Author:Joe Hill
Since the recent Never Flinch review has outed a few Stephen King fans here, I thought it was worth drawing attention to the new one by his son. It’s been a long time coming, but this is Joe Hill’s best novel by a long way. It’s a beast of a book – I read an eARC, but I’d guess the print version isn’t going to be far short of a thousand pages – but nothing is bloated or wasted. It’s a genuine epic that spans decades and continents as the story of how a group of friends make a deal with something they really shouldn’t have plays out down the years. It feels lazy to make comparison with Hill’s dad (although to be fair he does kind of invite it with direct references to The Dead Zone and The Dark Tower here, let alone the first word of the title), but this is up there with any of King Sr’s biiiig books, and possibly even better. It has lots to say about social class, about friendship, our emergent billionaire class, folklore and mythic archetypes and their relevance to the 21st century, plus there’s a bloody enormous dragon that loves nothing more than smashing up untold amounts of buildings and military hardware. It’s exciting, funny, tense and sad, and it’s the most fun I’ve had with a book for a long time.
Length of Read:Epic
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
The Stand, The Dark Is Rising sequence, The Secret History, Beowulf,
One thing you’ve learned
Don’t make any deals with malignant extradimensional forces
Published in October, I believe
Yes I just finished it last week and it’s his best since the equally epic NOS4RTU and certainly bears comparison with his father’s work both in terms of quality and length….the proof copy I have runs to 896 pages!
Just to update that this is published 21 October.
Sounds like an excellent read.
When your dad is that gigantic a figure, it takes guts to be a writer.
I was already looking forward to this, and your review has increased my excitement.
I like his longer books (the same applies to his dad’s), so this could be just up my street.
Oh … I came here expecting to read something about Joe Hill, the famous Swedish/American trade union activist and songwriter of the early twentieth century. Bugger.
You dreamed it?
As immortalised by the Elvira Madigan hitmaker..
Has anyone here read his graphic novel series Locke and Key? It’s good stuff.