The Bachman Books: Rage, the Long Walk, Roadwork, the Running Man

Rating:
Summary: Very, very, very good.
Review: The Bachman books is definently my favorite King work.
Rage is probably the best book I've ever read. It was jam packed with ideas that realy make you think about everything.


Roadwork was interesting and i think provided the reader with a chilling look into the depths of human thoughts and emotion concerning house and home.


The Running Man was out and out good. It was fast paced and like most King books freaky. Overall it was a hundred times better than the movie.


The Long Walk however was bad. It was long, and filled with the same thing over and over. I would most definently recomend this book to anyone looking for a good nights read!


"what must it be like for a suicide coming down from a high ledge? i'm sure it must be a very sane feeling, that's probably why they scream the whole way down." -Rage, Bachman

Rating:
Summary: You will read this book. You will read this book now.
Review: This is a wonderful collection of short novels that are incredibly good, with one exception. Rage is quite possibly the best that I have read from King, and would recommend you buying it just for that. The Long Walk is a decent read, and The Running Man is a good science-fiction-type story (with a great ending). I couldn't seem to get into Roadwork, though. If anything, check this out at the library to read Rage, or better yet, buy it.

Rating:
Summary: Long Walk kicks butt!
Review: The reason I gave it a nine is because road work was not as good. The Long Walk was the best book I have read in my life! Rage was cool when the kid just snapped and held his class up hostage! The Running Man was nothing like the movie they made. I recommend this book to a lot of people. Its a great book to read!

Rating:
Summary: TLW: Did Stevie ever match it again?
Review: I've read it all boys n' girls. The fiction, the short stories, the rare ones, the articles, the non-fiction and so on.. I think SK is the crowned king of characters.. TLW is my favorite and in my humble opinion while his later works were grand and good reads all, he never matched it. Never had me again so completely as he did walking down that road - walking for my life. :)

Rating:
Summary: King before he was pigeon-holed...
Review: The four novellas that make up the Bachman books are stunning, brilliant, powerful, and a depressing indication of the level of literary achievement to which Steven King could rise when he decided to write something other than horror. Which is not to say that all of the horror is bad--King is truly a master of the written word, and even the truly bad stuff is brilliantly written--but just that it tends to be limiting, when a writer of this type of talent should be aiming high each and every time out. Most impressive of all is "The Long Walk," a science fiction novella that is at once a truly gripping suspense story, a brilliant evocation of the adolescent mind (and not just one mind, either), and one of the saddest books I've ever read. Sure, you can tell that King was still a literary youngster, getting a little overly philosophical at times, but I'll take that King to the talented but bored King of Gerald's Game any day of the week.

Rating:
Summary: Two out of four ain't bad
Review: My rating of 6 is indicative of the sum of the books. Indivdually this is how I see them: THE LONG WALK gets an 8. It is easily the best of the four. A consuming tale about a contest in which the losers are brutally killed. The young men in the "race" must keep their speed above 4 mph. After a few warnings, boom! you're disqualified. You can almost feel the exhaustion of the walkers by the end of this one. THE RUNNING MAN is deserving of a 7. It bears little resemblance to the disapointing movie. In this book we see Richards as a man who is at his rope's end. His family lives in utter poverty, the only way he can make money is to enter a suicidal game show called the Running Man. The contestants are given money and a head start, but no one has ever escaped McCone and his hunters for the full thirty days. Richards intends to take a few of them with him if he doesn't make it, though. RAGE gets a 5. It deals with one of King's favorite subjects, insanity. This time it's a high school kid who goes nuts, and takes his class hostage. A few good moments but mostly forgettable. ROAD WORK gets a measley 4. This is the weakest story of all. A guy goes nuts when the new highway is scheduled to go through his house. He ain't moving without a fight, but you could care less after this pointless story.

Rating:
Summary: The Long Walk is great.
Review: To be honest, the only story I read in this book was The Long Walk, so the review is only for that story. I was completely fascinated and totally terrified, and I am not easily scared. I found the story exhausting and disturbing. It was the best short story I have ever read. I still shudder thinking about it.

Rating:
Summary: A pretty good book, except for the roadwork story
Review: I liked this book, but the roadwork story was kind of boring. My favorite story was The Running Man, then The Long Walk and then the other two.

Rating:
Summary: The Long Walk
Review: The Long Walk is a good novel. It is not King's best by any means. However, it is an interesting novel in that it was written while King was pretty young, and you can see his style in its early stages of evolution. If "The Long Walk" is nothing else, it is an average story with great characters.

Rating:
Summary: A stellar book....but not King's best
Review: This was the only book by King that I haven't read until a friend gave it to me for Christmas...I was relieved to finally read "Rage" after hearing so much about it. I was not as shocked as I thought I would be (too jaded, perhaps). I'm sure it was controversial a decade ago. All of these are fantastic short stories designed to suck you in and really almost FORCE you to turn the page. I am curious about "The Running Man"....why was the screenplay such a dramatic departure from King's orginal vision? I liked the book version MUCH better.