Hell Is Where the Heart Is
by James Roland
Ignatius Perrish seems like a really nice guy. He volunteers at his church, plans to travel the world as a philanthropist, and spends his free time cracking jokes with his pals over bottles of cheap beer. All his friends call him Ig. But everyone else calls him Satan.
Joe Hill’s new novel, Horns, conjures Ig and tells his story. The book arrives in stores on February 16th, creating a new benchmark for the current trend of ethically gray protagonists — Hill’s hero is the devil.
But not at first.
After a night of drunken lamenting over the death of his girl, Ignatius wakes to find a pair of bloody horns poking through his hair, radiating heat and a special power that makes everyone he meets confess their hidden secrets. They also give him the ability to coerce anyone’s dark desires into heinous acts.
As Ignatius stumbles through his day, trying to understand his new powers and struggling to remember the night before, he learns shocking truths about the murder of his high school sweetheart, Merrin, and the backstory unfolds beneath a very simple revenge plot.
The first few chapters of Horns are a whirlwind. Hill cranks the pace to eleven on the plot-o-meter, stripping away story layers and introducing new characters at breakneck speed. It’s a risky move, putting all the pieces on the table so quickly, because most of the characters in Horns seem despicable when you first meet them.
Another writer might build lovable characters at the get-go, then deconstruct those loved ones in later chapters, hoping the readers’ honeymoon will last until the final page. Here, Hill works in reverse order, populating his storyverse with selfish, infernal bastards. Then, just when one more mean word or despicable act could make the story unbearable, Hill rolls up his sleeves and sets about the hard work of redemption.
Hill crafts bold, brilliant situations. He creates sympathetic characters with hearbreaking lives, then plops them down in a supernatural suspense novel and watches them figure things out. Sure he writes a good adventure yarn, full of magic and danger, but as in the best fantasy stories, Hill’s quiet character moments trick his readers into believing the magic, making the danger almost too much to bear.
Much of the book takes place in extended flashback, primarily on a bright sunny week when the main characters were all teenagers. Hill perfectly captures the cushioned, sleep-like state of youth, when summers stretch for years on end and simple crushes burn hotter than hellfire. Here Ignatius first meets Lee Tourneau and Merrin Williams, forming the friendship triangle that will steer the course of their lives. The trio laughs and treads lightly through life without a hint of the pain to come. Hill uses this time wisely, laying the framework and set pieces for later scenes while his readers enjoy the vicarious fruits of youth.
Unfortunately, the story loses focus in the final acts. The ending relies far too much on generic violence and random supernatural events (in particular a time-traveling treehouse that appears briefly in the middle of the story, only to disappear and return just in time for the big finale), and as the mystery fades around Merrin’s death, Hill repeats entire sections of the timeline from different characters’ perspectives. The technique reveals nothing new about the characters or plot and only bogs down the pace with needless details.
Still, in the early pages Hill builds a foundation strong enough to support the unfocused finale. Ignatius’s painful transformation from friend to manipulative devil is mesmerizing to watch. And I defy any reader to finish Merrin’s final letter to her love without staining the closing sentences with tears.
Horns snares our attention from the first paragraph and holds us captive throughout. A solid sophomore novel from a great writer, it’s well worth the cover price, and I recommend picking it up from a local independent bookseller. Or else, there could be hell to pay . . .
Horns
Author: Joe Hill
Publisher: William Morrow
Date: March 8, 2011
Available at: All major booksellers
Price: $10.00 (paperback)
