278 pages
English language
Published Nov. 14, 2016
When Ben, a suburban family man, takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania, he decides to spend the afternoon before his dinner meeting on a short hike. Once he sets out into the woods behind his hotel, he quickly comes to realize that the path he has chosen cannot be given up easily. With no choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a world of man-eating giants, bizarre demons, and colossal insects.
Content warning Minor spoiler
So... Not bad at all. Nice twist at the very end. Magary's style is mostly straightforward, which I appreciate.
Two things I didn't quite like: the episodic structure (very Alice in Wonderland — I like AiW, but no need to keep doing that) and the whole "I'm the master of my own destiny" thing. A bit Hollywood-y.
All in all, a fun read that keeps you hooked.
The Hike is a strange book, to put things lightly. And my opinion on this book shifted wildly over its course, sometimes even page by page or sentence by sentence. There really isn't any good way to describe this book—even the teasing snippets littering the covers could never possibly capture how incredibly weird it is.
I will just say this: if you find yourself struggling to get through this book as I myself did at times, stick to the path. Push through to the end because I believe it is worth it. What a weird and magnificent journey.
In the vein of the greatest stumble-into-adventure stories like Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz but for adults, The Hike is full of fantastic imagery, humor, and heart from the very first step, never taking itself too seriously or demystifying its treacherous wonder.
Waring, this is not the Disney version of the fairy tale.
The protagonist does not like the path and the path doesn't like him.
I had trouble getting through the early chapters but once we meet the annoyed crab, the story changes from just dark to dark humor and we begin to see the light at the end of the path.
By the end I was enjoying myself.
I received this as an ARC from the publisher and it is by far the weirdest book I've read in a really long time. I categorized it as horror because it freaked me out, but it was very compelling. And really, really bizarre.
