Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller Hill (The Fireman) masterfully sustains tension throughout this immersive doorstopper of a horror novel. On one of college student Arthur Oakes's visits to his mother, Erin, in the Vermont prison where she is incarcerated, he recognizes Tana Nighswander, a pizza delivery person and campus drug dealer, in the waiting room. Tana and her older sister, Jayne, are also there visiting family, but Tana is denied admittance for wearing inappropriate clothing. Arthur offers her his hoodie--but that good deed is punished severely when Jayne threatens to have her prison associates blind Erin unless Arthur steals valuable books from his college library that she'll then sell to pay off a debt. While Arthur initially accedes to that extortion, once he comes across an arcane ritual in a rare book, he decides to use it to summon a dragon, King Sorrow, from the realm known as the Long Dark, and sic it on Jayne. Arthur gets more than he bargains for, however, finding his life, and the lives of those dear to him, endangered by the beast. Hill makes accepting the supernatural easy through his pitch-perfect characterizations and doses of black humor. This reinforces Hill's reputation as a titan of the genre. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Hill not only escapes the shadow of his famous father, Stephen King, but may even eclipse him with his first work of long-form fiction since 2016's The Fireman. Bookish Arthur Oakes is enjoying his college studies, his best friends, and his job at the library, but a family of criminals have got Arthur under their thumb and are forcing him to steal books from said library. Out of options, Arthur and his friends perform a ritual to summon a hungry dragon named King Sorrow to protect themselves. As part of the bargain, they must spend the rest of their lives keeping King Sorrow fed. Spanning decades and exploring the inner and outer lives of this group of friends, Hill's latest is as epic and touching a story as King's It. Though nearly 900 pages, the book never feels long or overstuffed, since Hill deftly moves between characters' viewpoints while rendering them vividly. VERDICT The novel evokes elements of the revenge plot, fantasy quests, and thrillers featuring shadowy organizations to tell an outstanding tale about how power corrupts. Hill's fans will love it, as will those who like King's more fantastical works, such as Fairy Tale.--James Gardner
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Hill, son of the master, turns in a near-perfect homage to Stephen King. Arthur Oakes has problems. One is that his mom, a social justice warrior, has landed in the slammer for unintentional manslaughter. And he's one of just three Black kids at an expensive college (in Maine, of course), an easy target. A local townie drug dealer extorts him into stealing rare books from the school's library, including one bound in human skin. The unwilling donor of said skin turns up, and so do various sinister people, one reminiscent of Tolkien's Gollum, another a hick who lives--well, sort of--to kill. Then there's Colin Wren, whose grandfather collects things occult. As will happen, an excursion into that arcana conjures up the title character, a very evil dragon, who strikes an agreement with fine print requiring Arthur and his circle to provide him with a sacrifice every Easter. "It's a bad idea to make a deal with them," says Arthur, belatedly. "Language is one of their weapons…as much as the fire they breathe or the tail that can knock down a house." King Sorrow roasts his first victims, and the years roll by, with Arthur becoming a medieval scholar (fittingly enough, with a critical scene set at King Arthur's fortress at Tintagel), Colin a tech billionaire with Muskian undertones ("King Sorrow was a dragon, but Colin was some sort of dark sorcerer"), and others of their circle suffering from either messing with dragons or living in an America of despair. There's never a dull moment, and though Hill's yarn is very long, it's full of twists and turns and, beg pardon, Easter eggs pointing to Kingly takes on politics, literature, and internet trolls (a meta MAGA remark comes from an online review of Arthur's book on dragons: "i was up for a good book about finding magical sords and stabbing dragons and rescuing hot babes in chainmail panties but instead i got a lot of WOKE nonsense.…and UGH it just goes on and on, couldve been hundreds of pages shorter"). At turns spooky and funny, with bits of inside baseball and a swimming pool's worth of blood. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
