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batrock's review against another edition
3.0
[Insert Stephen King/Richard Bachman meditations here!]
chloealexander's review against another edition
5.0
Notes: I laughed...maybe I'm just in shock but that was amazing.
bodaciousgaucho's review against another edition
5.0
Wow...so much of what I’ve read or watched or seen feels like a product of this book. A great work of fiction, action, adventure and social commentary.
chris_kenyon's review against another edition
4.0
This is a stereotypical King book in so many ways. Character and dialogue driven, but with with enough edge of your seat action and suspense that you can’t put it down. This book takes awhile to get going. There is a lot of nothing for the first 100 pages or so, which is why I didn’t give it 5 stars. But once it picks up, it REALLY pulls you in.
gbweeks's review against another edition
4.0
The word "fast-paced" gets used a lot for this book, and it's accurate. The action is almost non-stop, which made me read it very quickly. King comes up with really good twists, and the ending is dramatic (and gross-out in classic King style).
It's rare to wish a Stephen King book were a bit longer, but some more character development would've been nice. Ben's wife, who is so important to him, is one-dimensional, and it takes quite a while to get a better understanding of where Ben himself came from.
As with other of his books, King's treatment of African Americans is sympathetic and seems clearly intended to highlight the problem of racism, but veers a lot toward caricature.
It's rare to wish a Stephen King book were a bit longer, but some more character development would've been nice. Ben's wife, who is so important to him, is one-dimensional, and it takes quite a while to get a better understanding of where Ben himself came from.
As with other of his books, King's treatment of African Americans is sympathetic and seems clearly intended to highlight the problem of racism, but veers a lot toward caricature.
jcmiller5's review against another edition
5.0
Man… one of the best books i’ve ever read. Highly recommend.
juushika's review against another edition
3.0
In the dystopic near future, a desperate man volunteers for a survival game reality TV show. Survival games are one of my favorite tropes, and this is certainly an example--an early one, with all attendant caveats (it's not especially robust; may even feel reiterative), but if the premise appeals then the follow-through will probably be satisfying. The pacing is predictable but has significant momentum, and the Bachman novels have a succinct, brutal, dark humor which compliments this premise. But it's not as good as The Long Walk, probably because, while half the fascination of a survival game is the extreme circumstances, the other half is how multiple characters react to that situation--and here there's just one character, and not a great one; the protagonist encapsulates the poor white man as a stand-in for the underprivileged in a way that ignores intersectionality.
kimabill's review against another edition
4.0
***Warning*** DO NOT read Stephen King's introduction to this book before you read the book. He gives away the ending! Booo, Stephen King. Of course, the introduction was all about King mourning the fact that people eventually firgured out that it was him writing under the Richard Bachman pseudonym, so maybe giving away the ending was a little bit about revenge. Still, why would an author sabotage himself that way? But I digress...
I decided to read this because I realized that I hadn't read any of the "Bachman Books" and I felt like I should. This book could be a definite precursor to The Hunger Games or a postcursor (?) to "The Most Dangerous Game." It is about a futuristic dystopia (I know!) where the poor people earn money by participating in reality shows like "Treadmill to Dollars" where you run till you die and your family gets money based on how long you last. The protagonist of the book is chosen for the big-money game called "The Running Man" where he is hunted by members of the Games Corporation and average citizens are rewarded for sightings and tip-offs to the hunters. The book is incredibly fast-paced and nerve-wracking - lots of action. There's some gory Stephen King stuff toward the end, but mostly it is just like an action movie. (Actually, I guess this was made into a movie in 1987 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I watched the trailer and couldn't recognize a single scene from the book.) I read it so fast, I felt like I had just run a race when I finished it.
Also, the book is set in 2025...could we really be that close to our own dystopian future?! Yikes!
I decided to read this because I realized that I hadn't read any of the "Bachman Books" and I felt like I should. This book could be a definite precursor to The Hunger Games or a postcursor (?) to "The Most Dangerous Game." It is about a futuristic dystopia (I know!) where the poor people earn money by participating in reality shows like "Treadmill to Dollars" where you run till you die and your family gets money based on how long you last. The protagonist of the book is chosen for the big-money game called "The Running Man" where he is hunted by members of the Games Corporation and average citizens are rewarded for sightings and tip-offs to the hunters. The book is incredibly fast-paced and nerve-wracking - lots of action. There's some gory Stephen King stuff toward the end, but mostly it is just like an action movie. (Actually, I guess this was made into a movie in 1987 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I watched the trailer and couldn't recognize a single scene from the book.) I read it so fast, I felt like I had just run a race when I finished it.
Also, the book is set in 2025...could we really be that close to our own dystopian future?! Yikes!
iamneq's review against another edition
3.0
Man I know not everything is going to have a happy ending. And to be fair the forward from Stephen King before the book started did serve as a warning. The ending still sucked though and killed any good mood I was in. Suffering through a miserable book for a miserable ending is not my idea of a good time. The premise was good though and there were some exciting parts so 3 stars.
mysteriousnorse's review against another edition
3.0
A mix of Brave New World and "Rollerball," the bread and circuses idea in a dystopian future with a bitter Bachman backwash that I don't really like. I'd compare it to how I feel about Firestarter where I just feel it's average, in this case an average dystopia with some dark moments, but the characters are far less interesting.