Brutal, realistic and outspoken Stephen King struck me again. And remarkably, again under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. His works under this name, in my opinion, differ sharply from classic works in the horror genre. And sometimes for the better. The maestro invites us to see a topical and scary world where society quite encourages a kind of entertainment among teenagers called "Long Walk". The plot is built around an annual walking marathon, which is attended by dozens of teenagers. They will walk for a long time, and there is simply no distance limit. After all, as soon as you stop, you will be killed. And the winner will be the last one left standing. It seems to be a banal plot, but how many interesting things can be shown in such a story. That's what King does. All the time I was unwittingly trying to put myself in the guys' shoes. And when you sit or lie down and read a work, it seems to you that it is quite possible for yourself to come out a winner. Well, it's worth just going and going. And then you remember your school days when you did a race or later years when you had to travel for many hours on foot. In those moments, you expect the end of the movement, the opportunity to network and relax after a walk or a race. That's when you really realize that the heroes of the book simply do not have such an opportunity, they are not destined to reach their destination and just sit down with a sense of completeness. After all, this is tantamount to death. Then even panic really settles in the brain. The work is declared as a dystopia. Before us is the world of the totalitarian USA. However, the work does not give clear answers to the questions of where and how this state became such. At first, you want answers, but closer to the middle of the work, this topic doesn't bother you at all anymore. The process itself is important, the interaction of the guys that has been going on for, it seems, forever. You get tired with them. You experience very vividly everything that happens on the pages of the work. It's all about the skill of King, who literally gets into the heads of his characters and reveals them to us like on a platter. "The Long Walk" will show readers how cruel the world can be in its indifference, the book will demonstrate how simple death turns out to be. One minute you were walking next to a man, side by side, discussing something with him, and the next moment there was nothing in his place, because he just couldn't go on. I strongly recommend reading this work by King. I really liked it, as well as many books by the author under the pseudonym Bachman. They are somehow easier to read, and the stories in them are often much more interesting than the "classic" King's. The work keeps you in suspense until the very end. It's really an all-time thriller. 10 out of 10