Magary smartly doesn't answer every question Ben's journey raises, and the story is more satisfying as a result. Magary throws plenty of humor into the tale the giant has a 'death matrix' that measures how painful or slow Ben's death at her hands will be but keeps the focus on Ben's efforts to get home to his family and confront his own demons. In his waking hours he meets various fantastical creatures, including a talking crab and a gorgeous, polite, human-eating giant. As he wanders, he slips into dreams where he relives missed opportunities from his life.

A man named Ben wanders from a hotel for a hike, gets attacked by a bizarre man wearing the skinned head of a rottweiler, and soon gets lost in the woods. In this peculiar literary odyssey, Magary reexamines some of the same themes he covered in The Postmortal while throwing in some fascinating dream imagery, assorted video game tropes, and a story structure that's deliberately predictable (with nods to many other tales of wandering through strange lands before returning home) but still surprising. In The Hike, Magary takes readers on a daring odyssey away from our day-to-day grind and transports them into an enthralling world propelled by heart, imagination, and survival.

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.Īt once bitingly funny and emotionally absorbing, Magary’s novel is a remarkably unique addition to the contemporary fantasy genre, one that draws as easily from the world of classic folk tales as it does from video games. 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. 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. 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.

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. Quietly profound and touching.”- BoingBoingįrom the author of The Night the Lights Went Out and The Postmortal, a fantasy saga unlike any you’ve read before, weaving elements of folk tales and video games into a riveting, unforgettable adventure of what a man will endure to return to his family Magary underhands a twist in at the end that hits you like a sharp jab at the bell.

The hike drew