Full discolsure: I've recommended this author to a great many people, based solely on his writing for the Legacy collection worthy Locke & Key. Does this book bring all of the boys to the yard in the way that Locke & Key did?

dear jude
we will ride at nightfall we will ride to the hole i am dead you will die anyone who gets too close will be infected with the death on you us we are infected together we will be in the death hole together and the grave dirt will fall in on top of us lalala the dead pull the living down(...)

Joe Hill is someone that I want to adore on the strength of what he seems to mean. (He's also the only "celebrity" that I have attempted to talk to on the internet, using the magic of Twitter. He... either did not get it or he can go fuck himself for blowing me off *sob*) In case you don't know, Joe Hill is actually the man whose birthname is Joe Hill King, making him - Stephen King's son and therefore most obvious heir apparent. That is, if he can write worth a damn.... Which is something that I would flippantly say, if I had walked into this without having read a good deal of his forays into comic book writing, A.K.A, Locke & Key and The Cape. Holy shit, guys - I cannot recommend either of these enough - I almost forgot about The Cape, because it's about as Lovecraftian in tone, like its brother comic, Locke & Key, as I am into dat country music scene aww yeah, turn that Toby Keith UP n' roll the windows down n' moooovvee

#sorrynotsorryexceptthatI'mlegitsorrysososorry

So yeah, I walked into this one a fan of his comic book writing, which, for good or ill, gave me some serious hopes and thoughts about what the rest of his writing would be like. I don't know if he can do classic Stephen King writing as good or better than dad, but with comic books? This guy's got some serious talent all his own.

Even if I did not have any sort of a background for what I was getting into by way of my having read the comic books, I got told by Monster Man that the first Plot Point is pretty shocking. As in, there's a moment where he stopped reading altogether because of how jarring the scene actually is to read.

So, that's interesting. You know what else is interesting? Why in the fuck Hill thought that Coyne was a good POV to read from.

I mean, maybe it might have worked in a more visual form (like, let's say... A comic book?) But reading from the asshole's cradle-robbing, borderline sanctimonious POV is painful. I mean, well done with bringing to life what feels liek an accurate representation of an aging rock star's life, but I think I see now, more than ever, why people have such a hard on for the hero's tale instead of the Asshole's tale. I mean, this is a guy that think he's found someone special with a girl-woman 20 years his junior (gack).

Now, this would be more palatable, if that wasn't such an integral part of the story. Because it does, strap in if you find this less than pleasurable to read, because you're going to be dealign with it for most of the book.

That is not the only failure of the story. Disappointingly, this story's pacing was completely missing, leaving me with a story filled with scenes overexplaining Jude's reason for this, Jude's memory here, Jude Jude Jude Jude Jude Jude Jude. It bogs the story down, miring what should be something great into something borderline mediocre.

This is especially true after the first plot point makes an entrance. Wheras the structure of a normal story would generally have the middle racheting up and up and up, with maybe a few dips here or there, Hill has the concept into much more of a deep plunge and crawl back to the top with pitiful effort. This, when taken with conjunction with Jude's constant thinking to himself about his babyish attitudes towards women and his selfish thought patterns that juse refuse to cease makes this one worth skipping through.

It's not all bad - it's just that the true spots that seem to shine through what I can see as something that dear old dad could have done (and, let's be frank here, dear old dad already wrote a road trip story fairly recently, with Doctor Sleep) gets tempered with shit, the sort of thing that makes me wince and wish that it didn't have to be included with the package as a whole - like when you're trying to install an update of some kind, and you find that you've accidentally left a box that forces you to deal with some other skeevy program installing itself along with the program that you actually need. 

No Hill, I do not want an old man with a a twin lolita/victim complex downloaded with this copy of Scary Ghost Story.

Stay tuned for a more in-depth anlysis of what I'm actually referring to.

So, this was a book that, just like Joe Hill, I really wanted to like more than I ended up liking, mostly for issues of pacing and characterization.

What this is like: the movie Insidious + a road trip + the rock band Black Sabbath. Dump Sherri Moon Zombie on top with the corpse of a near-clone of her. Serve on top of an ash tray and with some uber manly beer aww yeah - hey, wait a sec - there's something weird about that beer, I feel like I've seen it before -

Huh. I peeled off the label and there was this other label just under it.

It's Castle Rock Ale, but someone put this other label over it.