Book Review | Strange Weather by Joe Hill

One autumnal day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails, splinters of bright crystal that tear apart anyone who isn't safely under cover. 'Rain' explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as clouds of nails spread out across the country and the world. Amidst the chaos, a girl studying law enforcement takes it upon herself to resolve a series of almost trivial mysteries... apparently harmless puzzles that turn out to have lethal answers.

In 'Loaded' a mall security guard heroically stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun movement. Under the hot glare of the spotlights, though, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it...

'Snapshot, 1988' tells the story of an kid in Silicon Valley who finds himself threatened by The Phoenician, a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid that can steal memories...

And in 'Aloft' a young man takes to the skies to experience parachuting for the first time... and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero's island of roiling vapour that seems animated by a mind of its own.

***

"After writing a couple seven-hundred-page novels back-to-back," Joe Hill has it in the afterword to his electric new collection, "it felt particularly important to get lean and mean," (p.436) and Strange Weather is exactly that: it's not long, and damn it, it's nasty.

A striking selection of novellas ranging from the playfully apocalyptic to the wickedly political, Strange Weather starts with an actual flash in 'Snapshot,' the unsettling story of a boy who crosses paths with a man in possession of a magical camera. This old Polaroid captures more than just those Kodak moments, of course: it captures the very memories of those moments, in sum leaving its subjects with holes in their souls.

Michael Figlione is just a kid when 'Snapshot' begins, so when he sees his old babysitter Shelly Beukes walking around the street they share, barefoot and swearing, he assumes she's simply senile. As a decent human being he does the decent thing and takes her home to her husband, who gives Michael ten bucks for his trouble. It's only when he goes to the local truck stop to spend his earnings and sees a creepy guy pointing a camera like a pistol that Shelly's seemingly insane story—about a man who's been stealing her essential self, picture by painful picture—starts to make sense.

Gripped by this suspicion, Michael stands guard over a sleeping Shelly later that same day, determined to catch the so-called Polaroid Man in the act. And he does, ultimately. But the story doesn't end there... though I rather wish it had. Economical in its narrative and affecting in its Stranger Things-esque setting, the first half of 'Snapshot' is stunningly done; sadly, the second section struck me as superfluous: slow and unfocused except insofar as it speaks to the themes at the centre of Strange Weather.

There is, to be sure, some seriously weird weather in this collection: between the storm that rages on as Michael confronts Shelly's tormentor in 'Snapshot,' the cyclonic blaze that looks likely to raze the town where the next tale takes place, the custardy cumulus the lovelorn protagonist of 'Aloft' lands on and the razor-sharp rain that gives Strange Weather's final fiction its name, the pathetic fallacy is in full effect in all four stories. But in terms of connective tissue, another, markedly more meaningful motif pervades these pieces: the struggle to let go of what we've lost.

What Shelly has lost is obvious; what Michael loses, less so. George Kellaway, the accidental hero at the heart of 'Loaded'—a straight story suggestive of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December of 2012—has lost his family. The restraining order his wife has taken out against him means he's also had to sacrifice his right to bear arms. But he still has a gun, by gum! A gun he's horribly happy to use when a woman who's been abused by her boss opens fire in the middle of the mall where Kellaway works.

Bodies promptly drop, including those of a Muslim woman and the bundled-up baby Kellaway mistook for a bomb—not to mention the only other witness to the incident. That guy gets one in the head as well, because otherwise, Kellaway would be in a whole bunch of trouble. As is, he has a good story to tell the first proper responders; a tale as tall as time that leads people to believe he saved the day instead of devastating it.

Celebrated as a hero by the media-savvy mayor, Kellaway is soon sitting for interviews, and starting to hope that not only will he get away with multiple murder, perhaps he'll even get his family back. But as the irregularities in his account start to surface, things take a terrible turn. "Kellaway felt like a bullet in a gun himself, felt charged and ready to go off, to fly towards some final, forceful impact. Loaded with the potential to blow a hole in what everyone thought they knew about him." (p.161) He does just that in a conclusion so unbearably brutal that it chills me still.

It's a shock to the system when Strange Weather's darkest story segues into its slightest and lightest, 'Aloft,' which follows a fellow on his first skydive. He isn't your everyday daredevil, however. "Aubrey has always been scared of heights. It was a good question, why a man with a dread of heights, a man who avoided flying whenever he could, would agree to jump from an airplane. The answer, of course, was maddeningly simple: Harriet." (p.254)

Harriet is "the girl [Aubrey] wanted as he'd never wanted anyone else," (p.300) and as the dismaying details of the pair's relationship to date are doled out, readers will realise that 'Aloft' is their story. Their story just so happens to wrapped around a particularly peculiar premise. You see, Aubrey doesn't make landfall with the love of his unlucky life. Instead, his dive terminates early when he loses his parachute on a semi-solid cloud that looks and feels like it's made of "acre after acre of mashed potato." (p.301) Stranded on this desert island of sorts, he must to come to terms with his feelings for Harriet, and her feelings for him, if he's to have any hope of touching terra firma again.

That 'Aloft' is the most whimsical of Strange Weather's four stories is fitting, considering it was written in the back of a notebook containing the finale of The Fireman basically because Hill hated "to see so much paper go to waste." But, as the author himself explains, it was 'Rain,' the collection's closer, that "arose from a desire to spoof myself and my own sprawling end of the world novel." (p.436)

'Rain' really is rather a lot of fun, particularly as it pertains to the White House's comments on the catastrophic change in climate that results in a hail of nails:

The operating theory—lacking any other credible explanation—was terrorism. The president had disappeared to a secure location but had responded with the full force of his Twitter account. He posted: "OUR ENEMIES DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY STARTED! PAYBACK IS A BITCH!!! #DENVER #COLORADO #AMERICA!!" The vice president had promised to pray as hard as he could for the survivors and the dead; he pledged to stay on his knees all day and all night long. It was reassuring to know that our national leaders were using all the resources at their disposal to help the desperate: social media and Jesus. (p.348)

It's a testament to Hill's not insignificant abilities that even here, in the midst of this rather ridiculous apocalypse, there remains resonance. Its protagonist, one Honeysuckle Speck, is haunted by the loss of her sweetheart, who was one of the first to fall victim to the disastrous downpour. Unable to accept Yolanda's death, she determines to deliver the news to her other half's father, which means navigating a stretch of highway that showcases the slippery grip civilisation has on society. Turns out all it takes to cause a collapse is—snap!—some strange weather.

I found the conclusion of 'Rain' is a touch too tidy; similarly, 'Snapshot' suffers from this occasional proclivity of Hill's, this inclination to offer answers to unasked questions. It's telling that 'Aloft' and 'Loaded' are Strange Weather's strongest stories: their ambiguous endings allow them to live past their last pages. That one is wacky and wonderful while the other's twisted tragedy proves all too easy to believe evidences the tremendous diversity of this collection. If NOS4A2 and The Fireman were Hill's Salem's Lot and The Stand, then this, dear readers, is his Different Seasons: a demonstration of his range and readiness to tell the hell out of any tale, be it supernatural or straight, silly or completely serious.

***

Strange Weather

by Joe Hill

UK Publication: November 2017, Gollancz

US Publication: October 2017, William Morrow

Buy this book from

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The Book Depository

Or get the Kindle edition

Recommended and Related Reading

Book Review | The Fireman by Joe Hill

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the unborn child she is carrying comes to term.

***

Unlike some, I have a soft spot for Heart-Shaped Box, and a lot of love for Horns, but even I'd agree that NOS4A2 is Joe Hill's strongest novel—not least, I believe, because it's also his longest. The larger than life-sized story it told and the complex characters explored over its engrossing course simply couldn't have come to be without the room to breathe its length allowed, so when I found out The Fireman was similarly thick, I was pleased.

And it's an awesome novel, naturally: an apocalyptic parable written from the perspective of an infectiously happy heroine every millimetre as meaty and memorable as Ms. Vic McQueen, and whose hellish ex gives Charles Talent Manx a run for his money. But for all that The Fireman kicks off brilliantly and ends tremendously well, the middle section of the text—an epic in and of itself—tends towards the plodding and the predictable.

It begins with the world burning.

It's been burning for months, as a matter of fact, but only "in filthy places no one wants to go," you know. So sayeth Harper Grayson's asshole of a husband. And it's true that the first recorded cases of Draco Incendia Trychophyto—a spore that marks its hosts with gorgeous golden growths before causing them to suddenly combust—it's true, at least according to the news, that the so-called 'Scale originated elsewhere.

Some say the Russians engineered it. Others insist on the involvement of ISIS, or, failing that, fundamentalists fixated on the book of Revelations. Truth be told, its source isn't so important, because the thing about fire is, it spreads—and with it, this incipient sickness. Before long, "fifteen million people are infected. Maine is like Mordor now," Harper has it: "a belt of ash and poison a hundred miles wide. Southern California is even worse. Last I heard, SoCal was on fire from Escondido to Santa Maria."

With "her silliness and her sense of play and her belief that the kindnesses you showed other added up to something," said school nurse is just about the sweetest human being there's ever been, so whilst her increasingly hysterical other half hides, Harper helps, however she can. Alas, lending a hand at the local hospital leads to her developing symptoms of the 'Scale herself—just hours after she learns she's pregnant.

News Flashing | Li'l Indy Throws Down the Horns in the Movie of the Book

So. Do you want to hear the good news, or the bad news?

The good news is, having acquired the option before the book was even published, Mandalay Pictures are pushing ahead on their big-screen adaptation of Joe Hill's Horns.

Or --- wait... was that the bad news?

Well, my mistake. The other bad news is the so-called close involvement of Shia LaBeouf.

Yeah, you heard me right. Li'l Indy and erstwhile Transformers liaison Shia LaBeouf is attached to play the lead role, which is to say bereaved boyfriend Ig Perrish. Ig remains the sole suspect in the case of the brutal rape and murder of Merrin, the love of his life, and a year to the day, our man in Maine wakes up from a night of soul-searching with a brutal hangover... and a stubby pair of horns sprouting from his head.

The horns aren't just accessories, however. Ig soon realises that these inexplicable growths have given him the power of truth-telling, for in their presence, no-one Ig speaks to can lie. A particularly convenient power, he understands - that is just as soon as the hair of the dog's worn off - particularly particularly convenient considering Merrin's killer is still out there somewhere.

Thus, this devil goes to town.

###

I adored Horns. Here's the TSS review to that effect. In fact I was thinking about it just the other day, because it's been just long enough since Horns hit that I'm starting to wonder when we'll hear word one about Hill's next novel.

Alas, we'll all have to wait a little longer to hear good Joe Hill news. Instead, there's this, and you must understand I wasn't immediately down on these developments, not the moment I got wind of 'em. But Shia Labeouf, when Joseph Gordon Levitt seems a far more suitable (not to mention talented) choice. And moreover, Mandalay Pictures.

Look them up on IMDB yourself. This is the production company who gave us not Wild Things, which had at least two redemptive qualities, but Wild Things 2, which had none - confusing, as I recall, redemptive qualities for breasts. Which I most certainly did not just now. Mandalay must have agreed, because as if to make up for such an embarassing oversight, the house then pumped out Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough and Wild Things: Foursome in quick succession, making up for the first sequel's qualitative shortfall with sheer, unadulterated quantity.

Then again they were also responsible for The Jacket, an ambitious genre flick which should have been far, far better, by all accounts, but settled in the end for status as Not Terrible. So there's hope.

Or hope of some tiny glimmer of hope somewhere, I should say. If you squint for it hard enough.

Anyone out there prepared to be positive about this news?

Karmic Chameleons

So I've got good news, and bad news.

Shall we get the bad juju out of the way first? We shall. That way we can end on a high. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is --- oh, I can hardly bear to say it... it's coming back.

Maybe.

Sadly, if and when it does - and sickeningly there seems to be something of an appetite for some sort of reboot (if not necessarily the one that's been mooted about the interwebs this past fortnight or so) - everyone's favourite vampire slayer will be returning short ANYONE who had ANYTHING to do with the original, touchstone series.

Kristy Swanson - what was Buffy in the dodgy movie, remember her now? - seems to be the only voice in support of this filth. Someone been out of work a little too long, maybe? Well, take a hike, Kristy Swanson! You keep out of this, you hear?

Anyway, io9 had the story originally, cobbled together from a press release issued on November 11th. Apparently Whit Anderson, who if you'll pardon the play on words we know not one whit about - not even an IMDB page, would you believe it - went to Warner Brothers with a unique new take on the Scoobs, and lo, the scent of money pervaded the air. But don't worry! As the sales pitch assures us, "this is not your high school Buffy [but] she'll be just as witty, tough, and sexy and we all remember her to be."

Mmm. Lucky that. That's almost exactly what I remember Buffy being. Good to know those WB folks totally get it, right?

You know, I'd get up in arms about all this, but I have a real hard time believing this is even a real thing. Not to suggest io9's talking hooey or anything, but their headline - "It's really happening" - is true only insofar as some people somewhere have an inkling to reboot Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Things are no further along than that, and I don't expect they'll get much further along. Thank Christ. Though I suppose stranger things have happened...

Moving along. The good news? The good news is the latest development as re: the proposed Locke and Key TV series. Locke and Key, for those who don't already know, is a comic book. Now I like comic books - not too much of a surprise, I hope - and given Joe Hill's involvement, I expect I'd like this comic book very much indeed, except... umm. Let's say I gave up on single issues many a year ago (more like I went cold turkey), and even the cost-to-time-spent ratio of trade paperback collections has gotten hard to reconcile of late, so Locke and Key is - alongside The Walking Dead, Ex Machina and a hundred hundred others - one of those series I've been dying to get my teeth into.

Well, what with the news of the TV series, now I won't have to!

Oh, but I'm only teasing. :)

But the news as per the mooted adaptation of Locke and Key has gone from great to incredible. As if having onboard the showrunners of far and away the best genre series currently on television - why Fringe of course - wasn't significant enough of a class act, add to that the likely involvement of Mark Romanek, director of One Hour Photo and most recently Never Let Me Go (which, damn it all, still hasn't hit theatres here in the UK). Romanek's reportedly set to direct the pilot episode.

If that all doesn't speak highly of this show's massive swag bag of potential, I don't know what finally will.

I'm certainly hyped. You?

Book Review: Mr Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett

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The Book Depository

"It is the time of the Great Depression. The dustbowl has turned the western skies red and thousands leave their homes seeking a better life. Marcus Connelly seeks not a new life, but a death - a death for the mysterious scarred man who murdered his daughter.

"And soon he learns that he is not alone. Countless others have lost someone to the scarred man. They band together to track him, but as they get closer, Connelly begins to suspect that the man they are hunting is more than human. As the pursuit becomes increasingly desperate, Connelly must decide just how much he is willing to sacrifice to get his revenge."

***

Mr Shivers represents the most impressive horror fiction debut since Joe Hill made his big break with the wonderfully wicked Heart-Shaped Box. In point of fact, though bleaker by half, Robert Jackson Bennett's first novel is a more memorable experience than even that.

There. I've said it.

With the blurb behind me, I turned the first few pages of Mr Shivers not knowing quite what to expect. My first thought was a simple, bloody revenge thriller, but soon enough it came clear that Bennett's debut was as much an unsettling tale of the macabre as that, or perhaps a careful character study of a man reeling from an awful loss. Or indeed, a mythic road-trip set against the crimson-tinged dustbowl of the Great Depression. But Mr Shivers is none of those things in isolation, though its narrative takes in every one and more besides. It defies description. It defies even its too-often degenerate genre. It is, and by a large margin, the best novel I've read in 2010 thus far.

That it's Bennett's first only startles me all the more. His is a voice that bleeds confidence: precise and assured, he spins his tale directly, with little of the digression and obfuscation many new novelists lean upon to disguise their uncertainty. We meet Connelly, a man devastated by the untimely death of his daughter, and learn of his vengeful intent; he comes upon a hodgepodge of other lost souls, each wronged in their own way by the scarred man in gray Connelly hunts; and together, the hobo gang trudge through the endless trail of death and destruction the enigmatic Mr Shivers leaves in his wake.

Mr Shivers is in many respects a rather straightforward novel. From the first chapter to the last, there is a clear, perfectly paced throughline that keeps the narrative tense. The object of Connelly's hatred never seems far away, and so the reader is drawn from encounter to encounter feeling always that the explosive showdown between these two men - not so dissimilar in character and purpose as they might think - is sure to come soon. When inevitably Connelly and his disparate companions do approach the end of their deadly pilgrimage, readers will have long felt its desperate pull - inexorable, awful and awesome all at once.

Connelly is a brilliantly laconic character, terse and deadly, demented by the death of his daughter, a "future and a life violently aborted without even a cry to mark its passing from the world." On his journey he comes upon a motley assortment of kindred spirits which sing with the same raw passion: a pitiable fortune teller, a fallen man of the Lord, a woman faced with a quandary much like his own. The most haunting of all the characters in Mr Shivers, however, has to be its evocative setting against a decaying America which writhes against the sky with all the horror of a ball of breeding snakes. Bennett's debut is, in its way, a song for a dying earth; a lament to a moment in our history "which they all now felt was penultimate. They lived in a dead and dying age. Already they were but memories for the future."

Bennet's prose is exquisite, sparse and poetic, dripping with the sort of sacred profanity Crooked Little Vein writer Warren Ellis has made his stock and trade. In the last act, the gray man explains that he has "stood on the edge of the world and pissed into nothingness. I've seen the things that hide and dance behind the stars in the sky and I pinned them to the ground and laughed and made them tell me their names one by one." Mr Shivers is shot through, too, of nuggets of hobo wisdom, such as the "only thing that's worse than a thing that don't work is a thing that almost works" and, on law and America, "If it's going to tell me what to do and what not to do, it better be on hand... This is just dirt we're standing on, son. Dirt and stone. Ain't no lines in the earth."

Mr Shivers is bleak, mythic and bloody: the most thrilling novel of its ouvre since The Road. In fact, the two narratives have a great deal in common, although the veins of genre certainly run deeper in Mr Shivers than in Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer prizewinner. But then, as the preacher says, "sometimes the road goes through places that are... not normal. The road is more than just dirt."

Robert Jackson Bennett is a staggeringly persuasive argument for the infinite possibilities of the horror novel and his debut is a landmark for the genre. Mr Shivers will take your breath away.

***

Mr Shivers

by Robert Jackson Bennett

January 2010, Orbit

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /
The Book Depository


Recommended and Related Reading

Book Review: Horns by Joe Hill

[Buy this book on Amazon
in the UK / in the US]

"Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with one hell of a hangover, a raging headache... and a pair of horns growing from his temples.

"Once, Ig lived the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned American musician, and the younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, Ig had security and wealth and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more - he had the love of Merrin Williams, a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic. Then beautiful, vivacious Merrin was gone - raped and murdered, under inexplicable circumstances - with Ig the only suspect. He was never tried for the crime, but in the court of public opinion, Ig was and always would be guilty.

"Now Ig is possessed with a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look, and he means to use it to find the man who killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere.

"It's time for a little revenge; it's time the devil had his due."

***

It's been nearly three years since Joe Hill made such a decisive debut to the horror genre with the cracking narrative of a miserable old rocker drowning in his own bitterness whose past literally comes back to haunt him. At the time, it was difficult to discuss Heart-Shaped Box without reference to the somewhat mixed blessing of its author's paternal heritage - Hill's nom de plume was revealed even before that novel's publication - but the terrifying tale with which he exploded into the scene, not to mention the impressive collection of short stories that succeeded it, proved strong enough to cement his reputation as among the great new voices of speculative fiction. Any other considerations were rendered moot the moment Judas Coyne discovered exactly whose cursed suit he had ordered from eBay.

The Speculative Scotsman has had an eye out for Hill's second novel since, and I'm pleased to report that if Horns is anything to go by, this is not an author at all intimidated by the dreaded sophomore slump. If anything, Horns is a superior work of fiction than its esteemed predecessor, for though Heart-Shaped Box was an incredible debut, it had its faults: slightly overlong and too steeped in pop culture for the references that came thick and fast to stand the test of time, some aspects of Heart-Shaped Box floundered when its narrative went too far off the beaten path of its primary thrust.

With his second novel, however, Hill takes the measure of both of those problems. Horns is pacey and direct from start to finish. Somehow, the author makes exciting storytelling from even the occasional flashbacks to pivotal encounters of Ig's youth, and though he still manages to namecheck Norah Jones, Dean Koontz and Guns 'n Roses within the first 30 pages, Hill is not sidetracked by either diversion for long.

Horns has as its snappy premise the startling notion of a man who people are compelled to be entirely truthful with. Like Judas, the grumpy protagonist of Heart-Shaped Box, Ig is a privileged individual who notoriety turns against him. When the love of his life is raped and murdered, Ig is the only real suspect, and though he has been cleared of any wrongdoing, Ig has since descended a downward spiral into the unrelenting clutches of depression and self-pity. When Horns begins - a year to the day of Merrin's untimely death and after a night of remembrance spent drunk and doing who knows what - he wakes "a pale, gaunt man with tragically receding hair, a goatee, and curving horns" poking out from his temples, bloody-tipped and bone-driven; horns that mean anyone who Ig talks to will share, unbidden, their darkest secrets and innermost regrets.

Hill makes the most of his high concept, and though some readers may be put off by Ig's too-literal transformation towards the third act, he grounds the devilish aspects of his protagonist in a cast of characters that practically leap off the page. I won't say much about them for fear of spoiling the myriad surprises Horns has in store, but between Merrin, Terry, Lee and Glenda, Hill renders Ig's allies and enemies alike with startling precision and subtle brush-strokes. In point of fact, Ig himself is the only character that doesn't immediately appeal; to begin with, he seems less of an individual than a man at the mercy of the beats of Hill's narrative. Ig, however, comes into his own soon enough, most particularly through the aforementioned flashbacks of better, bygone days which bring the likes of The Body and Hearts in Atlantis to mind.

If I could level only a single piece of praise in the direction of Horns, it would be that I had a sneaking suspicion as to who murdered Merrin within a few moments of first hearing the responsible party's name. At that point, I was already having such a whale of a time with Hill's incredible second novel that I would gladly have plodded through the remainder towards a climax I'd seen coming hundreds of pages before - it's the journey that counts, after all, not the destination. But Horns metes our revelation with shocking speed; an hour into my reading Hill discloses the very fact I'd feared would take the entire novel to arrive at. And the surprises certainly don't stop there.

I've said too much already. Let me close out this review with a quote that I feel speaks to Hill's staggering talent. Of his brother, Ig observes that Terry "had inherited their father’s most precious gift: the more he practiced at a thing, the less practiced it sounded, and the more natural and lively and unexpected it became." With Heart-Shaped Box and now Horns under his belt, Hill has shown himself to every bit the equal of his father - if not his better in terms of their respective recent efforts. The more this man writes, the better it gets, and though at the time of this writing Horns is itself still a few weeks away from general release in the UK, I can't help myself: I've begun to anticipate Hill's next novel already. If five drafts and three more years is the cost of another book as original and exciting as this, then that's a price I'm perfectly prepared to pay. Hill has more twists and tricks up his sleeve than the very best conjurers, and between its characters, its concept and its unrelenting pace, Horns outshines even the brilliant first blush of an astonishingly convincing and entertaining new voice in speculative fiction.

***

Horns

by Joe Hill

March 2010, Gollancz: London

[Buy this book on Amazon
in the UK / in the US]

Recommended and Related Reading

Book Preview: Horns by Joe Hill

[Pre-order this book from Amazon

in the UK / in the US]

***

It's been nearly three years since Joe Hill made such a decisive debut to the sprawling horror genre with the cracking tale of a miserable old rocker drowning in his own bitterness whose past literally comes back to haunt him. At the time, it was difficult to discuss Heart-Shaped Box without reference to the somewhat mixed blessing of its author's paternal heritage, but that novel, not to mention the impressive collection of short stories that both preceded and suceeded it, proved strong enough to cement Hill's reputation as among the great new voices of speculative fiction. Any other considerations were rendered moot the moment Judas Coyne discovered exactly whose cursed suit he had ordered from eBay.

The Speculative Scotsman has had an eye out for Hill's sophomore effort since, and it was with no small measure of excitement that I discovered the very thing listed on Amazon a few months ago. As of this writing, Horns is due out in a few short weeks, and I'm not ashamed to say its devilish premise has one specific reader on tenterhooks already:

"Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with one hell of a hangover, a raging headache... and a pair of horns growing from his temples.

From Your Blogosphere Correspondent (08/01/10)

A myriad of developments and disagreements have over the past few days made the speculative fiction blogosphere a particularly entertaining place to be. Conveniently, The Speculate Scotsman thought to round a few of the best articles up for your reading pleasure. In no particular order, then:

• 
  
  There's a debate in progress about the appropriateness of describing prose as "clunky" in literary criticism. Hal Duncan, author of Ink and Vellum, looks to have challenged Mark Charon Newton, staunch proponent of the New Weird if Nights of Villjamur is anything to judge by, to all-out internet warfare. This link will get you started.
  
  
  

• 
  
  The most recent episode of Alex Telander's podcast played host to none other than Guy Gavriel Kay, who discusses at some length the research he undertook before beginning the process of writing his forthcoming Tang-dynasty epic Under Heaven. Download or stream it from the Book Banter blog.
  
  
  

• 
  
  Joe Hill, successor to Stephen King - and not just in terms of their shared DNA - recently updated his blog with the results of an extensive Twitter Q&A session about his new novel, Horns. There should be a more thorough preview of it on the blog this week.
  
  
  

• 
  
  Here's hoping Mark Charon Newton might have something to say about James Long's recent assertion at Speculative Horizons that the New Weird genre is growing less relevant by the day. The suggestion has been the subject of some interesting discussion beginning here.
  
  
  

• 
  
  And finally, Pat from the one and only Fantasy Hotlist somehow charmed author Peter V. Brett into sharin with the internet at large an excerpt from his April sequel to The Painted Man. If you just can't wait, read it here.