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Six quirky but resilient youngsters encounter the path of a immense and fearsome otherworldly evil that has infiltrated our existence from the outer limits of darkness. They have no choice but to wage a lifelong battle fighting it, experiencing one nightmare after another in the struggle.

An Echoing Plot with a Fresh Twist

This describes the premise, in essence, of Stephen King’s novel It (arguably his finest; no arguments). It parallels of King’s son Joseph Hillstrom King’s recent horror doorstopper, in which a band of six invoke the ancient, infinitely malicious beast King Sorrow from the Endless Night to assist them in vanquishing some baddies. As one might expect, their supernatural ritual goes awry.

Embracing a Family Lineage

The author began his writing journey making great efforts to avoid any connection from his renowned parent, publishing under the pen name he still uses today and avoiding meeting his agent (he possesses a strong similarity to his father). Yet with this recent release, he leans into it. Certain passages that consciously reflect some of the senior author’s well-known (“The man in black fled across the desert …”); a scene that evokes a signature King element (a riddling contest). In this whopper of a novel, Hill is delighting in his family connection, and we delight along with him.

The Cast of the Main Characters

Back to those friends: the majority are students at the imagined this academic setting in the New England state. We have Arthur, studious and brilliant, solving ancient puzzles in his spare time; the character Colin, wealthy, clever, and prone to trampling obstacles in his path; the twin siblings; the stunning Allie herself. Additionally, Gwen appears, who remains outside their academic circle, but becomes a key part of their circle as they dabble, partly convinced, partly skeptical, in the occult.

The Pivotal Ritual

Arthur is, for reasons we don’t need to go into, forced into stealing rare books from his beloved college library by a set of regional villains. This devastates his scholarly soul, notably because he’s forced to acquire the collection’s foremost and chilling publication: the journal of occultist this enigmatic character (condemned “for dealing with infernal entities in 1703”; the binding is crafted from his flesh). The intrepid group peruse the diary, realize they are able to call forth what the author references as a “arrogant beast to assist Arthur with his coercion issue – and devote the remaining story facing the fallout. The dragon will undoubtedly remove those troublesome local drug dealers, but they’ll have to choose a fresh offering every twelve months or succumb to the dragon’s wrath. As Arthur later puts it: “You invoke terrible forces, all you get is more dragons.”

Stylistic Dexterity and Inventive Breadth

Covering a generation, Joe Hill transitions with natural fluency through various literary forms: as the friends attempt to deal with the circumstances they find themselves in by, variously, selecting clearly malevolent individuals to offer up, or seeking means to kill the dragon themselves, we go from thriller to shadowy tale, covert operations to romance to horror. A standout transition was to a quest story, deep in the caves beneath this UK region, a part tinged by the Lord of the Rings author that was wonderfully frightening.

A Rich Tapestry of Fear and Hope

There are trolls – bridge-dwelling ones and internet antagonists, genuinely frightening and superbly depicted. There are magical swords and treacheries, heart-stopping scenes of bravery and ones of dreadful evil, both mortal and otherworldly. This is a remarkable achievement: a horror novel that is above all a paean to the imagination, and to affection and camaraderie. “We longed for a tale to embrace and {now we’ve got one|presently we possess it|currently we hold it,” says the wealthy student as the friends assemble around a surface, preparing to summon their beast into being with the power of their thoughts.

As Hill puts it in his epigraph: “Here be dragons”. Do not overlook this.