King Sorrow: Should You Read Joe Hill’s New Horror Novel?
King Sorrow is the newest horror novel by Joe Hill. Though it’s not without its issues, despite being nearly 900 pages long, the book is a fast, easy, and enjoyable read. There are sections of it that are truly fantastic, and while I’d hesitate to call King Sorrow truly terrifying horror, there are great moments of suspense.
King Sorrow is a make a deal with the devil story. In this particular case, the devil in question is a powerful dragon named King Sorrow. Before we get to the supernatural elements of the book though, Hill takes his time developing his cast of college-aged characters, particularly Arthur Oakes. Arthur is being forced to steal rare books by a pair of ruthless drug dealers, thus the need for the summoning of the dragon to help deal with them.
Stories like this with magical dragons and deals with supernatural beings can often feel pretty out there, but Hill does a good job making the story seem grounded in reality. If there really were evil dragons that could be summoned, this feels like how it would happen. Of course, we know that after Arthur and his five friends summon the beast things won’t turn out as planned.
King Sorrow is split into five main books. Each book centers on a different one of the friends and there are also time jumps of varying lengths between sections. The books feel very distinct from one another. They’re obviously connected in that they’re telling the overall story, but they feature different side characters. Since they each narrow their focus on one or two of the main six friends, King Sorrow feels almost like a collection of shorter stories that are being combined to tell an overarching tale than one long book.
I thought the second book, which focuses on Allie taking a flight, and the third book, where we concentrate on the twins, Donna and Van, who find themselves in a not great situation, were both fantastic. I’d describe all of King Sorrow as a page-turner, but during these parts specifically it was hard to put the book down.
Of course, if there are stronger parts of the book, there are, by comparison, sections that aren’t quite as good. I think the opening book could’ve been shortened a little bit to get things going faster. I also didn’t dislike the ending of King Sorrow, but I wasn’t blown away in the manner I was with some of the other parts of the novel.
Hill is great at creating suspense and the ticking clock of the dragon (who arrives every Easter) works well at adding to the tension. While I think King Sorrow is definitely a horror story, it’s not particularly scary. There are some scary ideas, and I think maybe if the book was ever made into a TV series (which wouldn’t surprise me) some moments could appear frightening on screen. But reading it I was more enthralled with seeing where the story would go than ever actually afraid.
Author Joe Hill (as I’m sure the majority of you already know) is the son of Stephen King. I haven’t read a ton of Stephen King, but the similarities are definitely there. For starters, much of King Sorrow is set in Maine.
King Sorrow reads like a multipart spooky campfire tale. There are some other supernatural elements here, too, besides just dragons, so if you’re not a fan of those, this might not be the book for you. Personally, I enjoyed Hill’s writing style, which is descriptive and easy to read, and found the deal with a devil (or dragon in this case) story to be engaging. There’s a good bit of quality storytelling to enjoy here.
Grade: 8.5/10