BOOK REVIEW | KING SORROW | JOE HILL

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Bookish dreamer Arthur Oakes is a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters and beautiful buildings.

 But his idyll - and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot - is shattered when local drug dealers force him into a terrible crime: stealing rare and valuable books from the exceptional college library.

 Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for help: the wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren; brave, beautiful Allison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen. Together they dream up an impossible, fantastical scheme that they scarcely imagine will work: to summon the fabled dragon King Sorrow to kill those tormenting Arthur.

 But the six stumble backwards into a deadly bargain - they soon learn they must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow each year or one of them will become his next victim. Unleashing consequences they can neither predict nor control, this promise will, over the course of four decades, shape and endanger their lives in ways they could never expect.

 

REVIEW

Joe Hill returns to the magical world of the long form with his new book King Sorrow. A big book, with a big story about a big dragon.

Whilst visiting his mother in prison following her incarceration after a protest goes wrong and a police officer gets killed, Arthur Oakes’s life is changed forever when he tries to be chivalrous whilst visiting his mother.

He soon finds himself targeted by local drug dealers who are aggrieved that their supply chain to their mother in prison is severely disrupted. In light of this they force Arthur to steal priceless books from the library that he works at.

Meanwhile he soon finds himself making friends with the local oddballs at school. There’s twins Donna and Donavan, then there’s Gwen Underfoot, Allie and finally Colin.

After a violent confrontation with the local thugs, the group decide it's time to make a stand and do something about it. As Colin’s grandfather is a former psychologist who developed theories of brainwashing and interrogation techniques, and also has an interest in the paranormal, they decide that the best idea is to summon a supernatural being to deal with the problem, which is such a good idea! I mean what can go wrong?

The group take their inspiration from one of Colin’s grandfather’s experiments and a rare book written by a supposed witch that Arthur stole at the behest of the gang. At this, they call forth a dragon, King Sorrow. 

King Sorrow tells them that he will do their bidding. But if he does there is a price to his help as nothing in this world comes for free. Each year, at Easter, they must each pick one person to sacrifice to the dragon.

This puts them in a bit of a quandary. They can get rid of the problem, but can they live with the cost. (I bet you can’t guess!).

Spanning four decades, Joe Hill’s massive tome has a whole lot going on. 

Initially, the story tells the tale from Arthur Oake’s point of view, but as the story progresses it widens its net to include the points of view of the other individuals of the group.

Whilst King Sorrow has some comparisons to other books (I won’t mention it here!) as it has the similar set up of a group of kids who battle against the adversity of the big bad (in this case the two drug dealers as well as the dragon), the book owes more to David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. In fact, in a recent interview, Joe hill says as much (well not about the IT bit) and also identifies that Donna Tart’s book was as much of an influence on the story (and they make a cameo appearance in the book).

I must say that I have mixed feelings about this book. Yes, it is undeniably good, but is it as amazing as all the plaudits say it is. Truthfully? I personally didn’t think so, but that is my personal view and is definitely not the view of the countless five stars that are on Goodreads. 

In truth, I had a number of problems with this book and I think that they echo a number of other people’s views on the book. One of the main problems that I had with this book was expectations. As this book is lauded as being a triumph, I expected more out of it than what I actually got. 

I, personally, found the book far too long and there were many times that I wished the story would just end and I could get back to my day job. However, it went on and on and on. And no matter how many times that I almost threw in the towel, I continued to hope that something was going to capture my imagination, and to be honest there was and that was why I kept reading. 

However, the main problem that I had was the characters. I just didn’t connect with them at all. I found them totally unlikeable (and not in a good way) and there were many times that I almost threw the group to the dragon myself. It’s not that they were bad characters, I just did not care for them at all.I found them dull and boring, with about as much character as a wet paper bag. Not only that, I found them to be over entitled prigs that just made me think ‘serves em right’. Even the everyman character Arthur, I just found to be so yucky, and I really could not care less about the other entitled characters that populate the book. 

The other thing that riled me was that as the book was so long, there were certain storylines that just kinda fizzled out with not so much as whimper. For instance there was a recurrent storyline that had quite a lot of build up, but when it came to the denouement of that particular storyline, it seemed to be over in a paragraph, and I was like WHAT? REALLY? ALL THAT FOR THAT?

However, it wasn’t all bad. I really liked Hill’s style of writing, the way that he mixes pop culture references with short, snappy sentences, and the humour that he employs throughout the book. As well as that, Ilke how he peppered the story with lots of britishisms, showing his love for his adopted second home (unfortunately though, he also picks up on some of our more distastefully racist colloquialisms - and for people of a certain age, did you think that the troll in the second half of the book put you in mind of Jim Davidson? That was all I could see when he was on the page).

All in all, I thought it was a good - ish read. I liked the conceit of the book, the writing, the way that Hill mixes classic fantasy with finely crafted horror tropes. But! Like I said earlier, I just did not like the main characters, and for a book that revolves around the lives of these characters, that’s a big problem.