“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. On a quest of epic, life-or-death proportions,
Ben finds help comes in some of the most unexpected forms, including a profane
crustacean and a variety of magical objects, tools, and potions. Desperate to
return to his family, Ben is determined to track down the Producer, the creator
of the world in which he is being held hostage and the only one who can free
him from the path.”
Perhaps one the most oddly unique
books I’ve read in a long time.
This wonderfully bizarre,
surreal, often hilarious tale takes the tried and true premise of a man on an extraordinary
journey to get back to his family, and twists it into a genre bending novel
that defies categorizing. It’s like H.P. Lovecraft, Salvador Dali, Stephen King,
and Cormac McCarthy (along with doses of Alice in Wonderland) spewed out a kid
named Drew Magary.
The conceit of The Hike is built
on the foundation of having Ben doing things the reader
does not expect. And while you may think you'll see where it’ll go (because, surely the author will run out of ideas), Magary pulls
the rug out from under you and takes the reader farther out than one might expect, especially in today’s world of contemporary fantasy where the ending is telegraphed long
before the final page. However here, the ending is brilliant, perhaps the best ending I’ve ever read. So the book, at slim 278 pages, never wastes a page.
While The
Hike is made up of many genres, borrowing elements from The Twilight Zone,
King’s Dark Tower series, and the dark fantasy of Margaret Attwood, it’s still
one damn fine read; never boring, never predictable. A funny, thought provoking, and a very weird acid trip through the
creative mind of Drew Magary.
This should
be read by all.
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