King Sorrow

Author: Joe Hill
Genre: Dark Fantasy, Horror
896 pages
Publisher: William Morrow

Synopsis
Arthur Oakes is a reader, a dreamer, and a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters, exceptional library, and beautiful buildings. But his idyll—and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot—is shattered when a local drug dealer and her partner corner him into one of the worst crimes he can imagine: stealing rare books from the college library.

Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others—brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen—don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world.

But there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year—or become his next meal.

My review
King Sorrow by Joe Hill is a dark, immersive novel that sits firmly at the crossroads of horror and dark fantasy. This is an epic novel, and I deliberately saved this book for my winter holiday break so I could sink into long, uninterrupted stretches of reading. Yes, it’s long, but Hill’s writing is also disciplined. He knows exactly when to linger and when to move on, and the pacing was flawless. I’m not sure my review can fully capture just how impressive this novel is, how richly developed its characters are, or how extraordinary the storytelling is.

Somehow, a narrative that spans from 1980 to 2010 and features a group of friends, a destructive talking dragon, Arthurian legend, and Oxford professors works beautifully and doesn’t feel forced. The premise follows six friends who, in a moment of desperation, call out to a supernatural entity for help. To their astonishment, they succeed in summoning King Sorrow. But dragons, as it turns out, delight in riddles and destruction. Before long, the friends realize they are not the beneficiaries of this bargain but its victims, manipulated into a lifelong reckoning with the consequences of their choices.

Beyond the gripping storytelling, King Sorrow is a sweeping examination of the human condition. It shines a spotlight our basest instincts, wrestles with questions of justice, and explores the complexity of love and loyalty, and the struggle between guilt and redemption . Hill gives us not only moments of extreme turmoil but also quieter, slice-of-life scenes where we truly come to understand who these characters are. These shifts in pacing never feel indulgent. Instead, they kept the story dynamic and emotionally grounding, and I was fully invested in the lives of this group of friends.

Hill’s storytelling feels both epic and intimate. It’s epic in its length (896 pages), its scope of supernatural and fantastical elements, its thematic ambition, and its constant twists and turns. Yet it’s intimate in its focus on six friends, on how friendship can act as both shield and weapon, strengthened by shared hardship but eroded by secrets and betrayal. This is a book I would recommend to almost anyone. Despite its size, it’s fluid, absorbing, and surprisingly easy to read.

King Sorrow is a story about friendship stretched across decades, shaped by a talking, destructive dragon, ancient myth, and academic obsession, but it is also exceptional storytelling. Hill’s writing is so immersive that I frequently forgot I was reading at all, tearing through nearly 900 pages in just a few days. Thank you, Mr. Hill, for one of the best books I’ve read this year. I can only hope we won’t have to wait another ten years for your next novel.

My recommendation: definitely worth the read!