The Running Man

In the version of the audiobook that I listened to, there is a retrospective forward by King that mentions that the pseudonym Richard Bachman could serve as a vector for his angry and aggressive tendencies. While I generally like King, this side of him is not my favourite.

I have read plenty of unpleasant bleak dystopian novels that I have enjoyed, but basically every moment of this one is full of rage and there is very little time for anything else. There is a lot of aggressive language even just in the description of characters, though some of that maybe also is just a reflection of the time in which it is written, and even just the "victories" present throughout the book are just sort of nihilistic.

I feel like I never really got a good sense of the world, and there are a lot of ideas that are brought up briefly and discarded. Maybe it would have worked better if I was into the book more, because I do think its interesting to come into this story without a bunch of leadup into how The Running Man came about, but it still just felt pretty thin to me.

King is unquestionably a gifted thriller writer though, so there are many scenes of action or suspense that had my full engagement moment to moment, I just don't think it worked as a whole for me.