I remember chewing through a ton of books when I was a kid, though thinking back on it I don't remember much from those stories. I wonder how much I actually internalized, and how much I just blazed through the books because I was a "good reader" and smart kids read books.
Also: a very large percentage of books I read during that time were Dragonlance novels. Which, uh, don't hold up well upon reexamination. So maybe I didn't remember them because they were terrible.
As I got older, I stumbled upon Stephen King's work, randomly: I decided I would read It because the hardback novel my grandmother had (for some reason) was thicker than the baby dictionary I had at home and that impressed me. I was bound and determined to get through that book, all 1100+ pages of it.
I discovered that I enjoyed King's writing and I chewed through a number of his books, but lost steam three books into The Dark Tower series (much like Roland, I'll get there someday.) Probably as a result of reading so many 750+ page novels, I've gotten kind of burned out on reading long novels or series. The last "big" series I managed to get through was George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and even that was a result of being encouraged for years by a friend (this was prior to the HBO adaptation.)
I say all that not to impress with my (spotty) history of literary conquests, but to emphasize the following statement: this past Monday marked the first time in a long time - quite possibly ever - that I stayed up until almost 1 a.m. just to finish reading a novel. I shotgunned something like 300 pages just because I couldn't, didn't want to, stop reading.
That novel was Horns, by Joe Hill.
The short, spoiler-free review is that Horns is one of the best love/revenge stories I've come across, and I have a predilection towards them so I feel like I've experienced my fair share (in books, movies, TV shows, etc.) It has supernatural elements, but they're relatively tame; most of the story focuses on the tight cast of characters, their interactions, and the events that unfold.
It's also a book that's very, very difficult for me to describe or discuss, because I feel like knowing almost anything about this story going in is a bit of a shame. I went into this book knowing only the most basic information possible - stuff that you learn from reading the Amazon.com description - and I think my experience was richer because of it.
I recently discovered that Joe Jill is Stephen King's son, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I enjoyed his writing so much. He shares a lot of the traits that keep me coming back to his father's work, even after I've read so much of it I feel like I can guess all the beats - both Hill and King are very good at making their characters relatable and human in simple, effective ways. Both authors have a talent for tripping powerful emotional responses with relatively little effort, while also not being cheap or manipulative about it (or at least, if they are it doesn't feel that way.)
Hill deserves special praise for his energy and for the economy of his storytelling. Horns is a book that I could see easily being larger than it is (and maybe it was at some point,) because I've read/heard/seen that bloated version of this story before. Hill has the confidence to tell his story in simple, quick beats. While the pacing isn't perfect - there are two "flashback" sequences that derail the momentum to varying degrees - I was compelled to continue reading the novel because I knew every chapter would keep things moving forward.
By now I'd usually page break and start getting into spoiler territory, but I don't want to do that with this book. I'm still mulling this one over, so any spoilertastic discussion is probably going to show up in a separate post. For now I'll just say that Horns is a funny, exciting, engrossing, emotional book that tells an interesting story very well. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes a good love/revenge story, or anyone who likes good books in general (mileage may vary.)
Go out and grab a copy however you prefer to read books (Amazon link, or Barnes & Noble if you're a Nook user.)
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