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Six unlikely but doughty children confront the path of a colossal and terrible otherworldly malevolence that has entered our realm from the deepest abyss of shadow. They are compelled to devote their lives battling it, experiencing terror upon terror in the ordeal.

An Echoing Premise with a New Approach

This describes the premise, roughly, of the master of horror’s iconic book It (his best; no arguments). It parallels of King’s son Joe Hill’s recent chilling tome, in which a band of six summon the primordial, utterly malevolent serpent the Dragon King from the Long Dark to assist them in vanquishing some antagonists. Needless to say, their arcane ceremony backfires.

Embracing a Authorial Legacy

Joseph Hillström King started his career making great efforts to distance himself from his renowned parent, using the pseudonym he still uses today and steering clear of encounters with his agent (he possesses a strong similarity to his father). But in this latest novel, he fully acknowledges it. There are lines that consciously reflect some of his father’s iconic (the famous Dark Tower introduction); a scene that evokes a signature King element (a game of puzzles). Throughout this massive book, Hill is delighting in his heritage, and we delight along with him.

The Cast of the Central Figures

Returning to the group: five of them are pupils at the imagined this academic setting in this northeastern locale. We have Arthur, bookish and brilliant, solving ancient puzzles in his leisure hours; another key figure, rich, clever, and inclined to bulldoze those who oppose him; twins Donna and Donovan; the stunning Allie. Then we have Gwen, who isn’t their classmate, but assumes a vital role of their group as they dabble, half believing, partly skeptical, in arcane arts.

The Fateful Summoning

The protagonist finds himself, as a result of external pressures, obliged to take rare books from his treasured institution’s archives by a set of regional villains. This tears at his bookish heart, particularly as he’s forced to acquire the library’s most valuable and chilling work: the diary of practitioner Enoch Crane (put to death “for trafficking with the devyll in 1703”; the cover is crafted from his flesh). The intrepid group read the journal, learn they can invoke what Crane describes as a clever snake to help Arthur out with his extortion dilemma – and spend the rest of the novel facing the fallout. King Sorrow will certainly eliminate those problematic neighborhood criminals, but they must select a different victim every twelve months or fall prey to the beast. In the character’s own words: “You plant seeds of destruction, all you get is more dragons.”

Narrative Versatility and Inventive Scope

Moving through four decades, the author shifts with effortless ease between genres: as the friends endeavor to address the predicament they find themselves in by, in different ways, selecting clearly malevolent individuals to immolate, or searching for methods to destroy the entity themselves, we transition from suspense to shadowy tale, black-ops torture to romance to horror. One particularly memorable shift was to a heroic journey, within the subterranean depths beneath this UK region, a section sprinkled with JRR Tolkien that was wonderfully frightening.

A Rich Tapestry of Fear and Hope

We encounter trolls – the classic variety and online ones, truly terrifying and superbly depicted. The story includes mystic weapons and treacheries, pulse-pounding sequences of valor and instances of terrible wickedness, both mortal and extraterrestrial. This is a remarkable achievement: a horror novel that is above all a paean to the creative spirit, and to devotion and companionship. “We needed a story to believe and {now we’ve got one|presently we possess it|currently we hold it,” says Colin as the friends gather at the table, making preparations to call forth their serpent to life with the power of their thoughts.

In the author’s own words in his introductory quote: “Hic sunt dracones”. Don’t miss them.