According to Stephen King’s The Running Man, next year will be intense.
It’s 2025 and 28-year-old Ben Richards is living in a dystopian America. The economy is in the toilet and the country is run by a totalitarian state. The gap between rich and poor is so vast that the poor have been pushed to extreme means to earn money.
The Games
One option is The Games. Ben is forced into competing as his young daughter is ill and needs a doctor they can’t afford. He undergoes a series of tests before being told he will compete in The Running Man, a game he cannot win.
He will be released onto the streets with a 12-hour head start. Once that time is up he will be hunted down by professional hunters until he is killed. If he can survive for 30 days, he wins and becomes rich. No one has made it past a few days. For every day of his survival, his family are given money. His hopes are just to earn enough to save his daughter.
So begins the hunt. During this time Ben learns more about the corruption of the games authority and the government and plans the ultimate way to end the game.
The Read
If you want to pick this up for a read can I suggest making some time for it to attempt in one go? I read this over several days, squeezing in chapters when I could. This was a mistake. I could not get the story out of my head. I had to know what happened next. It was relentless, heartbreaking, and violent.
Class
The narrative never leaves Ben Richards and his desperate situation. He needs money, he has none because of the state. He must allow the state to use him as a pawn to get money.
The class elements of the story are plain to see. We meet several people along the way who are middle class and wealthy. Clean and living in the nice areas. Ben also meets others like him, living in slum like housing and barely earning enough to survive. The fear of the lower classes by the middle classes is the driving force behind The Games and when we are introduced to a middle class character we see this in full force. But she is forced to get to know Ben and see his humanity. This causes a huge shift in her and we see her struggle with the reality of his situation.
This book is one of the most thrilling experiences you can have reading a book. It will grip you from the first sentence till the last. My jaw actually dropped at one point. King is a favourite to many for very good reasons. He can tap into part of your psyche and lodge himself there forever. So, as a word of warning, don’t read this unless you are prepared to think about it for the rest of your life.
Charlotte Wood is a feminist and writer of the macabre and sinister. She reads horror, fantasy, classic literature and historical fiction (with a preference for history from a woman’s perspective).
Charlotte’s debut novel Heather available for preorder now!
A compelling, frightening and heart-breaking tale of desperation, Heather is a ghost story spanning 100 years that will keep you guessing till the end.
