The Walking

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.

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.

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 had this book sitting on my bookshelf for quite some time. I had to build up to read it, but it was pretty good. The story jumped around a lot, but it gave you a lot of info that you needed to really understand the big picture. So the plot, I must say was intense!

The book started off with the story of a young man and his father trying to figure out what had happened to their grandfather. He was sick and then he started walking. The little boy was scared of what was happening, but one morning they woke up and the grandfather was gone - there was no trace of him anywhere! So this added to the mystery of what was going on. But as the book moved along, it circled around a man named William who was a witch back in the day and looking to show more find a sanctuary of sorts for his kind. Tired of being persecuted for their beliefs and ways, he met up with a man named Jeb and together they founded a town called Wolf Canyon. The story circled around this town. But back in the present, people were dying all across the country and then start walking. Yes, they were zombies, but they didnt' attack anyone, they had another purpose.

All in all, I don't want to tell much more of the story, cause then what would be the point in reading it. But the end kind of disappointed me a little, cause I think it could have been a little different, but it was still pretty good. I couldn't help myself, I never really wanted to put the book down, but ya know, life loves to happen...lol show less

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