King Sorrow
A Novel
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4.8 • 13 Ratings
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill, a chilling tale of modern-world dangers, dark academia, and the unexpected consequences of revenge as six friends dabble in the occult and are tragically, horrifyingly successful… calling forth an evil entity that demands regular human sacrifice.
“A brilliantly Faustian fable with a heart as huge as a dragon’s, and a stinging twist in its tail. I devoured it.” —Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in Suite 11
Arthur Oakes is a reader, a dreamer, and a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters, exceptional library, and beautiful buildings. But his idyll—and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot—is shattered when a local drug dealer and her partner corner him into one of the worst crimes he can imagine: stealing rare books from the college library.
Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others—brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen—don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world.
But there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year—or become his next meal.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
After you get to the end of this thrilling, clever, and well-paced doorstopper, you’ll know why you never send a monster to go after another monster. In 1989, drug dealers threaten to harm Arthur Oakes’ social-activist mother in prison unless he steals rare books from the university library that they can sell. Trapped in a devil’s bargain, Arthur and a loyal coterie of friends foolishly get a real devil (well, a dragon) to help get him out of it. Through their collective belief—and drunkenness—they summon the dragon King Sorrow, who agrees to kill the dealers but demands his own yearly price in blood. The friends soon regret this new, terrible pact, and they’ll be dealing with the consequences for decades. Fans of Joe Hill (and, yeah, his father, Stephen King) will get dizzy on this heady, gory mix of supernatural horror, thriller, and dark fantasy. And don’t miss all the sly references Hill makes to his dad’s fiction and prominent social media presence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Hill (The Fireman) masterfully sustains tension throughout this immersive doorstopper of a horror novel. On one of college student Arthur Oakes's visits to his mother, Erin, in the Vermont prison where she is incarcerated, he recognizes Tana Nighswander, a pizza delivery person and campus drug dealer, in the waiting room. Tana and her older sister, Jayne, are also there visiting family, but Tana is denied admittance for wearing inappropriate clothing. Arthur offers her his hoodie—but that good deed is punished severely when Jayne threatens to have her prison associates blind Erin unless Arthur steals valuable books from his college library that she'll then sell to pay off a debt. While Arthur initially accedes to that extortion, once he comes across an arcane ritual in a rare book, he decides to use it to summon a dragon, King Sorrow, from the realm known as the Long Dark, and sic it on Jayne. Arthur gets more than he bargains for, however, finding his life, and the lives of those dear to him, endangered by the beast. Hill makes accepting the supernatural easy through his pitch-perfect characterizations and doses of black humor. This reinforces Hill's reputation as a titan of the genre.
