The Fireman
2016
- fiction, psychological
- fiction, horror
- fiction, dystopian
- horror
- fiction
- science fiction
- fantasy
- thriller
- dystopia
- post apocalyptic
The story
*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 despe
What it’s like
Ash-grey autumn light and smoke-hazed New England streets, with the sky often dim and orange-tinged, give the book a scorched, end-of-the-world palette. Joe Hill's prose is confident and literate, moving in close third person through Harper's exhausted, clear-eyed perspective, with plenty of tactile detail: the chalky smell of burned buildings, the glimmer of gold-black marks on skin, the crackle and heat of fire as a constant presence. Sound is mostly the roar of blazes, sirens that go quiet, and sudden human violence in the silence between. The mood is melancholy and tense, with flashes of tenderness, a sad-hopeful undercurrent that sits closer to bleak survival than gloom. It suits a long, unhurried read on a cold evening, or a late-night stretch when you want something absorbing and a little unsettling. The pacing is brisk and propulsive, with frequent chapter breaks and escalating danger. Intensity is high: frequent and graphic depictions of burning people, deaths by fire, mob killings, and cruelty, with dread and gore both present. Adults who enjoy post-apocalyptic horror with emotional stakes, and readers drawn to resilient, morally complex heroines, will find it especially rewarding.
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