Rating: 
Summary: No walk in the Park
Review: I began reading The Long Walk understanding the plot from friends recommending it. After reading a hundred pages I wondered if I could finish it. Stephen King writes so vividly you feel as if you were a contestant. Your feet hurt and you become tired and hoping most not to get a ticket. Once kids begin getting thier tickets I was horrified. Then King allows you to become acquanited with the lead characters and you cheer "Maines Own". Every step you are with them. I have read almost all of Stephen Kings works and I loved this one. It is on my top ten list. Another excellent book by the king of horror.
Rating: 
Summary: CreepY!
Review: This was a very strange book. It took our reality and made a chilling twist to it where there is a contest every year and a hundred or so young guys walk continuously until they can't any longer. When they can't they're killed. At times the book seemed to be a bit slow and at times it seemed to jump ahead too quickly. I found the ending to be a little to quick and unlcear, but just the idea behind the book, and how the characters excepted this as normal and fun is all-out creepy.
Rating:
Summary: The word horror has never been used more appropriately!
Review: The Long Walk is the only book I've read that actually left me physically tired after reading it. To describe this book as scary would be misleading (and an understatement). Horrifyingly intense is the only way to sum it up. There is nothing creepy or supernatural about this story. It is like nothing that has ever been written.What makes this story so intense is the feeling that it could really happen in the near future. Stephen King is a genius when it comes to pulling you right into his nightmares. The story starts out very subtly and then you quickly learn what the contest "The Long Walk" is all about (and it aint no benefit marathon). What is truly amazing about this story is that it was written twenty years before the explosion of reality T.V. The story seems even more plausible when read today. I have never been more engrossed in a story than this one. I really started to feel the fatigue and constant dread that these boys must have felt. This book is for anyone who loves to enter a different world and be terrified. Whatever kind of sick person would like that is beyond me, but you know who you are. Read this book you will love it. Oh, by the way, keep in mind that a happy ending is never guaranteed in King's early novels.
Rating:
Summary: WOW
Review: That's all I can -- WOW. I've read everything by Stephen King, and this is one of only two stories that has ever given me nightmares. It's awesome -- just sit there and think for a minute about being in those boys' shoes. Can you even imagine? This is such an original tale, the perfect example of why I started to read the Master of Horror to begin with -- alas, I wish he still wrote stories like this.
Rating:
Summary: Depressing but Very Good
Review: Stephen King wrote The Long Walk under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. As Stephen King has said, Richard Bachman is Stephen King on a rainy day. While most Stephen King books have happy themes intertwined with terror (his horror books) or other terrible circumstances (e.g., wrongful imprisonment as in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption), Richard Bachman books are depressing all the way through. In this book set in an alternate present, a group of one hundred teenage boys, including the hero, Ray Garraty, start out on a "long walk," in which the winner gets money and a separate prize and all the rest of the walkers get a "ticket." The ticket, as many reviews have explained, and as you learn about 10 pages into the book (so it's not a spoiler) is a euphemism for a bullet or two in the brain. The kids all have to walk at 4 miles per hour. If a kid ducks below that pace, he gets a warning. If he gets three warnings he gets shot. However, if he can keep walking for an hour after he gets a warning, the warning is revoked. As you can imagine, this book is really a 350 page exploration of pain, suicidal thoughts and how strong the will to live really is. Since very few of us, outside of holocaust or Jim Jones survivors have experienced such a thing, it is a triumph of King's great writing that this all seems very real. The book is very much centered on the long walk, the pain and the anguish. Much of the book is about the transformation of good, bad, cynical, innocent, smart and dumb people under these extreme circumstances. Nevertheless Garraty and many of the other walkers do talk about their lives before the walk with each other, and you get a glimpse of what life is like under this totalitarian government. You also get two hints of why America has become such a horrible place that this is a prime sort of entertainment for America. (perhaps there are more hints, I only caught two). These hints were fascinating. The focus does remain on the long walk itself though, which distinguishes it from Running Man, the most similar King book (also "written" by Richard Bachman), which also is a book about a horrible life-and-death contest in America for sport in a country that has taken a wrong turn somewhere. In Running Man, you get much more of a flavor of the surrounding world. However, The Long Walk is just as interesting. Only one flaw kept it from being a five star book (and it is a problem with many King books). I was disappointed by the ending (which I will not spoil). I think the ending is supposed to be a bit of a surprise. However, rather than a surprise, it was something you would guess as a possible ending early on but hope it turned out differently. Nevertheless, I strongly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: ticket to hell
Review: Okay read, it could have been about one hundred pages shorter if King had left out the zillions of times the Lord's name was taken in vain. At least he didn't insert his proabortion leftwing politics like he did in his book. Insomnia.
Rating:
Summary: Creepy, but very entertaining
Review: I enjoy reading a book where I can put myself in the shoes of the main character. Stephen King allowed me to do this in The Long Walk. Garraty and ninety-nine other 18-20 year olds had won a chance to compete in the long walk, a futuristic contest that allows one winner, the one who finishes by walking the furthest, the chance to win a million dollar cash prize and anything else he wants (i.e. one wish, basically). People bet on the walkers, much like they would bet on a horse race, or basketball game, so it's basically as big as the Super Bowl.
There is no second or third place in the long walk, only one winner. I read this book every year or so, and I still get the willies when I read what happens to the ninety-nine contesants who fall below walking four miles per hour four times in an hour or those who pass out, or those who simply quit walking. In The Long Walk, you see, quitting is not that simple.
This book will keep you reading until the ambiguous end, and it doesn't disappoint. A suspensful read, and one of my favorite books by Stephen King. I highly suggest reading this.
Rating:
Summary: A book that you want to go on forever or end mercifully
Review: This was the second time that I have read this book. I first read this book back in the year 1999, flew through it, and picked up another book. I have read it again now, and my how it has effected me. The book takes place in a future, or alternate present, in which America is ruled by a military figure only refered to as the Major. The Major appears not to be a cruel tyrant, but it seems there is a lot of censorship: certain jazz albums are forbidden, speaking out against the Major is forbidden, speaking out against the Long Walk is forbidden. The Long Walk is a terrifying thing in which 100 young boys, 14-17, gather to participate in. What do they do? They walk, and walk, and walk. What happens when a boy cannot walk anymore? He is shot in cold blood. The winner receives whatever he wants for the rest of his life, but by the end of the Walk is there much left of the boy that wins? Our hero of the story is Ray Garraty, a boy whose father got taken away by the soldiers years before. He does not know what he wants from the race, but he is willing to die. As a character states at one point in the book that is why they are all there, they all want to die. King weaves a wonderful book that shows the strength of friendship and the bottomless lows o being human. People cheering when boys are shot. A great book, but very disturbing
Rating:
Summary: THE LONG WALK
Review: This was one of the greatest books ever written by Richard Bachman aka Stephen King. I very seldomly read books, but I've read many of Stephen King's, and this one is my favorite. The reason it was so great was the way we really got to know the characters, the surroundings/environment, and you knew what was going on all the time. What so scary is the fact that this is something that might actually happen decades into the future, as a rather sick way of population control, but this book was excellent, and the ending... well, read the book. That ending was something else.
Rating:
Summary: The Long Walk
Review: This was a great book, for me, anyway. It was a page turner (as some may call it) because the first day I got it I read it for five hours (three in the morning and two at night) and the next day I read it for another two hours and finally finished. It was so exciting even though the idea was kind of silly that these mindless, emotionless soldiers would blow 14-16 year old kids' brains out. There was quite a few gory scenes in it. My favorite part was that King got into the characters so well, you either hated them or liked them. But the main characters Ray, Pete, Art, Stebbins and so on (there were so many characters) were so real. I actually missed and felt bad for them when they died. Even some of the characters some people might hate, like Barkovitch and Olson and Parker, I still liked them, in a way. Anyway this is a good book and I recommend you read it and pass it on to a friend. Although i thought it was good, some people won't like it.
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