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Six oddball but doughty youngsters confront the trail of a immense and fearsome supernatural malevolence that has infiltrated our realm from the farthest reaches of oblivion. They must devote their lives fighting it, enduring terror upon terror in the process.

A Familiar Storyline with a Distinctive Approach

This describes the premise, broadly speaking, of Stephen King’s novel It (a standout in his career; no debate). It is also the plot of Stephen King’s offspring Joseph Hillstrom King’s new chilling tome, in which a close-knit group summon the primordial, utterly malevolent serpent the Dragon King from the Abyssal Void to aid them in overcoming some baddies. Needless to say, their supernatural ritual has unintended consequences.

Acknowledging a Family Heritage

The author started his career going to great lengths to avoid any connection from his renowned parent, using the pseudonym he continues to employ and eschewing in-person meetings with his agent (he exhibits a strong similarity to his father). But in this latest novel, he leans into it. Several quotes that deliberately echo some of the senior author’s well-known (“The man in black fled across the desert …”); a scene that evokes a King plot point (a riddling contest). In this whopper of a novel, Joe Hill takes pleasure in his heritage, and we delight along with him.

Meet the Main Characters

Focusing on the companions: the majority are pupils at the fictional the esteemed institution in Maine. We have Arthur, bookish and intelligent, solving historical enigmas in his spare time; another key figure, wealthy, astute, and inclined to bulldoze obstacles in his path; twins Donna and Donovan; the beautiful Allie. Then we have Gwen, who isn’t their classmate, but emerges as crucial of their group as they toy, somewhat credulous, somewhat doubtful, in arcane arts.

The Fateful Ceremony

The protagonist finds himself, due to circumstances beyond his control, forced into stealing valuable volumes from his beloved college library by a group of neighborhood thugs. This tears at his bookish heart, especially when he’s compelled to seize the library’s most valuable and disturbing work: the logbook of practitioner Enoch Crane (executed “for dealing with infernal entities in 1703”; the binding is crafted from his flesh). The intrepid group peruse the diary, discover they could summon what the author references as a cunning serpent to aid our hero with his coercion issue – and spend the rest of the novel enduring the repercussions. The dragon will certainly eliminate those problematic neighborhood criminals, but they’ll have to choose a fresh offering every twelve months or become his victim themselves. As our protagonist states: “You plant seeds of destruction, all you get is additional horrors.”

Genre Dexterity and Imaginative Range

Moving through four decades, Joe Hill transitions with seamless grace through various literary forms: as the friends attempt to deal with the circumstances they find themselves in by, in different ways, picking people who are obviously evil to offer up, or searching for methods to slay the beast themselves, we go from page-turner to dark fantasy, black-ops torture to affectionate subplot to horror. A standout transition was to a heroic journey, far beneath the surface under the English county, a segment infused with the fantasy maestro that was gloriously terrifying.

A Rich Canvas of Horror and Hope

There are trolls – those living under bridges and online ones, truly terrifying and superbly depicted. The story includes mystic weapons and treacheries, pulse-pounding sequences of courage and instances of dreadful evil, both earthly and supernatural. This is a remarkable achievement: a horror novel that is above all a ode to the imagination, and to affection and camaraderie. “We required a narrative to trust and {now we’ve got one|presently we possess it|currently we hold it,” says the wealthy student as the allies assemble around a surface, preparing to summon their beast into being with the power of their thoughts.

According to Joe Hill in his epigraph: “This is dragon territory”. Ensure you experience it.