Marianne’s Pick of the Week: King Sorrow by Joe Hill

“No one needed a magic wardrobe that opened to Narnia if they had a library card; if you had a library card, you had a thousand magic wardrobes to choose from, ten thousand….A library card was as good as a sword drawn from a stone”   – King Sorrow, by Joe Hill

Warning: This book clocks in at 900 pages.

I picked up Joe Hill’s newest King Sorrow with some concern. At 900 pages long I worried that finishing would take me the better part of a month. My book club was meeting in the next week and I feared I wouldn’t finish my book for the meeting. My concerns turned out to be unfounded. Joe Hill has written a fast-paced, sweeping, funny, twisty, romantic, epic tale. Not only is King Sorrow wholly original, but it is also an homage to both Stephen King (It or The Stand) and J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit).

Meet our crew: Arthur (a librarian), Colin, Alison, and twins Donna and Donovan, all students at a small Maine college in 1989. Add Gwen, a high-school townie whose parents work for Colin’s grandfather, and you have our “Scooby Crew.” Arthur is in debt to local drug dealers and is blackmailed into stealing rare books from the library. To help Arthur, the gang holds a summoning (think séance, only stranger) to bring forth the dragon, King Sorrow. In exchange for ridding Arthur of his blackmailers, King Sorrow requires a sacrifice from the Scooby Crew every fifth Easter.

Hill follows our crew every fifth year between 1989 and 2022. As the story unfolds the gang meets and battles with a ghosts, trolls, magical objects, and covert military operations. Watch for the Easter eggs to Tolkien (riddle game, anyone) and King (Johnny Smith and Senator Greg Stillson). We watch as these characters grow into adulthood and the toll choosing a sacrifice takes on each of them. Hill beautifully illustrates the unintended consequences of the characters’ choices through time and space.

Literary allusions abound in a book filled with laughter and sorrow (I proudly admit to a tear or two falling). Hill folds current events into his narrative, using King Sorrow as the metaphorical hammer to take out the Scooby Crew’s perceived enemies. Ultimately, this is a story of how absolute power corrupts and how deep friendships save.

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