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A group of six oddball but brave children fall into the path of a colossal and dreadful otherworldly evil that has infiltrated our existence from the farthest reaches of oblivion. They are compelled to wage a lifelong battle battling it, experiencing terror upon terror in the ordeal.

A Resonant Plot with a Distinctive Spin

This outlines the narrative, roughly, of Stephen King’s novel It (arguably his finest; no arguments). It parallels of Stephen King’s offspring Joe Hill’s latest massive horror novel, in which a band of six call forth the primordial, utterly malevolent beast King Sorrow from the Long Dark to help them defeat some baddies. Needless to say, their arcane ceremony has unintended consequences.

Celebrating a Family Lineage

The author began his writing journey making great efforts to distance himself from his well-known dad, adopting the nom de plume he maintains to this day and steering clear of encounters with his agent (he bears a uncanny likeness to his father). But in this latest novel, he embraces it. Several quotes that consciously reflect some of the senior author’s well-known (“The man in black fled across the desert …”); a moment that brings to mind a recurring theme in King’s works (a riddling contest). Throughout this massive book, Hill is delighting in his lineage, and the audience revels alongside.

The Cast of the Central Figures

Returning to the group: five of them are pupils at the imagined Rackham College in this northeastern locale. We have Arthur, bookish and intelligent, solving Old English riddles in his leisure hours; another key figure, rich, clever, and inclined to bulldoze obstacles in his path; Donna and Donovan; the attractive Allie herself. Then we have Gwen, who remains outside their academic circle, but emerges as crucial of their circle as they toy, somewhat credulous, partly skeptical, in supernatural practices.

The Fateful Ritual

The protagonist finds himself, for reasons we don’t need to go into, compelled to pilfer rare books from his beloved college library by a bunch of local criminals. This tears at his bookish heart, especially when he’s made to take the institution’s prized and disturbing publication: the logbook of adept this enigmatic character (executed “for trafficking with the devyll in 1703”; the cover is made from his skin). These young investigators peruse the diary, learn they can invoke what the occultist details as a armoured devil” to aid our hero with his coercion issue – and occupy the subsequent narrative reaping the consequences. The dragon will indeed rid them of those troublesome local drug dealers, but they’ll have to choose a new sacrifice annually or succumb to the dragon’s wrath. In the character’s own words: “You plant seeds of destruction, all you get is additional horrors.”

Stylistic Fluidity and Imaginative Scope

Moving through four decades, Hill also moves with natural fluency across narrative styles: as the companions endeavor to address the predicament they find themselves in by, variously, choosing undeniably wicked targets to immolate, or seeking means to destroy the entity themselves, we transition from suspense to shadowy tale, black-ops torture to romance to horror. One particularly memorable shift was to a quest story, far beneath the surface below Cornwall, a part tinged by the fantasy maestro that was gloriously terrifying.

A Rich Tapestry of Horror and Hope

There are trolls – those living under bridges and internet antagonists, truly terrifying and expertly realized. The story includes mystic weapons and treacheries, breath-taking moments of valor and scenes of dreadful evil, both human and otherworldly. It’s a tour de force: a frightening tale that is primarily a paean to the human inventiveness, and to affection and camaraderie. “We longed for a tale to embrace and {now we’ve got one|presently we possess it|currently we hold it,” says the wealthy student as the allies sit around the table, preparing to summon their dragon to life with the force of their minds.

As Hill puts it in his introductory quote: “This is dragon territory”. Ensure you experience it.