Publication Date: Available Now from Gollancz
Source: Netgalley/review copy
Nobody knew where the virus came from.
FOX News said it had been set loose by ISIS, using spores that had been invented by the Russians in the 1980s.
MSNBC said sources indicated it might’ve been created by engineers at Halliburton and stolen by culty Christian types fixated on the Book of Revelation.
CNN reported both sides.
While every TV station debated the cause, the world burnt.
Pregnant school nurse, HARPER GRAYSON, had seen lots of people burn on TV, but the first person she saw burn for real was in the playground behind the school…
With the epic scope of THE PASSAGE and the emotional impact of THE ROAD, this is one woman’s story of survival at the end of the world.
First of all I pretty much did not sleep once I started this book. Only when I literally collapsed. It was pure brilliance both in concept and execution for me, loving as I do a good post apocalyptic free for all. Joe Hill does characters so so SO well, sets them up in a peculiar and yet scarily realistic feeling situation and BANG off we go. Literally bang in this case with everyone bursting into flames everywhere….
It freaked me the heck out for starters. Imagine getting a “disease” that meant you could burn alive at any second. You don’t know where and you don’t know when. Then imagine having that and being pregnant. This is the situation Harper finds herself in and despite her Mary Poppins vibe or perhaps because of it, she is determined to survive and allow her baby to survive also. It seems an impossible task. Then she meets The Fireman…
The thing about The Fireman is it is a sprawling mass of gorgeousness with a lot of themes at the heart of the narrative that creep up on you. I love how Joe Hill uses language and descriptive prose to really really hit the reader in the gut with a glorious sense of abandon, all the while telling an addictive, intriguing and fascinatingly horrific tale about the end of life as we know it. Human nature man, it’ll get you every time.
It is often unexpected, sometimes (seemingly purposefully) predictable, but bang on all the way. An epic, yes that for sure and not only because of its length, although I disagree with those comparing it to The Passage – the only real similarity I could find was that mankind is in a spot of trouble here as they were there. The Fireman is unique in its reading sense, for sure this author changes it up with every book, I’ve loved them all for different reasons with The Fireman it is exactly that. The Fireman. A brilliantly enigmatic character who hovers in the peripheral layers of the story which is really that of Harper and her fight for survival.
Once again I give hardly any plot away – why, WHY would you do that – the point of reading is to go on a journey to elsewhere – well in The Fireman you can go on quite a few of them all at once. Joe Hill is crazy good at this storytelling stuff, expect a few sharp intakes of breath, the wish to set fire to the occasional character yourself lest they don’t burn of their own accord and most of all a sheer reading adrenalin rush. Start to finish. Pitch perfect and full of wit and wisdom, The Fireman is quite simply brilliant.
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Happy Reading!
