The Walking

Not one of Little's best. The premise was great. The plotting, while slow, was good.

Of course, we got a mention of The Store. Yay for The Store! A Bentley Little book without a mention of The Store would be like a day without sunshine.

However. This is a good example of an author who wrote himself into a corner and just said, "Fuck it."

Something strange is happening in the small southwestern town. There have been a series of strange deaths and the dead have an even stranger compulsion. I wasn't sure I was going to like this book at all when I first started reading it. The author switched back and forth between the "now" and the "then" and the you couldn't keep up with the why of the whole thing. as you continue to read the story comes together very well. Is this my favorite book of Bentley Little's? No. But it is an intriguing tale.

I am always on the look out for truly frightening horror outside of the wonder twins, King & Koontz, and heard good things about Little. Maybe I came too the book with too many expectations.

From reading the description, I was excited for a good zombie story but found myself reading what felt very much like the same old story about intolerance, revenge, and witchcraft. Set in the Old West, or the Middle Ages, witches who misuse magic because normal people hurt them for being different?? Been there. I felt like I had everything figured out the minute Isabella showed up on the page and while parts of the story were genuinely creepy and even thrilling, the inevitability of the grand showdown disappointed me.

When I first read the concept for this book on the back cover – people who are compelled to walk even after they have died – I thought it sounded mysterious and cool. But as with the other Little novels I have read, an interesting premise is quickly transformed into a far-fetched plot with uninteresting characters and an ultimately unexciting climax. This one concerned witches and evil spirits, and there were very few walking dead people, considering the title. I’m not quite sure why Little is considered such a shining light in the horror genre when his novels can’t even measure up to the formulaic but still suspenseful works of Dean Koontz.

I had high hopes for this one, but they didn't pan out. For starters, the man has some issues with his female characters. As in, he can't write them for shit. It's a shame, as he's overall a very talented horror writer and I generally like his works pretty well. I enjoy his short fiction best, he seems like he has one unbelievably horrifying, bone chilling image in every work he writes and the whole work hinges on that. Hard to describe, but there you go.

I've noticed two different types of books by Bentley Little. The first are where Little takes something normal and mundane and twists it into something creepy and horrific. The second type are the ones where he just tells a story, but without the twist of the first type. This is the second type. While the story isn't bad, it didn't have that twist of making an everyday thing evil. This just told a story and while interesting just didn't hold my grab me like a lot of his novels do. Little's books also tend to have endings that can at times seemed forced. The ending to "The Walking" just ended too nicely, everything wrapped up too cleanly with little fanfare. If you're a Little fan then by all means read this, but this may not be the best show more choice to introduce yourself to his work. show less

If you enjoy Western tales, Witches, Ghouls and The Super-Natural, this is a must read. I enjoyed reading about a time when cell phones were just becoming fashionable. Knowing that witchcraft and other practices that seek to connect with other-worldly forces and powers, I enjoyed the journey undertaken by everyday persons, who were struggling to live their lives, until the supernatural came calling.