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Six unlikely but brave youngsters confront the path of a vast and fearsome supernatural malevolence that has infiltrated our realm from the deepest abyss of darkness. They are compelled to devote their lives confronting it, facing one nightmare after another in the struggle.

An Echoing Premise with a New Approach

This describes the premise, broadly speaking, of the master of horror’s novel It (a standout in his career; no arguments). It is also the plot of King’s son Joseph Hillstrom King’s latest chilling tome, in which six friends invoke the age-old, deeply sinister serpent the Dragon King from the Endless Night to aid them in overcoming some villains. Unsurprisingly, their arcane ceremony has unintended consequences.

Embracing a Authorial Legacy

The author started his career making great efforts to distance himself from his famous father, using the pseudonym he continues to employ and eschewing in-person meetings with his agent (he exhibits a strong similarity to his father). But in this latest novel, he embraces it. Several quotes that intentionally mirror some of the senior author’s well-known (“The man in black fled across the desert …”); a incident that brings to mind a King plot point (a battle of wits). In this whopper of a novel, Hill is delighting in his heritage, and the audience revels alongside.

Meet the Protagonists

Focusing on the companions: five of them are students at the made-up this academic setting in the New England state. First is Arthur, bookish and gifted, deciphering Old English riddles in his spare time; the character Colin, wealthy, sharp, and prone to trampling anyone who stands in his way; the twin siblings; the attractive the lovely Allie. Additionally, Gwen appears, who remains outside their academic circle, but emerges as crucial of their circle as they dabble, half believing, half not, in supernatural practices.

The Fateful Ritual

Our hero becomes, for reasons we don’t need to go into, obliged to take rare books from his treasured institution’s archives by a bunch of local criminals. This tears at his bookish heart, particularly as he’s forced to acquire the collection’s foremost and unsettling work: the journal of occultist the historical figure (put to death “for conspiring with dark forces in 1703”; the binding is made from his skin). Our Scooby gang read the journal, realize they are able to call forth what Crane describes as a “arrogant beast to aid our hero with his blackmail problem – and devote the remaining story enduring the repercussions. King Sorrow will certainly eliminate those problematic neighborhood criminals, but they are required to pick a different victim every twelve months or become his victim themselves. As our protagonist states: “You invoke terrible forces, all you get is additional horrors.”

Stylistic Versatility and Creative Scope

Moving through four decades, Hill also moves with effortless ease between genres: as the allies attempt to deal with the predicament they find themselves in by, in different ways, picking people who are obviously evil to immolate, or searching for methods to destroy the entity themselves, we move between page-turner to dark fantasy, black-ops torture to affectionate subplot to fright. My favorite genre switch was to a quest story, far beneath the surface below Cornwall, a section sprinkled with JRR Tolkien that was gloriously terrifying.

An Expansive Tapestry of Fear and Courage

We encounter trolls – bridge-dwelling ones and internet antagonists, truly terrifying and expertly realized. The story includes mystic weapons and betrayals, breath-taking moments of bravery and ones of dreadful evil, both earthly and supernatural. It’s a tour de force: a horror novel that is primarily a ode to the human inventiveness, and to love and friendship. “We needed a story to believe and {now we’ve got one|presently we possess it|currently we hold it,” says the wealthy student as the friends assemble around a surface, making preparations to call forth their dragon to life with the force of their minds.

As Hill puts it in his introductory quote: “Here be dragons”. Don’t miss them.