Rating: 
Summary: Hardly the horror event of the year -- very average
Review: This is the first book I have read by this author and was sorely disappointed. After reading all the other reviews, however, it appears that this was probably not the author's best effort. Usually, I can easily lose myself in a good, creepy read, but I found that I just could not suspend disbelief enough to get into it. I didn't think the characters were developed that well, there were a couple red herring plot lines (what was the purpose of introducing the 'X-files type' FBI agent?) and everything came together too neatly and conveniently in the end. This would be a good story to relay over a campfire, but I couldn't recommend this book to the serious, critical reader.
Rating: 
Summary: I've Read Better
Review: I've read several of Bentley Little's books, and this one definitely wasn't one of his best. The dead get back up, walk around their (former) homes for a while, then head out on a journey. Everyone's trying to figure out why this is going on, and where the dead are going. When you finally find out why it's happening, the story does get a bit more interesting. Unfortunately, until you get there, it's kind of slow-going.
Rating: 
Summary: POWERFUL
Review: "This is how the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper." "Evil is banal." These are two of the philosophical cornerstones of our modern era, and no author has illustrated them more effectively than Bentley Little. Directly and indirectly, he has addressed the horrors of the Holocaust in much of his published fiction, asking how such monstrous evil can arise from such mundane sources, and in THE WALKING he postulates the end of the world as caused by the bitterness and anger of a single individual. It's a powerful metaphor for many of the atrocities of the 20th Century. Other Amazon.com readers looking for quick simplistic thrills in their fiction or grotesque climaxes piled upon grotesque climaxes have faulted Little for his ending to the novel, but they have missed the point. This is the only way the novel COULD have ended, and it's a brilliant, potent statement by an author willing to address the central issues of our time. A thought-provoking work by one of contemporary horror fiction's true artists.
Rating:
Summary: "The Walking" is barely limping.
Review: The premise of this novel seems irresistable; Certain dead people start walking in circles, and then out to some unknown destination. They're not cliched flesh-eating zombies, all they do is walk after death. So far so good, an original premise. Unforturnately the story dives right into witches, spells, magic and monsters, without a whit of why this should be believable. This reviewer has always been fond of horror which grows inexorably from the odd to the obviously supernatural, best exemplfied by the original Halloween movie. There is no such finesse in this book. The reader is expected to accept a U.S. Government sanctioned community of witches, otherwise normal men and women, in the same way Mormons settled in seclusion in the untamed west. The story continues to spin out of credibility with police treating a body melded into a wooden fence without question and the FBI matter-of-factly amputating the animated legs of a walker with no further explanation. It gets worse, with terms like Super-witch and "it just seems right." Little's breezy style makes the book an easy read, and once started a reader will probably finish it just to see how it ends, but you'll likely be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: P.S.--
Review: One more thing (sorry to have left this out), I would like to resoundingly agree with an earlier reviewer, for their remarks about the book's muddled anti-Christian sentiment. It was shallow at best, ignorant at worst. And yet he has his lead character joyfully celebrating Christmas... bizarre. Heck, in the first seventy pages, the author manages to demonstrate an astounding lack of research and understanding on the issues of Christianity, Halloween, and even witchcraft. The book was an offensive mess, philosophically. Thank you, and good night. :)
Rating:
Summary: It seemed so promising...
Review: This book was... there. If I'm certain of nothing else, I'm certain that I read it. Yup, I read opened it and went from word to word until there weren't any more... I'm quite certain of that. Given that, you'd think it would have left more of an impression. Okay, seriously, let me begin by saying that there are undoubtedly some positives to this novel, just so I won't feel or seem as though I'm completely negative, here. The ideas are very creative... The imagery Little evokes is deeply creepy at some points. There are some ideas that I would say stand out as almost imspired pieces of horror imagery, very creative stuff. There were one or two mental images in here that made me shudder. That, however, in all fairness and honesty and with no attempt to be rude or sarcastic, really is the best I can say about this book. I was drawn into reading it by the compelling summary on the back, of what seemed like a plot that could really go places, by the sterling reviews offered by the likes of Stephen King, and by what is possibly the creepiest prologue I have ever read in a horror novel. Having now finished the whole story, though, I am in shock... I simply cannot believe that King, Koontz and so many others saw so much in this book. The very idea actually makes me question those authors' own works anew, by virtue of their taste. Someone actually referred to this book as "spellbinding... a waking nightmare." Stephen King of all people apparently called it the "horror event of the year!" Well, perhaps, but not in the way he meant it. Yes, *The Walking* has a very interesting premise, but the text fails to live up to it both in suspense and in simple story. The plot is extremely predictable... So much so that somewhere around page 150, the rest of the book becomes a chore to read. Simply, the few hundred pages between the first chapter and the last are almost entirely unnecessary. Seriously, nothing happens. Ever. From the level of suspense, emotion and story progression involved, these pages could easily have been compressed into fifty or so. I do noy say that to be sarcastic; my feeling is that this novel would have actually made an absolutely *incredible* short story or even novella. However, stretching it out to this length destorys any possible suspense and allows the reader to see the holes in the plot and to recognize the flatness of the characters. There is little suspense and few genuine scares... one of the big flaws, it seems to me, is that the author has a tendency to hurry through what could be the really interesting parts. Though he spends paragraph upon paragraph detailing the most mundane of daily occurrences, to the point where the reader's mind begins to wander and doesn't really have to come back for a few pages, the moment he approaches something that could be seriously, genuinely scary, he rushes through it in a sentence or two. In this, he does himself a great disservice because, as I said, those ideas a generally very, very good. The plot itself is good, but again, sadly predictable and wish the occasional contradiction. The author tries to compensate by throwing in things that are designed to make the reader uncomfortable, like the illness of a character's parent for instance and, taking a cue from Stephen King, a constant stream of vulgarities which are utterly random, inappropriate, and completely unecessary. When King does it, he at least integrates it into the story and the characters... and on those (admittedly pretty frequent) occasions when he doesn't, it can be overlooked because the story is so compelling. This is not the case with *The Walking,* however, and it just comes across as either deeply childish or as an aping of King's style. As for the characters, which Dean Koontz inexplicably described as "believable," they're generally bland and unremarkable. They remain undeveloped throughout, apart from one standout individual who of course dies almost immediately. The protagonist of the tale is Miles Huerdeen, a dry and bland man with an inexplicably vehement hatred of Southern people. If you're from anywhere in the U.S. south of Pennsylvania and east of Texas, you probably won't like Our Hero very much. Miles manages to spend the entire book being completely bland and uncompelling. Honestly, part of the reason I couldn't get into this book is because I couldn't care less what happened to Miles. He never seems to be even interested, much less affected, by his circumstances. I can imagine him being voted "Detective Most in Need of a Nap"... he wouldn't turn up for the ceremony, of course, he just wouldn't be able to summon the enthusiasm. He's the Keanu Reeves of the detective world. Seriously, the character remains undeveloped until the very end, when he has a sudden bizzare epiphany, in an attempt to make the reader think that Miles has been developing all along and the reader just hasn't noticed. Honestly, I tried to avoid sarcasm in this review, I set out with the intention of using no hyperbole or biting comments, but the more I reflect on the book the more bitter I become. Anyway, finally the book comes together again somewhat at the end. While the plot remains iffy, at least things once again start to happen in the last fifty pages or so, but it seems too little, too late. In summary, this book is simply not involved enough to hold the reader's attention. While the author is undoubtedly creative in some ways, this book is not a good place to turn if you're accustomed to the quality of King and Lovecraft. I have never read anything else by Little so I cannot make any judgment on him as an author; he could be a master for all I know. I can say, though, that if you're an accustomed reader of suspense or, this book is probably best avoided.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good Book
Review: I thought this was overall a good book and definately worth the read. The story was excellent, and read more as a super-natural mystery than a scary book. The characters were very well developed and each had unique personality. I'd say this is less scary, but more involved than most books of the genre. Great reading! I'll never stroll through the desert the same again without think of Mary Ann.
Rating:
Summary: The Walking Stopped Dead In It's Tracks
Review: I loved the begginning.. it was great, but the ending was rather lame. I think the author ran out of gas. I had many questions, and was trying to piece together loose ends. I was rather dissapointed. I have read other works by Mr. Little and have liked those... so I was surprised by the lack of an ending.
Rating:
Summary: I agree with Mr. Harjo
Review: I picked this book up because of so many glowing recommendations. The writing is genereally pretty good compared to others in the field, but I thought the ending seemed like the author either reached his page quota or just didn't feel like writing anymore - The ultimate evil villan is defeated in a shockingly dumb-luck kind of way by an unprepared and confused foe... Odd. The covers of his books are really cool though...
Rating:
Summary: "The Walking" goes nowhere.
Review: This is the first Bentley Little book that I've purchased, and while it's intrigued me enough to chance another one, The Walking in and of itself was a bit disappointing. It begins with a unique spin on an old 'walking dead' premise, and it's first half does a good job of building up the characterization and plot threads. Then, beginning in the early second half, the book begins to fall in upon itself. What was genuinely chilling in the opening half becomes rather silly by the second. The finale of the book is perhaps one of the worst, and least compelling conclusions I've read in this genre since Stephen King's "Bag of Bones". Overall, a passable read, but probably not the best introduction to Little's works.
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