Guys. Guys. You guys. Holy shit. I'm so fucking stoked.
Joe Hill touches on the Kingiverse. Joe Hill mentions Pennywise and Midworld and holy shit are you fucking kidding the Treehouse of the Mind is in the same universe as Derry? That makes so much sense on so many levels but brings up just a ton of questions. Hill and King are very different writers and as much as I love King (I really do, he's wonderful and he's written books that have become such good friends over the years) I'm feeling really, really into Hill. But does Hill even want to go there? Was this just a gimme to people who are reading because they're fans of his dad but maybe not all that into him? I really hope not. I hope Hill gets a chance to expand this universe with his own twisted imprint and make it just all kinds of awesome.
Really. Please, please, please, it's so fucking good!
Anyway. NOS4A2 kind of fucking rules. I kept being surprised by this book in just the best ways - as I thought I was closing in on the ending (it seemed like I'd read through the right amount of action to be moving into a final act) I realized that I was only about halfway through the book. There was a SHITLOAD more where that came from and I was thrilled. Characters kept doing and being so much more than I had anticipated, and Hill wasn't scared to be cruel to his readers. NOS4A2 kept slamming that fact home to me - this isn't some kind of post-close-encounters-Spielberg storyteller where the kids are always alright, this is a dude whose favorite movie is Jaws and you know he loves it when the Kintner kid gets eaten. This book is visceral in that it's full of viscera - guts and gore slide and explode all over the place and make you giddy and sick as a reader. It's good shit.
I really want to tell you A LOT of what happened, I want to go over the story in depth, but the book feels a little too new to comfortably dig deeply into. Suffice it to say that Hill does an admirable job of exploring nontraditional families and that I was startled and pleased to read a horror novel that passes the Bechdel test so many times over. And I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that the Hilliverse leaves doors open to the Kingiverse and vice versa - both men are tremendously talented and engaging writers and I think it would be delightful to someday read their stories interacting with one another.
Cheers,
- Alli
Hill, Joe. NOS4A2. William Morrow. New York: New York. 2013.
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