#joe-hill

I don't know what n is this year, but it's embarassingly low. I intend to do better.

Anyway, I read King Sorrow by Joe Hill. I enjoyed it—much like his father, Joe tends towards producing books that I find compulsively readable, even if both tend to do it in doorstop increments. The premise was interesting, the characters were likeable, and since he's part of the same early 70s clade as I, the feel of the time where the story starts—1989—felt familiar.

That said, I was a little surprised to see it on the lists of notable books of 2025 for both Vulture and the New York Times because so much of it felt like he was almost plagarizing himself.

The things that I noticed most were those that matched the first thing of his I read—and that I have re-read several times—Locke & Key.

At a high level, the entire plot of "young friend group becomes wrapped up in ancient evil" is the same. Gwen reads a lot like Kinsey (or maybe Vic from NOS4A2). Donna's characterization bears more than a little resemblance to Jordan Gates, especially at the end of the book. There's other stuff, but it's late and my intention isn't to be exhaustive, which would involve spoilers—just to note that it feels like familiar territory.

Familiar territory isn't intrinsically bad—I mean, I read and loved 40+ Discworld novels, and those all have that feel of being in familiar territory because it's a series—that's a feature, not a bug. And you could make an argument that a lot of these are just elements you're likely to find in stories in a particular horror-adjacent genre.

But still, Joe's only got 6 works on this scale—5 novels and Locke & Key—and the others feel more diverse in their elements. I just hope that the next one treads some new ground.

I suppose you could say that I'm cheating a little bit here, insofar as Locke & Key is a comic book. But at this point it's finished—36 issues from beginning to end—and I read it through in its entirety.

I'm definitely going to recommend this book; I only picked up the first volume a few months ago, and I've been waiting for the conclusion to be collected ever since.

The story builds methodically from page one. In re-reading the earlier collections, I was impressed with how dense it actually is—in this era of decompressed storytelling, there is no filler here. I suspect that on future re-readings, I will continue to notice more subtle details from the beginning and middle that have ramifications for—or are referenced in—the end.

This is a book that is chock-full of character and story.

That said, I'm not yet certain that they stick the landing. Most of it flows with the sort of inevitability that a horror story needs to not feel gratuitous, but there's one reveal that didn't work for me on the first read. It may be that when I go through it again, it is set up better that I realize this first time through; I would certainly believe it, as even this second read-through has let me see many more subtleties than the first time.

Oh, and that's all ignoring the absolutely brilliant art by Gabriel Rodriguez. It reminds me of a more traditionally cartoon-y relative of Marc Hempel's art from Sandman's The Kindly Ones. It has a clean line with lovely detail, and that's even before he does his Bill Watterson tribute.