This 2019 collection of Joe Hill stories is a baker's dozen of short stories that have seen print previously in anthologies or magazine form. The two stories that Hill co-wrote with his famous father, Stephen King were my least favorite as they lacked the voice of the younger author which I have become a fan of over the past decade. But overall, this was a great read filled with excitement and a whole lot of chills for someone who is interested in reading Halloween themed stuff but couldn't yet because it wasn't October yet.
My favorite stories were the tragic 'By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain', which later became the focus of an episode of the Creepshow series on Shudder, 'Dark Carousel' with it's perfectly eerie ending set across the pond, and 'Mums' which may or may not be about a young boy who grows a menacing plant-like version of his late mother. My absolute favorite was 'Late Returns', which along with 'Mums', was published for the first time ever in this book. It's about a young man who takes a part-time job driving his hometown's bookmobile and discovers that he can recommend great final reads to dearly departed members of the local library. I so very much did not want this story to end and I would love for it to be a movie or even a mini-series.
Another story that I would like seen put on film is 'You Are Released'. It's about the early hours of a nuclear holocaust as experienced by the passengers on a jumbo jet. Although I really want this story to be longer as well, with everything that has been happening in Israel in the past week, I think I could wait for the movie as I get this eerie feeling that right now, life is imitating art.
Don't skip out on Hill's foreword nor his afterword. Both are amazing non-fiction reads. The foreword talks about how having 2 famous writers for parents influenced him to become a writer. There's also a great story about Hill when he was a little fella starring in the framing sequences of the original Creepshow movie. Hill's afterword discusses where you might have come across many of the stories collected in this book, along with sources of inspiration for those tales. Hill claims he's not a story teller but I would love to read a collection of his thoughts. He's that good a writer!
I think I am done with Joe Hill novels for a little bit. Not because I'm tired of him. Nor is it because I'm scared crapless; though Joe Hill is the only author that can write about non-demonic things and scare me cleaner than Ex-lax. It's just that as we are now in October, I am burning through a bunch of those Halloween reads that I've been saving up to read. Thanksgiving and Christmas are up next and I really want to dip into those reads too. Maybe when it's time to spend the holidays in St. Louis this Christmas, I'll bring another Joe Hill work that I haven't read yet with me. Hopefully, the author will have something new on the horizon as I am running out of things of his that I haven't read yet.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.
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