Joe Hill Horns
Joe Hill has given me hope. It’s been years since I’ve actually finished a fiction book. I read quite a bit, but most of it is non-fiction, gripping things like Re-Work, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, Web Analytics; An Hour A Day, and the absolutely spellbinding Sharepoint Server 2007 Best Practices!
Horns is the best book I’ve read in a long time. I honestly can’t remember the last book I enjoyed as much as this one.
The book starts off with the main character Ignatius Perrish waking up after a night of heavy drinking to find that he has sprouted horns. Horns like as in flesh covered bone. He finds that the horns allow him to influence others, and lets him hear their deepest darkest sins.
As the first couple of chapters go, we find that Ig loved a girl, and the girl was murdered. Everyone in town believes that he did it and got away with it, but there’s no proof thanks to a mysterious fire at the lab which destroyed the DNA evidence.
It’s a great read, with the back story being revealed in a series of Flashbacks. The pacing is terrific, just as you get into the current storyline, Hill returns you to a flashback to fill out some of the back story, and then immediately brings you to the present. This tease and tell approach makes you constantly want to see what’s next, and how the two timelines play into each other.
Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son, he’s written two novels and a collection of short stories, as well as a comic series called Loke and Key.
A little extra note, I read this on my iPhone after buying it through Amazon’s Kindle app, and I think this may be my favourite way to read a book. First it’s always with me, second my kids never once stole my bookmark, and third the form factor is absolutely perfect (I never wrestled with pages, or spines, or any of the other things that come along with a meat space book). Electronic reading is highly recommended!