#30 – The Long Walk

Plot

On the first day of May, 100 teenage boys meet for an event known throughout the country as The Long Walk. If you break the rules, you get three warnings. If you exceed your limit, what happens is terrifying.

Review

We talked earlier about how The Running Man could easily have been made into an episode of Black Mirror.  King slows it down with The Long Walk, but the idea remains the same – this novel would have made for an excellent Black Mirror episode.  

There is nothing complicated about this premise.  100 boys start walking – if they stop, they die.  Last man standing wins.  The prize?  Anything they want.  A bountiful of riches, or maybe a lifetime of horrors.  

The Long Walk cracks the top-half of this list because of that simple – and yet incredibly powerful – premise.  King also executes with excellent character development on an extremely high level.  The Long Walk isn’t tremendously suspenseful, but King will enlist your empathy – and disdain – for those that are competing.  

Typically, I let endings resonate before reading reviews online, but I immediately looked for explanations of the final sequences because I was not 100% sure how to interpret the last few pages.  

Details

Pages: 370

Dates Read: June – July 2019

Quote: “Any game looks straight if everyone is being cheated at once.”

Best Part: Charley horses are horrible – but this takes it to another level.

Hint for #29: King had to change the year in this novel from 2020 to 2019 due to COVID-19.

 

Until next time, peace be the journey.