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Tag Archives: Joe Hill

King Sorrow: A Review

Joe Hill’s new novel, King Sorrow, is his first full-length work in almost a decade, and I feel it was absolutely worth the wait.

King Sorrow is the story of Arthur Oakes and his friends, and the dragon to which they find themselves pact-bound. It’s New England in the early 90s, and Arthur is a young black man working in the campus library at Rackham College. His mother is serving a prison sentence at a nearby facility, and so he stays close by so that he can continue to visit her as her parole date approaches. Arthur has his eyes on a graduate program in England once he graduates, but his plans are disrupted when a blackmail scheme is launched against him. His mother has made some enemies on the inside, and the daughter of one threatens injury to Arthur’s mom unless he cooperates. So it is that Arthur begins to steal rare books from the college library’s collection for the blackmailers to sell.

Arthur’s friends eventually find out about what’s going on, of course, but they realize that one of the books that Arthur has been instructed to steal might contain the answers to their problem. The Crane journal, a grimoire bound in human skin, has been a part of the rare book collection for years, and inside it are the instructions to summon King Sorrow, a dragon who is willing to make pacts with humans. One night, in a weed and booze-fueled haze, the group gathers around a table and calls out to him. A bargain is struck. Arthur’s blackmailers will be dead by Easter, and he and his friends will be protected.

The problem with deals, though, is always in the details. Arthur and his friends soon learn that they must choose a new sacrificial offering once a year, or their own lives are forfeit. If the only way to summon King Sorrow is found in the grimoire, then the way to rid oneself of him must be contained in it as well, but the book itself made its way to the blackmailers and their buyer before the Easter deadline.

King Sorrow is a fantastic slow burn. I’ve missed Hill’s writing a great deal of late, but I was thrilled to get a chance to tackle this one early. It was released on 10/21, and so it’s been loose in the world for almost a week. My utmost thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

The Fireman: A Review

The world is burning, one person at a time. A new sort of plague, a spore known colloquially as Dragonscale, is infecting hundreds of thousands around the globe. It begins with something small. It gets into your head. It grows. You feel fine until you see it on your skin-a small stripe, like a gold-flecked stain. You might even mistake it for a bruise at first. But then you know you have it. You know that you’re going to burn, and it’s only a question of when. No one knows exactly how it spreads, and there’s no sign of a cure short of being killed before you ignite. You’ll smoke a bit first, and then you’ll combust, unless someone decides to end your life before then.

In the midst of the chaos is Harper Willowes, a Portsmouth nurse who sincerely wishes for nothing more than to be able to help others through the crisis. She volunteers her services caring for the infected while her husband Jakob works for the Public Works Department, helping to clean up the devastation left behind by the burning infected. It’s at work that Harper first meets the Fireman. He brings a child in for treatment, not for the Dragonscale covering him, but for a ruptured appendix. After the boy, Nick, is taken in for surgery, the Fireman vanishes. A few days later, Nick is gone as well, leaving only questions in his wake. Then, disaster strikes and the Portsmouth Hospital burns to the ground. Harper escapes, but soon makes two discoveries. She’s pregnant and she has the ‘scale. Believing himself to be infected as well, Jakob snaps and Harper is forced to flee for her life and that of her unborn child.

When all seems lost, the Fireman intervenes. He rescues Harper from Jakob’s pursuit and secrets her away to a small camp where over a hundred and fifty infected are living in hiding, including Nick. Living and thriving, to Harper’s great surprise. While there’s no cure for the spore, the people of the camp have found a way to live in harmony with the Dragonscale, under the leadership of Nick’s grandfather. Harper’s medical skills quickly make her indispensable. The camp, however, is no paradise. As panic grips the nation, marauders seek to eliminate any infected. Harper only wants to survive long enough to deliver her baby, but internal power struggles in the camp threaten to expose them all to the roving Cremation Crews. The Fireman may be the only one who can save them all, but he hides a dark secret of his own.

Joe Hill takes on an apocalypse of his own, one that rivals The Stand in scope and violence (not to mention pop culture references). As the world around them burns, his characters must face the fact that other humans may be a greater threat to them than the Dragonscale ever was. The Fireman is a hell of a ride from beginning to end, and is every bit as intense as the flames it evokes.

The Fireman, hits store shelves on 5/17. Go check it out.

[My most sincere thanks to William Morrow for the Advance Reader Copy of The Fireman, acquired at PLA 2016]

May

Things that are happening this week:

Captain America: Civil War (Spoiler-free review coming soon)

Free Comic Book Day (Check out your local comic shops/libraries)

Reading/reviewing Joe Hill’s new novel The Fireman (With utmost gratitude to William Morrow for the Advance Copy)

I’m also working through a heap of holds from the library. My to-read list is ridiculous. Thankfully, I’ll be putting some vacation time to good use. The weather’s getting warmer, and the small ones enjoy time outside, so I’ll try to make the most of it. Reading outside counts as exercise, right?