The Fireman

LoveReading Says

Tales of overwhelming pandemics striking our world are like buses: you wait for ages and all of a sudden, like a plague, they all emerge at the same time. Recent months have witnessed, among others, the Cronin trilogy reach its conclusion, Emily St John Mandel's Station Eleven and Ezekiel Boone's The Hatching and now here is a veritable doorstep of a catastrophe book by Joe Hill (son of Stephen King, who himself penned The Stand...). And it's an undoubted winner; one of the more original examples to hit the genre. A new disease sweeps the globe, infecting people with Dragonscale, which eventually has them self-consume in flames. Frightening enough but where Hill ups the odds is not just in his evocation of a world in overdrive to destruction but in creating a gallery of truly memorable characters like doughty, infected and pregnant nurse Harper and, of course, the eponymous Fireman whose superpowers and unusual talents might well hold the key to mankind's survival. Breathless adventures, pulsing emotions, things that go bump in the night and so much more, with surprises lurking on the corner of every page: a major achievement in a genre that many had thought had nowhere further to go. Will provide you with nightmares and epiphanies in equal share.

Maxim Jakubowski

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