Book Review: The Fireman

The Fireman

Joe Hill

747 pages

William Morrow

This seemed to be the book of the summer, which is actually one of the reasons I picked it up.  Therefore, chances are you know something about it. A brief synopsis for those who are wondering wtf I am talking about:

Harper Grayson is a school nurse who has been caught in a plague ravaged world. It’s unknown how it started, but a spore has developed that has the ability to cause people to literally ignite and go up in flames. Terror runs rampant as everyone does their best to avoid this new plague, so as you can imagine tensions are astronomically high and the world as we know it is no more.

Harper escapes to a commune type place, where a bunch people infected with the dragon scale are hiding out. I will leave it at that because I don’t want to give too much away.

As I mentioned before, this is one of the “it” books of the summer. Joe Hill, the author, is also Stephen King’s son. Those are the two main reasons I bought this book (the third reason being that it was on sale for Amazon Prime Day). Otherwise, I never would have picked this up on my own. I don’t dislike dystopian fiction but it’s not my favorite.

I thought The Fireman was just ok. The storyline was interesting and I liked how Hill really explored what happens when society is dictated by fear and power. Ultimately though, this book was just a bit too long for me. I am not opposed to behemoths, but it has to be done well and in this case, I felt like it was done just for the sake of it and not because the story actually needed to be that length.

It seems like reviews have gone both ways for this one, so tell me what you thought.