The Fireman: A Novel by Joe Hill (Epub)

Description

From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to save it, led by one powerful and enigmatic man known as the Fireman.

The fireman is coming. Stay cool.

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.

Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.

User’s Reviews

Amazon.com Review An Amazon Best Book of May 2016: I admit, when I hit a saggy part in a story, I do skip ahead to see if the plot will pick up again. At no point in Joe Hill’s doorstop-weight novel did I have that urge, for each and every page had me entranced. Set in New Hampshire right about now, The Fireman opens with a man spontaneously combusting outside the office of school nurse Harper Grayson. He’s not the first victim of Draco incendia trychophyton, the spore responsible for this transformation, but he’s the signal that Dragonscale has spread to Harper’s small town. It also spreads to Harper soon after she realizes she’s pregnant. Highly contagious and 100 percent fatal, Dragonscale soon plunges the world into chaos. (An oddly affective moment is when Harper logs onto Google and finds, instead of the search engine, the words “Goodby.”) But Hill smartly focuses on Harper and her attempts at survival, keeping the stakes small but extremely personal as the uninfected hunt down and murder the infected, supposedly to protect the rest of the town but really to indulge in sociopathic tendencies now unleashed. The Fireman starts with a hot burn, simmers as Harper joins a group of infected hiding in a summer camp, and then heats up again as the near-utopian community ruptures. Hill weaves questions about the power of leadership, group-think, love, catastrophe, and family into the plot. His smartest move is to give no clear-cut answers to these questions, making The Fireman more substantial and real than a typical apocalyptic thriller. And his humdinger of an ending provides just the right closure. –Adrian Liang –This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ Possible spoilers aheadThe first half of this book starts out fantastic. We see the slow decline of mankind and experience it with the main character, Harper. I can’t really think of any disease more terrifying than one that could cause you to spontaneously combust without any sort of warning. I liked Harper for the most part, but she was pretty generic. Kind of a cardboard cut out nurse.Of course, at about the halfway point, we do meet the thing more terrifying than the disease that causes you to spontaneously combust, self preserving, panicked humans. I think Carol is the most terrifying, but there is also Jakob Grayson, the Marlboro Man, and a whole slew of others. A good horror story all around. The horror never seems to end for Harper and her friends.By that I mean, this book never seems to end. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t object to books being long. In fact- I like long. I think my objection to the length of this book comes from a lack of focus or clear direction. First the antagonist is the dragon scale itself, then it’s her husband, Jakob Grayson, then its group think and Carol Storey, then it’s the Governor of Maine. I thought this book was over when I was at the 75% mark. It felt over. We reached a huge climax, overcame it, and moved on. It should have ended. I thought that other 25% was acknowledgements and book previews, etc., etc. as my kindle app so often tells me I’m only 75% finished when the book is actually done. I was ready for someone to put these characters out of their misery.That being said- I did enjoy the story overall. I like the fireman character. I adored Nick. I felt bad about Mr. Truffles. That seemed unnecessary. The horror was real. I will definitely keep on with Joe Hill. I don’t think the drawn out ending outweighed the good story telling here, but it wasn’t NOS4A2. If you want to read Joe Hill and haven’t checked out NOS4A2 yet- start with that one.

⭐ I feel bad writing a lukewarm review of this book as I am a big fan of Joe Hill and, in fact, I think this book is excellent. However it is punishing. Perhaps the problem was me. I started reading this around February 2020 (see where I’m going with this) and didn’t finish until the end of June 2020.For one thing the book, despite being released prior to the age of Trump, is remarkably prescient in creating a plausible end of the world in which right-wing religious zealots and nationalists terrorize the survivors of the apocalypse. Everything about it smacks of plausibility. Some of the specifics he describes are breathtaking in their cruel indifference and utter likelihood. The nightmare scenarios he suggests are an easy hop, skip, and jump from the casual hostility of today’s conservative media fever dreams. This sh*t could *definitely* happen.These fictional (but not at all unlikely) bleak portrayals while my real world was descending into quarantine and uncertainty resonated so strongly that I had to put the book down several times for weeks at a time. Hill’s characters were not unlike Golding’s monstrous children in Lord of the Flies: the default human condition, absent societal guard rails, is ideological cruelty. That Hill and Golding are probably right was too much for me to bear. I just had to put it down.The story itself is excellent. Lively characters that were right for the story propelled everything along at a nice clip. The setting was evocative and the sense of impending doom ever present – just what every good apocalyptic tale should have. I have no beef with any of it. It’s a solid story, if far too punishing to its characters to be especially enjoyable.Having finished, I am glad to be done with it. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to any but the most masochistic readers.Pardon me now as I am very much enjoying reading the autobiography of John Taylor of Duran Duran, on recommendation from their number one fan: my beautiful wife. So far nobody has been impaled, immolated, executed, terrorized, abandoned, eviscerated, decapitated, or otherwise made to suffer. Thank god.

⭐ Wow … such high hopes. I was very disappointed in this book. The premise sounded promising – a virus that cause people to burst into flames – and the opening chapter was riveting. But after that Hill’s story progresses at a snail’s pace. I was most disappointed because I’d enjoyed all of his other novels immensely. It’s unfair to add that he’s Stephen King’s son, but that being the case is partly why my expectations were so high (though I’ve had something of a love/hate relationship with his offerings over the past few years).Honestly, the worst thing I can say about this book is that it was boring, and in the end, I didn’t really care who lived or died. I had no emotional attachment to any of the characters. I can’t help but feel like this book could have benefited mightily from a better editor who could trim it down from 600-plus pages to 300.

⭐ The highest praise I can give The Fireman is that when I finished it I felt as if I had lost my best friend, just because the story was done. I became so involved in the tale that I went through a sort of post-literary tristesse at its conclusion. Joe Hill has delivered a post-apocalyptic tale that is both dark and terrible and full of hope and humanity at the same time. It’s almost impossible not to draw parallels to his father’s novel, The Stand. Not only survivors banding together and the juxtaposition of good and evil, but also in slyer ways. I couldn’t help but wonder if Hill’s character of Harold Cross was HAROLD Lauder + Nadine CROSS (two characters from King’s The Stand) – sort of an homage to the brilliant, petulant, pervy character his father had developed in such odious detail. But this book isn’t The Stand by any means. In my opinion it is a masterful tale told with imagination and insight into the human condition. There are people that are not necessarily evil themselves, but do very evil things when caught up in mob mentality. There are also people that are basically “good” who have their weaknesses and flaws and don’t always do the right thing. These things are similar, but the addition of the dragonscale spore to the mix opens up a totally different world.The tale is dark for much of the book, but throughout there is a golden thread of hope that keeps you going. It’s actually quite uplifting at times, a lot of which is due to the main character’s charm and appeal. Harper is wonderfully developed. She has good values and the caring demeanor of a true nurse, but she’s also flawed in that she tends to let people walk over her – not seeing sometimes that she’s being repressed. I also love that she can be delightfully bawdy at times. I enjoyed all of the characters in The Fireman – the good and the evil – including the eponymous character himself. The Fireman (John Rookwood) is delightfully complex as well – heroic, funny, a protector, but also too proud and not able to let go of the past. The flaws of the characters make them so much more real and relatable.I highly recommend The Fireman. I was thrilled to learn that it’s to be made into a movie – I will definitely make a point of seeing it. This is a book I will also reread from time to time – like visiting an old friend. If you haven’t read Joe Hill’s other books and short stories, do yourself a big favor and do so. You won’t be disappointed.Thank you, Joe Hill, for such a wonderful story. It’s rife with the failings of humankind, but also full of heart and hope. You’re a fierce talent, and I look forward to your next work.

⭐ This is a hard book to review. On the one hand, it’s well-written, with interesting characters and a unique plot. Yes, it’s post-apocalyptic fiction, but it manages to be different all the same.On the other, my God, but did this book need someone to tell Joe Hill to cut back several chapters. Moreover, he needs to stop stepping on his own plot twists. There are only a few plot twists here that are not spelled out ahead of time what will happen. Before we even meet a particular character, we are told by The Fireman that the character is untrustworthy and might turn into a villain. So it is no surprise at all when that exactly comes to pass. Later, characters often speculate on what will occur, only for that exact thing to happen. For example, the cat. It’s clearly a bad idea to bring the cat. Two characters spell it out. But do they bring the cat? Yes, they do. Does it turn out to be a bad idea? Yes it does.And our characters, despite all they go through, are curiously accepting of one plot point, something I could not for the life of me understand. I won’t say more for fear of revealing too much.Overall, it’s an extremely engaging read that slows down far too much in the middle and would have benefited from an editor slashing about a third of it. I wish the ending were different, but I respect it nonetheless (except for the fate of the cat).P.S. There is a hidden ending to this book. Do yourself a favor and read the credits until the very end.P.P.S. Kate Mulgrew’s narration is amazing.

⭐ MAJOR MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD.I honestly don’t know if I loved this book so much because it was just a really good fackin’ book or if it was because almost immediately I pictured the character of the Fireman in my head as the actor Paul Bettany who I love beyond belief. From the first minute we are introduced to the Fireman until the fiery awful ending I was enthralled with the idea of this mythic, super hero like character. I wish it had been that. The idea of the dragon scale, and what some of these characters were able to do, to become because of it was so f*#@ing cool, omg. I could just picture that sexy brit, in his ragged soot covered tshirt, and yellow fireman pants, with a dirty ashy face and his flaming left hand, shooting out his fabulous phoenix. OMG. Paul. Freakin’. Bettany. And I liked Harper, I really did, I thought she was a tough cookie. I see some comments criticizing that she fell in love with the Fireman out of no where but HELLO!!! Giant flaming Phoenix!!! I’m in love with the Fireman (Paul Bettany) how could you NOT be!! But again, not sure if its because he was really that cool or because I just super imposed a juxtaposition of Vision, the Archangel Michael, the Priest and Geoffrey Chaucer on top of the Fireman, because, you know, in my mind….Paul Bettany. Either way – this book was damn entertaining. I couldn’t put it down, I loved the world building and the details Joe Hill created in regards to the dragon scale spore. And yes it was kind of predictable and yes some of it has been done before, but I actually liked the little homages to his father sprinkled throughout, but the only thing…the ONLY thing that really made me mad was that after nursing the Fireman back from the brink of death 18 times practically, and dropping him off a cliff and after setting his broken femur with nothing and dragging his dying feverish a$$ 200 miles to salvation, and see him recover only to have him be killed by some yahoo on a boat…shot. Freakin’ shot are you kidding me??? not PAUL. FREAKIN’. BETTANY!!! ugh. heartbroken. but yes. Five stars.

⭐ This book, and this author, excite me. I’m a recent fan of Joe Hill, a young author who is still in the beginning stages of what I hope to be a long career. Admittedly, I discovered him through my favorite author of all time, a true storyteller – an art form that few modern writers have. I am happy to say that I’ve found all of this in Joe Hill, and his latest novel, The Fireman.The Fireman is an epic adventure revolving around a plague, Dragonscale, which results in spontaneous combustion for most of the infected. The spore is a true plague, threatening all of humanity, and instilling fear and madness to those who are not yet infected. The story centers around a holdout group that has somehow managed to defy the end game, offering a community for those able to manage the spore. Hill deftly creates both character and story, combining them into a terrific read with depth, complexity, humor, and horror. Yeah… try that.Admittedly, there are some points that don’t flow as well as others, places where the story loses its rhythm. However, when taken in context of the *whole* of the story, those instances of pacing issues pale in comparison to the areas he got right. There are sections that are absolute page turners, causing the reader – if you’re a night reader like me – to show up to work the following day a little red-eyed because you just can’t put it down.You can clearly see where Hill has found inspiration, both from other authors, and from his upbringing in Maine (and NH… close enough). This is not to say that he has over-borrowed, but I can see influences from other authors, other stories, that have made an impact upon him – much the same way they have impacted me. Hill has his own distinct style of writing, and it’s only going to get better with time.Taking on such an epic piece of writing is not easily done, even by experienced authors. Hill does not back down, writing rich characters and a suspenseful storyline. No spoilers, but there were parts in the story that were so jolting, so well-written, that it makes you wonder a little bit about how a well-adjusted person could write them. Surely this must come from the mind of a psychopath. Or… it could be the work of Joe Hill. I’ve only been able to say that about one other author; I’m thrilled to have found another.It’s time that we stop looking at Hill’s pedigree and see him as a standout author in his own right. I’m thrilled to find another story teller who can take his readers on a fabulous, macabre journey for decades to come. Joe Hill will certainly be one of the eminent (and I hope prolific) writers of the twenty-first century. I will be his Constant Reader, one of many.

⭐ Before I wrote this I read some of the bad reviews of The Fireman and had to admit I was surprised. Some people are just really hard to please, I guess. Is The Fireman the perfect apocalyptic thriller? Of course not, but it’s a darn good one. I became totally caught up in the world of the Dragonscale, an infectious spore that causes people to spontaneously combust–except for the main characters who learn how to control the scale. Joe Hill has created characters who are very believable–both the infected characters and the “healthy” who turn into monsters out of fear of being infected.My only criticism was Harper’s medical skills which were just a little too unbelievable for a nurse only four years out of school who had worked as a school nurse before the poop hit the fan. If she’d had some military or ER nursing in her background, a stint as an EMT, or even if she had just searched out medical texts and read up on how to do some of the things she did, it might have been more believable. But it’s fiction, not a biography, so it didn’t stop me from getting caught up in her story and the world she was in. I read that it will be made into a movie, and I’m looking forward to it.

⭐ And what a novel it was. Admittedly, I did get lost a few times and had to skip back to get back on track. On the other hand, I do that in our house, too, and it’s smaller than this book.Loved the descriptions…could “see, smell, near…ALL the senses had to work. The ending took me by surprise but was sweet, too. LOVED the return of Sarah!Your family has some mad genetic skills (yes, I’ve read his brother and both of his parents) and had a flat out lol moment at the one star reviewer who said to the effect of: [Had I realized who his father was, I wouldn’t have bothered.] -O_o- Their loss, our gain.Great novel, long novel but understandably so. Great characterizations and characters to match.I will miss the main characters and finding out their future but…maybe a fo!low up in 40 years. Like that guy who wrote “The Shining” did. Just read it. You won’t regret it. But if you do, please don’t go all Siskel and Ebert on us by doling out the whole storyline without a *Spoiler Alert* as the title.of your big word critique. Mmmkay?

⭐ This is the first book I have read by Joe Hill since “Horns”. He is definitely improving with each book. I’ve read two more since this one. This would make a great movie. It’s a whole new take on the apocalyptic theme – which I am a big fan of. Love those zombies! I like reading about how people handle the “end of the world” scenarios. As in real life crisis, it brings out the best and worst in people. I was looking for another book by Joe to read and saw “Locke & Key” and thought the plot sounded good so I downloaded it to my Kindle. I should have read the description more carefully because I didn’t realize it was in comic book form! I saw it is also available as an audio book so I was hoping maybe there was a non-comic version but didn’t see one. Fortunately I then found, “Heart Shaped Box” which I also downloaded. The good news is “Locke & Key” was in the Kindle free section so I didn’t pay for it! I’m really not into the comic book format. Bummer since the plot does sound good and there are sequels! Anyway, I do recommend, “The Fireman” to anyone who is a fan of the apocalypse theme. P.S. to Joe – Did I detect the possibility of a sequel in the way the story ended?

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