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Six oddball but doughty children fall into the path of a vast and fearsome otherworldly evil that has entered our existence from the deepest abyss of shadow. They have no choice but to wage a lifelong battle battling it, enduring one nightmare after another in the process.

A Familiar Plot with a New Approach

This describes the premise, roughly, of Stephen King’s novel It (arguably his finest; no arguments). It similarly frames of King’s son Joe Hill’s recent massive horror novel, in which a close-knit group summon the age-old, infinitely malicious serpent King Sorrow from the Long Dark to assist them in vanquishing some villains. As one might expect, their supernatural ritual has unintended consequences.

Celebrating a Authorial Heritage

The author launched his profession going to great lengths to avoid any connection from his famous father, publishing under the pen name he maintains to this day and eschewing in-person meetings with his agent (he bears a uncanny likeness to his father). But in this latest novel, he leans into it. There are lines that intentionally mirror some of the senior author’s well-known (“The man in black fled across the desert …”); a moment that recalls a signature King element (a battle of wits). In this whopper of a novel, Joe Hill takes pleasure in his lineage, and the audience revels alongside.

Meet the Central Figures

Focusing on the companions: five of them are students at the made-up Rackham College in Maine. There’s Arthur, studious and brilliant, cracking ancient puzzles in his spare time; another key figure, rich, clever, and inclined to bulldoze obstacles in his path; the twin siblings; the beautiful Allie. And there’s Gwen, who isn’t their classmate, but assumes a vital role of their group as they toy, partly convinced, partly skeptical, in arcane arts.

The Fateful Ritual

Arthur is, due to circumstances beyond his control, forced into stealing prized manuscripts from his beloved college library by a set of regional villains. This wounds his academic spirit, particularly as he’s forced to acquire the collection’s foremost and unsettling work: the logbook of practitioner Enoch Crane (put to death “for conspiring with dark forces in 1703”; the binding is made from his skin). The intrepid group read the journal, learn they can invoke what Crane describes as a “arrogant beast to aid our hero with his blackmail problem – and occupy the subsequent narrative facing the fallout. King Sorrow will certainly eliminate those troublesome local drug dealers, but they must select a different victim each year or fall prey to the beast. As Arthur later puts it: “You plant seeds of destruction, all you get is more dragons.”

Genre Versatility and Creative Breadth

Spanning forty years, Hill also moves with natural fluency across narrative styles: as the friends endeavor to address the circumstances they find themselves in by, through diverse methods, selecting clearly malevolent individuals to offer up, or searching for methods to destroy the entity themselves, we go from page-turner to shadowy tale, black-ops torture to affectionate subplot to horror. One particularly memorable shift was to a heroic journey, far beneath the surface beneath this UK region, a section tinged by JRR Tolkien that was magnificently horrifying.

A Rich Canvas of Fear and Hope

There are trolls – the classic variety and internet antagonists, truly terrifying and expertly realized. There are magical swords and betrayals, heart-stopping scenes of courage and scenes of terrible wickedness, both human and supernatural. This is a remarkable achievement: a chilling book that is chiefly a paean to the creative spirit, and to love and friendship. “We needed a story to believe and {now we’ve got one|presently we possess it|currently we hold it,” says this character as the friends gather at the table, making preparations to call forth their beast into being with the power of their thoughts.

As Hill puts it in his epigraph: “This is dragon territory”. Don’t miss them.