From book-jacket:

Joe Hill has been hailed as "a major player in 21st-century fantastic fiction" (Washington Post); "a new master in the field of suspense" (James Rollins); "one of the most confident and assured new voices in horror and dark fantasy to emerge in recent years (Publishers Weekly); a writer who "builds character invitingly and plants an otherworldly surprise around every corner" (New York Times).

This gifted and brilliantly imaginative author catapulted to bestsellerdom with the chilling Heart-Shaped Box and cemented his reputation with the prizewinning volume of short fiction 20th Century Ghosts. At last, the New York Times bestselling author returns with a relentless supernatural thriller that runs like Hell on wheels. . . .

Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things.
He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache . . .
and a pair of horns growing from his temples.


At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances. A mental breakdown would have been the most natural thing in the world. But there was nothing natural about the horns, which were all too real.

Once the righteous Ig had enjoyed the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician and younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, he had security, wealth, and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more—he had Merrin and a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic.

But Merrin's death damned all that.
The only suspect in the crime, Ig, was never charged or tried. And he was never cleared. In the court of public opinion in Gideon, New Hampshire, Ig is and always will be guilty because his rich and connected parents pulled strings to make the investigation go away. Nothing Ig can do, nothing he can say, matters.
Everyone, it seems, including God, has abandoned him.
Everyone, that is, but the devil inside. . . .

Now Ig is possessed of a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look—a macabre talent he intends to use to find the monster who killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere.
It's time for a little revenge. . . . It's time the devil had his due. . .

This book could have said everything it needed to in 200 pages, but, instead, it just drones on and on and on and came very close to putting me into a boredom induced coma.
I probably would have loved this book when I was a teen and laughed my way through it, instead of rolling my eyes and sighing and thinking "Get on with it already" on nearly every page.
Maybe I'm just getting too old and jaded ...

Released into the Halloween bookbox.

I'm claiming this hardcover from the Halloween bookbox.

The premise is certainly intriguing; a grieving man cuts loose one night and wakes up to find that horns are growing from his head - and with them, "a terrible new power"...

I did enjoy this one more than Hill's first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, though I still prefer the short story collection 20th Century Ghosts. This novel is an odd mix of horror (mostly of the real-world, unpleasant-people type, with psychological horror mixed in) and humor, especially regarding the many, many, many puns on the title. Horns of many descriptions turn up, including the pointy, on-the-head kind and the variety that you play, and there are as many quips regarding devils and devilish behavior, starting with the protagonist's name: Ignatius Martin Perrish. Heavy-handed? Perhaps, but I admit I got rather a kick out of it each time I spotted a new reference, even the really obvious ones.

The story darts around in Ig's life, opening with his awakening after "doing terrible things" to find the beginnings of horns on his head; he soon learns that other people don't seem to see them, or at least, if they do notice them, not to seem surprised. And then he finds that people in his presence seem compelled to tell him the truth - what they're thinking, their deepest desires, even things they don't confess to themselves...

That's not the only power he has, but working this out - and learning to use his new skills - takes a while. And since much of what he learns is that most other people in his community believe that he's a vicious criminal who assaulted and murdered his wife, not the most cheering thing to deal with.

Flashbacks show us Ig's early life; how he met, married, and parted with Merrin, the woman whose death he is believed to have caused, how he met Lee, his one close friend, what his relationship has been with his family, etc. And, gradually, as Ig's horns grow (and other physical changes take place which I won't detail, but, given his initials and the title of the book, can probably be guessed at), we - and he - learn more and more about the causes of Merrin's death, and the motivations of many other people in Ig's life.

Given that Ig's clearly, um, pretty devilish, it seems odd that he starts using his growing powers to influence people for the better - though that's undoubtedly a key point of the story; here, the devil is more of the "bringer of knowledge" than the tempter-into-damnation. But Ig still tends to bumble his way through situations, and there are forces in play that are considerably nastier than anything our horned hero ever did...

[The TV Tropes page for this book has some entertaining tidbits, but do beware of spoilers. The 2013 film adaptation is pretty good, though I preferred the book.]

I plan to leave this book on the bench near the State House Plaza, next to the statue of Governor Winant; hope someone enjoys the book!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2019 e-less release challenge. ***

*** Released for the 2019 Movie release challenge. ***

*** Released for the 2019 Keep Them Moving release challenge. ***