In The Tall Grass by Stephen King & Joe Hill – Review

Title - In The Tall Grass

Authour – Stephen King & Joe Hill

Publisher - Gollancz

Price – £0.99 (Kindle) – £10. 10 (audio)

 

 

 

 

 

King and Hill, Father and Son, a dynamic duo with equal strengths, twisted imaginations and the ability to turn in a diabolical tale from something as simple as a field of grass.

Going in I was expecting some side-story along the lines of Children Of The Corn, but I was wrong, this is as far removed from that classic King tale as Count Duckula is from Bram Stokers Dracula. OK maybe slight exaggeration, but you get my drift?

Anyone familiar with both author’s work will know they are brilliant at visualising everyday settings with a sinister, supernatural twist. In this trimmed down short story you get all that, without the high page count. A brother and sister taking a road trip across America hear a cry for help from within a field of tall grass. Deciding to go help they soon find themselves disorientated, lost and slowly becoming spooked by their surroundings.

The scares are fast in coming, the horror slow in building, and the pay-off though predictable is satisfying. Also, as an added bonus you get two neat excerpts after the main event, a preview of Stephen King’s Dr. Sleep – a prequel to The Shining – and an excerpt to Joe Hill’s next novel NOS4R2, which might be about vampires (based on the title alone).

 

 

Gollancz Reveals Two New Covers

Gollancz have revealed coves for a couple of forthcoming novels. The first due in 2013 and the other as yet has no publication date.

NOS4R2 is the new novel by Joe Hill.

 

Based on the title I’d guess this is a vampire story. Interestingly, after a search online, 1931 (the date on the plate) was the year the original Dracula staring Bela Lugosi was released. Not sure if that’s relevant though.

 

The Dark Defiles is the third in the A Land Fit For Heroes trilogy by Richard Morgan.

 

Continuing the story of Ringil Eskiath this last installment promises to be fairly packed with numerous storylines coming to a head. Richard has posted that to date the word count in increasing and hinting he may have to split the book.

 

Horns By Joe Hill – Book Review

Horns

By Joe Hill

Published by Gollancz

Readily available in paperback and Kindle

RRP £7.99 in Paperback / £4.99 Kindle

Ignatius Parrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. Next morning he woke with a hell of a hangover, and horns growing from his temples. Once Ig had a blessed life, a life of privilege. The second son of a well know musician, brother to a rising late-night chat show host, he has wealth, security, status; and the love of the girl of his dream Merrin Williams.

Then Merrin was gone, ripped from his life, brutally raped and murdered, but worse Ig was the Police’s prime suspect. Although never tried for the crime he was convicted by the court of public opinion. He was whispered about, shunned, ignored. Everything he had taken from him.

Now he had the horns, and with them a terrible power to look into people’s darkest secrets and lay them bare. With a touch he knows what they know, with a suggestion he can steer them to do as he wishes. Ig sets out on a quest to find who killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best never got him anywhere, now it’s time for payback, time the Devil got his due.

This is the second novel by Joe Hill, and like Heart-Shaped Box has left me thinking why I’m so late in reading his work. The way this story unfolds may seem daunting to some, it is told in a non-linear fashion jumping around in time looking at events in the present as well as before and during the core of the story; the rape and murder of Merrin Williams.

Throughout the story you are given an insight into the main characters, either through the parts told during Ig & Merrin’s first meeting and after, or through the power of the horns enabling Ig to see into people minds. In this way you get the back-story to the couple, and their friends, as well as different POV’s of the lead up, and eventual crime, inflicted on Merrin. Through the power of the horns Ig unravels the events of the night Merrin died. Ig’s own memories of that night are vague – due to him passing out blind drunk – meaning there is some lingering doubt throughout for the reader if he is actually the killer.

As much as telling the story of Merrin’s death and the aftermath, the book also looks at how the character of the Devil is perceived. Ideas are put forward that in some ways the Devil is an anti-hero, not the embodiment of total evil. Another is that God and the Devil are on the same side, both out to punish sinners. To some these ideas may not sit well, I suppose it depends on your faith, as an atheist I find them interesting and do fall in camp of the Devil getting a bad – and one sided – press.

Joe has taken great care to create a believable and sustainable world. Much like his first book he has taken pains to make the settings and characters comfortable to be around. He has also laid seeds for a shared universe with the name check for a character from Heart-Shaped Box; Judas Coyne.

Horns is a story about the devil inside all of us, and what happens when we let them have free reign. 

Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill – Book Review

Heart-Shaped Box

By Joe Hill

Published by Gollancz

Readily available in paperback and Kindle

RRP £7.99 in Paperback / £4.99 Kindle

Judas “Jude” Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals, a real hangman’s noose, a snuff film. He’s an aging death-metal god and his tastes for the unnatural are well known to his legions of fans. But nothing he possesses matches his latest purchase, a dead man’s suit.

For $1,000 Judas became the owner of a suit said to be haunted by a restless spirit. But what UPS delivers to his door packed in the black heart-shaped box is no metaphorical ghost, no conversation piece. Suddenly the suit’s previous owner is everywhere, behind the bedroom door, sitting in the passenger seat of Jude’s restored Mustang; staring out from the widescreen TV.

But the ghost has no interest in simple haunting; it has a purpose, a reason to be in Jude’s house. Everywhere Jude goes the ghost is there with a gleaming razor blade on a chain hanging from its hand.

It’s been a lot of years since I read a ghost story, I’d hazard a guess it was the early 1980s, and was probably written by Joe Hill’s father.  As I read Heart-Shaped Box I was reminded a lot of King’s early work, his attention to detail with all things every-day. Hill’s style does differ from his father’s though; the story is tighter, more compact and the suspense delivered in sharper doses.

The idea behind the story is pretty straightforward; a vengeful spirit intent on righting a wrong. But as you get into the story you realize there is more to it. The wrong the ghost is attempting to right, is not as clear cut as you at first thought; the ghost’s motivations clouded by what its sense of right and wrong was when it was alive. It is all helped by very believable characters (if a ghost can be said to be believable) that are put in a situation that, despite its supernatural element, feels very real.

Judas Coyne is every inch the aging rocker living out his semi-retirement with a string of young girls to keep his bed warm. Georgia, his latest bed warmer, is not just there as someone for the ghost to chase though, she’s a very strong character, very resourceful, obviously made from the same stuff that made Buffy Summers. Together they are thrown into a nightmare with seemingly no escape route, embarking on a harrowing road-trip not only fleeing the ghost but taking Jude into his past.

If you are a heavy metal fan you’ll love the references dotted throughout, the nods to bands great and small. If you’re a fan of good old fashioned ghost stories you’ll love the way this story is assembled, the pieces carefully crafted. Joe Hill maybe his father’s son and may share his love of rock and the macabre, but he is his own man and this tale – although echoing some of King’s earlier work – has a very distinctive voice that is Hill’s and Hill’s alone.