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Six unlikely but resilient children encounter the way of a immense and fearsome paranormal evil that has infiltrated our existence from the outer limits of oblivion. They must wage a lifelong battle fighting it, enduring horror after horror in the ordeal.

A Familiar Storyline with a Fresh Spin

This describes the premise, in essence, of Stephen King’s seminal work It (arguably his finest; no debate). It is also the plot of King’s son Joe Hill’s recent horror doorstopper, in which six friends summon the primordial, utterly malevolent beast King Sorrow from the Abyssal Void to help them defeat some baddies. As one might expect, their otherworldly invocation backfires.

Acknowledging a Family Heritage

The author began his writing journey striving diligently to avoid any connection from his well-known dad, adopting the nom de plume he maintains to this day and eschewing in-person meetings with his agent (he exhibits a striking resemblance to his father). Yet with this recent release, he embraces it. Several quotes that deliberately echo some of the senior author’s well-known (that classic opening line); a moment that brings to mind a King plot point (a battle of wits). In this whopper of a novel, the author rejoices in his lineage, and the audience revels alongside.

The Cast of the Main Characters

Back to those friends: most are scholars at the made-up this academic setting in the New England state. There’s Arthur, bookish and brilliant, solving Old English riddles in his leisure hours; Colin, affluent, clever, and known for crushing those who oppose him; twins Donna and Donovan; the beautiful Allie. Then we have Gwen, who doesn’t study with them, but emerges as crucial of their band as they dabble, somewhat credulous, somewhat doubtful, in supernatural practices.

The Fateful Ritual

Our hero becomes, for reasons we don’t need to go into, compelled to pilfer prized manuscripts from his beloved college library by a group of neighborhood thugs. This wounds his academic spirit, particularly as he’s compelled to seize the collection’s foremost and disturbing title: the diary of practitioner this enigmatic character (condemned “for dealing with infernal entities in 1703”; the binding is fashioned from his hide). These young investigators peruse the diary, discover they could summon what Crane describes as a armored demon” to aid our hero with his blackmail problem – and spend the rest of the novel reaping the consequences. The dragon will indeed rid them of those problematic neighborhood criminals, but they’ll have to choose a new sacrifice annually or become his victim themselves. As Arthur later puts it: “You sow dragon’s teeth, all you get is additional horrors.”

Genre Versatility and Inventive Scope

Spanning forty years, the author shifts with effortless ease through various literary forms: as the friends endeavor to address the predicament they find themselves in by, in different ways, selecting clearly malevolent individuals to offer up, or searching for methods to kill the dragon themselves, we transition from page-turner to shadowy tale, covert operations to affectionate subplot to horror. One particularly memorable shift was to a adventure narrative, within the subterranean depths below Cornwall, a section infused with the fantasy maestro that was gloriously terrifying.

A Detailed Canvas of Fear and Courage

There are trolls – the classic variety and online ones, truly terrifying and expertly realized. We see enchanted blades and deceptions, pulse-pounding sequences of valor and scenes of dreadful evil, both mortal and supernatural. It’s a tour de force: a frightening tale that is primarily a paean to the human inventiveness, and to love and friendship. “We longed for a tale to embrace and {now we’ve got one|presently we possess it|currently we hold it,” says the wealthy student as the friends assemble around a surface, getting ready to invoke their beast into existence with the power of their thoughts.

In the author’s own words in his introductory quote: “Here be dragons”. Do not overlook this.