The Long Walk, book review. (Stephen King)

Another first time read for me of an old Stephen King/Richard Bachman book, and like The Running Man and Rage - which I reviewed last year - I really quite liked it.

It's a simple affair really, a hundred boys/young men have signed up for, The Long Walk, in the knowledge that they will die if they are not the last one standing. There is little premise here, but the assumption I made was that something bad had happened to the world, not Hunger Games bad, but something bad all the same; bad enough that hundreds of young men would essentially sign their own death warrant for a prize – that prize being: all and everything you could ever want or wish for.

I wasn't sure how a long walk could fill nearly three hundred pages but as is usual with King, you're halfway in before you know it and by the time you're close to finishing, you're so desperate to know who will win, that you just can't stop turning the page.

The walk begins at 9 am one unassuming morning and Garraty - our main character - and those that flank him, soon fall into an uneasy rhythm - drop below four miles per hour and you get a warning, get three warnings and the forth is a bullet in your skull, and yes, they really do kill you, so when your number's up or 'you get your ticket' as they say in the book, there's one less competitor to worry about.

There's not a lot of chit chat to start with but after a few hours, after fifty miles, after a kiss by the roadside that earns Garraty a warning, the strengths and weaknesses of Garraty and those around him start to show through, and it is here, in the characters, that the book really shines. You've got the boy with the limp who's going to be the first out but last longer than most, the loudmouth that goes surprisingly quiet as the days and miles tick by, the silent creepy boy who secretly scares them all, and due to their inadequacies, their jibes and mocking of each other, and in some cases their plain loathing, the book ebbs along like real life.

They talk about home, school, the ones they love, be it a girlfriend or a parent, and as they get ever fewer, as the miles trip past, the crowds grow and gunshots ricochet off the surrounding hills, they increasingly talk of the prize: Any and everything that they could hope or wish for, but will any of them be alive to claim it?

This is a three and a half star book for me. I thought I would like it but it ended up being better than I had anticipated.
So, one more King book down, several dozen still to go.