The Fireman by Joe Hill Review

The Fireman by Joe Hill

I could not wait to get my grubby little hands on Joe Hill’s The Fireman. When I finally did, I spent all my free time reading the behemoth 768 book.
Two of the things I love about Joe Hill’s writing are his characters and even when nothing major is going on I still want to keep reading.

Apocalyptic / post-apocalyptic fiction and fantasy are my two favorite genres of books. The Fireman merged these two nicely. There is a plague that hits the world called Dragonscale. It causes a telltale beautiful black and gold marks on the body. It can then combust. Sometimes setting off a chain reaction of infected people burning up. Large swaths of the world have burned up and fear is spreading.

There a quite a few likeable characters in the book. I don’t want to say much about them and let you discover them on your own. My favorite of the book is Allie. She is a teenager with all the surliness you expect. A tough cookie with a soft gooey center. Her deaf brother Nick is another of my favorites. It would have been an interesting story told between their alternating viewpoints.

There were long sections of the book where it seemed not a lot was going on. There is just enough going on and the writing is good enough that I stay with it. I would have liked more on some of the scarier things, the cremation crews, The Marlboro Man, Jakob.

The ending, I don’t want to give anything away so I won’t say much except that it was an ending but still very much open. Though be sure to read the acknowledgments, there is coda added at the end. It’s a short little thing but it did help close the story for me. I did read in a forum somewhere that Joe Hill said this is the first of his books that he has felt the urge to revisit the characters. It is left in a way that another book could easily fit. If he does I would love to catch up with the characters as well.   

  This book is available for checkout through the Lake County Library System.