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Six quirky but brave kids confront the path of a vast and dreadful otherworldly malevolence that has invaded our realm from the farthest reaches of oblivion. They are compelled to wage a lifelong battle confronting it, enduring terror upon terror in the ordeal.

A Familiar Plot with a New Twist

This outlines the narrative, roughly, of the master of horror’s novel It (his best; undeniable). It parallels of the celebrated author’s heir Joseph Hillstrom King’s latest horror doorstopper, in which a close-knit group call forth the age-old, deeply sinister dragon King Sorrow from the Abyssal Void to help them defeat some villains. As one might expect, their arcane ceremony goes awry.

Acknowledging a Authorial Heritage

Joe Hill started his career striving diligently to distance himself from his renowned parent, publishing under the pen name he maintains to this day 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. Certain passages that deliberately echo some of King’s most famous (the famous Dark Tower introduction); a incident that brings to mind a recurring theme in King’s works (a riddling contest). In this whopper of a novel, the author rejoices in his heritage, and readers share in the joy.

The Cast of the Central Figures

Returning to the group: the majority are students at the made-up Rackham College in this northeastern locale. There’s Arthur, bookish and intelligent, deciphering ancient puzzles in his free moments; Colin, wealthy, clever, and prone to trampling anyone who stands in his way; Donna and Donovan; the beautiful Allie. And there’s Gwen, who remains outside their academic circle, but emerges as crucial of their group as they toy, partly convinced, half not, in supernatural practices.

The Fateful Ritual

The protagonist finds himself, as a result of external pressures, forced into stealing prized manuscripts from his treasured institution’s archives by a bunch of local criminals. This tears at his bookish heart, especially when he’s compelled to seize the library’s most valuable and disturbing work: the journal of occultist this enigmatic character (executed “for dealing with infernal entities in 1703”; the cover is crafted from his flesh). The intrepid group examine the log, discover they could summon what the occultist details as a clever snake to aid our hero with his coercion issue – and occupy the subsequent narrative facing the fallout. This ancient entity will indeed rid them of those problematic neighborhood criminals, but they’ll have to choose a different victim annually or fall prey to the beast. As Arthur later puts it: “You invoke terrible forces, all you get is further monstrosities.”

Narrative Versatility and Creative Breadth

Spanning forty years, Joe Hill transitions with seamless grace across narrative styles: as the allies strive to manage the situation they find themselves in by, variously, selecting clearly malevolent individuals to sacrifice, or searching for methods to slay the beast themselves, we go from page-turner to shadowy tale, black-ops torture to love story to terror. One particularly memorable shift was to a quest story, deep in the caves beneath this UK region, a section sprinkled with the Lord of the Rings author that was wonderfully frightening.

A Rich Mosaic of Dread and Optimism

There are trolls – bridge-dwelling ones and online ones, properly scary and superbly depicted. We see enchanted blades and treacheries, heart-stopping scenes of bravery and ones of dreadful evil, both earthly and otherworldly. It’s a tour de force: a horror novel that is above all a ode to the human inventiveness, and to devotion and companionship. “We longed for a tale to embrace and {now we’ve got one|presently we possess it|currently we hold it,” says this character as the companions assemble around a surface, getting ready to invoke their beast into being with the power of their thoughts.

In the author’s own words in his introductory quote: “Hic sunt dracones”. Do not overlook this.