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Six oddball but brave kids encounter the path of a colossal and fearsome otherworldly darkness that has invaded our realm from the outer limits of oblivion. They have no choice but to devote their lives fighting it, facing terror upon terror in the process.

An Echoing Plot with a New Twist

This is the plot, roughly, of Stephen King’s novel It (his best; no debate). It is also the plot of the celebrated author’s heir Joe Hill’s latest chilling tome, in which a close-knit group summon the ancient, utterly malevolent serpent King Sorrow from the Abyssal Void to assist them in vanquishing some antagonists. Needless to say, their supernatural ritual goes awry.

Embracing a Authorial Heritage

The author launched his profession going to great lengths to distance himself from his renowned parent, using the pseudonym he continues to employ and avoiding meeting his agent (he possesses a striking resemblance to his father). But in this latest novel, he fully acknowledges it. Several quotes that consciously reflect some of King’s most famous (that classic opening line); a moment that recalls a recurring theme in King’s works (a battle of wits). In this whopper of a novel, the author rejoices in his family connection, and the audience revels alongside.

Meet the Protagonists

Returning to the group: five of them are students at the made-up the esteemed institution in the New England state. We have Arthur, bookish and brilliant, deciphering historical enigmas in his spare time; Colin, affluent, clever, and prone to trampling those who oppose him; twins Donna and Donovan; the attractive Allie. And there’s Gwen, who doesn’t study with them, but assumes a vital role of their band as they experiment, somewhat credulous, half not, in supernatural practices.

The Fateful Ceremony

The protagonist finds himself, for reasons we don’t need to go into, compelled to pilfer prized manuscripts from his beloved college library by a bunch of local criminals. This devastates his scholarly soul, especially when he’s compelled to seize the institution’s prized and chilling work: the diary of practitioner Enoch Crane (executed “for dealing with infernal entities in 1703”; the cover is made from his skin). Our Scooby gang peruse the diary, learn they can invoke what Crane describes as a “proud worm to help Arthur out with his blackmail problem – and spend the rest of the novel facing the fallout. The dragon will indeed rid them of those annoying regional antagonists, but they are required to pick a different victim each year or become his victim themselves. As Arthur later puts it: “You plant seeds of destruction, all you get is more dragons.”

Narrative Versatility and Creative Range

Covering a generation, Joe Hill transitions with effortless ease across narrative styles: as the allies strive to manage the predicament they find themselves in by, in different ways, choosing undeniably wicked targets to immolate, or searching for methods to destroy the entity themselves, we go from suspense to shadowy tale, covert operations to romance to terror. My favorite genre switch was to a quest story, within the subterranean depths under the English county, a segment tinged by the fantasy maestro that was magnificently horrifying.

A Detailed Mosaic of Horror and Optimism

The novel features trolls – bridge-dwelling ones and digital trolls, truly terrifying and superbly depicted. There are magical swords and betrayals, pulse-pounding sequences of valor and scenes of terrible wickedness, both human and extraterrestrial. This is a remarkable achievement: a frightening tale that is above all a paean to the human inventiveness, 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 the wealthy student as the friends sit around the table, preparing to summon their serpent into being with the power of their thoughts.

In the author’s own words in his epigraph: “Here be dragons”. Ensure you experience it.