Horns (Joe Hill, 2010)

If anyone were to ask me who I'd be reading in twenty years time the answer would come easily and without hesitation: Joe Hill.

I loved Heart-Shaped Box and whilst his collection of shorts (20th Century Ghosts) contained a few duds, for the most part they were excellent, the likes of Pop Art and Last Breath in particular, were works of an exciting new talent. But it has also been a while between projects (H-SB was released way back in 2007) so my anticipation for Horns was near astronomical by the time of release. But this gap also shows Hill's determination not to release sub par material. Having worked for a year on a novel titled The Surrealist's Glass, he admitted that it just wasn't working and rewrote it to what eventually became Horns. We'll never know which manuscript was better but considering how good Horns is it hardly matters.

Horns is also a very different beast from H-SB. Effectively a story about a man possessed with the powers of Satan, the forefront of the narrative is about the character's motivations and what led them to decisions that ultimately ruined the lives of the four key players. It's Merrin's murder that is the catalyst but she is just as much a protagonist as Iggy, our "hero" who seems to acknowledge the fine line between good and evil and that sometimes, evil will benefit more. As such, two of the five main sections of the book are told in flashback, detailing our character's lives from the age of 15 to the night of Merrin's death. It's compelling stuff and one trump card that Hill has managed, with H-SB also, is his ability to tell enough back-story without bogging the reader down, something his father (Stephen King) has failed to do on numerous occasions.

But, this being a story about the devil, there is debauchery aplenty and, in places, it’s filthy. It doesn't quite trump H-SB's ghost crawling out of the mouth moment or anyone masturbating to a snuff film with a pistol in their mouth but someone does die after having a snake crawl down their throat.

I loved it. Having read 90 pages, I sat down on Sunday for a quiet hour to read and ended up finishing it. Both Horns and H-SB have their good and bad moments and whilst I would honestly say that it's difficult to differentiate between the two in terms of quality, Hill's sophomore effort is step up in terms of maturity and writing prose. I just hope that it isn't another three years before his next one.

I’d like to see him try something epic next time. Maybe a zombie apocalypse?

5/5