has finally won me over because this is a book I will be thinking about for a while. This has a lot of symbolism and could be an allegory for the futility of life? I'm not quite sure but nevertheless it was well done and I understand the need for all the ambiguities even if I don't like it.

Not my favorite. Actually, the concept of the long walk is really interesting. The idea that these teenage boys have to walk each year in this competition. Every day that passes the tension and terror intensifies. But... this concept was a bit too underdeveloped for my taste. So many questions left unanswered.
Also, while all in all liking the writing style, I found the book very tedious and boring especially in the middle. I have to be honest, usually I like the characters most in King novels but these kids were so uninteresting I wasn't sure about who he is talking half the time. Also, what about these weird sexual conversation topics all the time. LOL
And as usual for king novels the ending was a bit unsatisfying for me.

3.5 stars
Okay, I skipped a lot of pages in this book because the story was dragging on but I still thought that everything was perfect, just the way it should be. And it is my fault for skipping pages
This book is SO SO deep. I loveddddd ittttt....
To me the Long Walk was a metaphor for life, except in real life, you always have to keep on walking and if you take a rest, and sit down, you don't get three warnings. In some twisted way, this book is actually merciful because of the way the soldiers gave three warnings.
The soldiers' rifles were the cold grip of death that doesn't distinguish between rich or poor, intelligent or stupid.
Gosh, I loved this book!!! :D
the feelings the author portrayed in the book were so vivid and so heart-wrenching. How everyone slowly started going insane, and how in order to survive and live rich and well, you have to let go of your own humanity.
LOVED IT

This book, which I read as part of The Grand Stephen King Experiment at TannerWillbanks.com, was brutal. Perhaps it is because he was writing as Richard Bachman or perhaps it was just because he was feeling extremely dark that year but whatever it was Stephen King wrote a bleak, depressing little novel here. While I ultimately enjoyed the book, it was rough to slog through it.

The Long Walk by Stephen King

Pros: creepy premise, really get to know the characters, thought provoking

Cons: don't learn much about the world or why the walk is put on, crass discourse

Every year 100 teen boys join the Long Walk. They walk at 4 miles per hour, day and night, until they can't go any further and are given their ticket. The prize for the winner is great. But it's a long, long road.

This is a character driven dystopian novel that focuses on a small group of walkers in the current year's Long Walk. The characters become very real, three dimentional people. Which makes reading the book difficult, as you're slowly watching them die.

As the walk progresses and the characters discuss why they've joined it and who will survive, you're left questioning many things as the reader - are you the same as the crowd that lines the road, hoping to see blood? Or are you one of the boys, learning that you don't want to die because death is suddenly so close? Unlike the crowd you see the characters as human. You feel their pain. As someone who walked the last 100+ km of the Santiago de Compostella pilgrimmage in 5 days, I really did feel their pain. But even as you feel their pain and sympathise with their situation, you're still a spectator, safe in the knowledge that you can stop walking, sit down, enjoy today with the knowledge that tomorrow is coming.

The book also makes you think about peer pressure, and how much easier it is to go with the status quo than to fight it, even when you life is on the line.

I was disappointed that you don't learn much about the society that allows - nay encourages - the Long Walk year after year. Clues in the text indicate that America has become in some ways a police state, but the extent of it is hidden from the reader. Similarly, the early text leads you to believe that the boys volunteer for the walk, which isn't quite the case.

I wasn't a fan of some of the boys' discussion, but I accept it as realistic. There's some crass humour as well as discussions of bodily functions, etc.

If you liked the Hunger Games or Battle Royale and want a less violent, more introspective version of the same ideas, then check this out.

The premise of this book was so intriguing. It reminded me a little of the Hunger Games in that young people are forced to participate in an activity to the death as a form of entertainment for society. The story mainly focuses on the inner lives and relationships that develop between these young men as they walk. I found it to be compelling and depressing. The ending felt a little flat. 3.5 star read for me.

FYI this has all the same problems as all the other King books I've read: racism, misogyny, toxic masculinity, hyper sexualization and the infamous non-ending.

But if you are able to work through that you will find a book that really explores the experience of an American teen boy against a gripping dystopian backdrop.

Wasn't expecting one of my favorite reads of the year to be a book with no female characters but here we are! My first King book ever and I loved it. It's a simple story with intriguing character dynamics, hints of world building, and enough nuance that our English high school class could add it to its curriculum.

Holy shit, how can anyone give this more than 2/5 is beyond me. I finished it but just barely. To call it a novel is overstatement since it has no structure. People walk, people die and it doesn't end until the last man is left. He wrote this before anything else but Rage (as far as published novels go) but Rage was so much better. Characters in this one aren't interesting. Motivations are laughable. The dialogues could've been done so much better if he reworked it properly before publishing. It was published after a few of his big hits.

By far the worst and most boring King novel. And he himself says Roadwork is the worst in The Bauchman Books anthology... We shall see.

The ending was such a let down. I just did not get it. The “winner” was so mentally broken and hallucinating at the end that he saw a “black figure” and ran. The whole way I was hoping something would happen to “stop” the long walk or break the status quo for the better, but it stopped any of that potentially interesting angles. I can see why King did not want his name on this.

This is the only Bachman book that I've read. I remember just thinking that this is Stephen King, but on a much more darker (if possible) and harsher level. The story was really intriguing and really kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end. My only negative I have for it is that it really depressed me haha. It was awful reading this story and getting to know these characters and knowing that they were all going to be dead by the end of it..save one. Not sure if ill venture into anymore of the Bachman books. Wonderful writing, just really dark for me.

I had been curious to read the Long Walk after my husband had said that after reading it, that it is one book he thinks about a lot. I wasn't the least bit disappointed in this book.

In a futuristic world, boys around America sign up for the annual “long walk” where their task is to keep walking towards an unknown finish line until there is one lone walker. Those who drop out of the walk meet with fatal consequences.

In reading this story, I kept thinking about what kind of society had this country become to allow a competition like this to occur. Stephen King can certainly provoke thought and emotion through his prose. This story was disturbing, and like my husband, this is not a story I will soon forget.