What do you do when the book you were assigned makes you so mad you can barely get through it? Celeste and John tackle The Running Man, Stephen King’s dystopian thriller published under his pen name Richard Bachman, and they both walked away with the same feeling. What did they think about the protagonist, the underlining messaging, and the over all structure of the story? Check out this very honest review of one of King’s most debated early works.

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We are back, allegedly. It has been a minute since our last episode, and if you listened to that one, you already know why that sentence is funnier than it sounds. John and Celeste are back this week to talk about The Running Man by Stephen King, published in 1982 under his pen name Richard Bachman. One of them did not finish it. The other also did not finish it. It was Squid’s pick. This tracks.

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What Is the Book About?

The Running Man is set in a dystopian America in the year 2025, where the economy has collapsed, pollution is rampant, and the government keeps the population distracted with ultraviolent television.

Ben Richards is a broke, desperate man with a sick daughter and no good options. As a last resort, he signs up for The Running Man, the most dangerous game show on television. The premise is simple: survive for 30 days while an elite team of hunters tries to kill you. Every hour you stay alive, you earn money. Survive the full month and you win a billion dollars. No contestant has ever lasted longer than eight days.

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What Did Celeste Think?

Celeste’s problem was not anger so much as complete indifference. She never felt like she got to know Ben Richards before everything fell apart. The reader is dropped directly into crisis mode, which means you are watching someone survive without ever understanding who that person is on a normal day. Is he a good father? A decent person? The book never gives you enough to form an opinion, and Celeste found herself simply not caring whether he made it or not.

She did note that the world itself had real potential. The setting is atmospheric and grim in a way she found genuinely interesting, even if the story living inside it let her down. She gave it roughly two stars, and both of those stars go to King’s prose, which holds up even when the story does not.

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What Did John Think?

John did not finish it. At all. His problem starts early and is fundamental. The opening of the book involves a systematic stripping away of Ben Richards’ dignity, which John found genuinely offensive. It is the specific flavor of humiliation for the sake of spectacle that got under his skin, and he never recovered from it.

Beyond that, John takes issue with what he describes as a pervasive agenda running underneath every narrative choice. Normally, even when a Stephen King story makes you uncomfortable, there is not a sense that King is trying to program you. Under the Bachman name, John felt the opposite, and it made the book impossible to enjoy.

He also flagged a structural quirk worth knowing: the chapters are formatted as a countdown, ticking off hours. The problem is those hours only account for roughly four days, even though the story spans much longer. It is a clever gimmick that quietly falls apart when you do the math.

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The Final Verdict

Neither of them recommends it. Celeste puts it plainly: anyone who might enjoy it for the action will probably be put off by its messaging, and anyone who would appreciate the messaging will find the action unpleasant. It is a book without a natural audience, and even Squid, who picked it, was apparently not enthusiastic about it by the end.

King has better books. Go read them.