Literateur: "Fireman" is Hot! Hot! Hot!

I love Joe Hill. Yes, he's Stephen King's kid, but he's a fantastic writer on his own merits. And he's gotten better with each book- 20th Century Ghosts, Heart-Shaped Box, Horns, and NOS4A2. So obviously I'm stoked about his new one. (What madman wouldn't be?)

Problem: it's an apocalyptic plague novel. And that genre is far beyond played out.

It's a GOOD apocalyptic plague novel, though! Original touch: it's a plague of spontaneous combustion. It makes people unpredictably smoke for a while, and then catch fire and sometimes explode. Resulting in some great nightmarish scenes and imagery.

And it's tremendously well-written. Hill excels at poetic imagery and clever descriptions and observations.

But truth be told, the main characters didn't catch my interest at all. We don't get to know them before the plague hits and then they're in constant distress and arguing for the first 50 pages and the book just lost me.

I kept going for a while after that, but it never recaptured my attention. The title character was just kind of an annoying fire-throwing superhero. The pregnancy melodrama fell flat. Lots of people screaming and cussing non-stop at each other. LOUD NOISES. And the Cremation Crew would have been more shocking if the jarringly horrifying Torchwood: Miracle Day hadn't nailed that brutal concept.

It says at the end that Hill started writing this book in 2010. If Hill had cranked it out faster, he might have hit the genre before it was overrun by Divergent Hungry Zombie Strains of apocalypse in movies, books, and TV.

As is- meh. And it's really surprising that he didn't nail the characters, because that's usually his strength. In all his other books, you really love the characters and hope they're gonna be okay.

It's getting great reviews, though. So maybe you'll like it. And I take no joy in reporting that it did nothing for me. Just a heads-up: modulate your expectations, because this one is getting an awful lot of hype.


-Phony McFakename

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