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83 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
just a great funny touching wild book, January 8, 2010
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Ig Perrish wakes up one morning with a hell of a hangover and discovers that he has grown horns on his head. He has become a (the?) devil, has powers and thus opportunities (but also downsides) he didn't have before, and within a short time, he knows just what he wants to do with them - take revenge for a hideous wrong. How best to do it?
That's simple enough, an amusing premise for something of a supernatural thriller, but Joe Hill does more than just exploit that - a lot more.
First of all, the book is just crazy funny. Hill has a great ear for dialogue, his scenes are often completely absurd and yet somehow believeable, and the situations are, after all, ridiculous on their face, but he makes it all work.
Second, his plotting (for such a strange book) is tight. The heart of the book is something of a murder mystery, and Hill uses flashbacks from various characters to good effect, putting the pieces of the puzzle in place in a pretty clever way.
Third, there is something more than just a wild ride for his characters here - there is actually a touching love story, and the revelations behind various motivations and actions are really well done. The last 50 pages or so, and especially the last 20, are in fact just downright intimate - and all without seeming mawkish or losing the flavor of the very strange ending.
It's a crime story, a horror story, a love story - frankly, it's a lot like something Steven King would have written 20 years ago. It's excellent.
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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sympathy for the Devil, March 10, 2010
"Ignatius Martin Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things." So begins Joe Hill's excellent sophomore novel, Horns. As the straightforward title suggests, the novel has a simple, high-concept premise. After the aforementioned night of doing terrible things, Ig Perrish wakes up the next morning with a pair of horns growing out of his head. His reaction is typical enough. After the immediate shock of it, he concludes he's hallucinating--and either way, he'd better see a doctor.
It is with these initial interactions, with his girlfriend, the folks in the doctor's office, and most disturbingly with his family, that Ig makes several unpleasant discoveries. No one reacts to the horns. Rather, they're compelled to share their deepest, darkest, sickest secrets. Trust me; you don't want to hear the most vile thoughts of a stranger on the street--much less those of your grandma!
Just when this grotesque show-and-tell is beginning to feel a bit old, Hill moves on and dives into the meat of his story, Ig's story. One year prior, Ig's childhood sweetheart, the love of his life, was violently murdered. The crime was never solved, and Ig is widely believed to be the murderer. Very widely believed, he is to learn. Hill's novel ultimately spans several literary genres. It's a supernatural thriller, a murder mystery, a coming of age story, and a dark comedy all rolled into one. And the novel succeeds quite well on all counts.
As the story drew to its conclusion, the thing that was very noticeable to me was how elegantly constructed the novel was. It was like a perfect puzzle, with different clues and unanswered questions salted throughout. But by the end, everything came together in a way that wasn't so much neat as inevitable. It was elegant. And it was emotionally satisfying. And it was darn entertaining, which is just about the highest praise I can offer.
P.S.: For those of you who realize there is a coded message on the end papers of the novel, but are too, uh, busy to decipher the message, I'm putting the solution in the comments section of my review.
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73 of 95 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I Wanted to Love Horns, but I did not, January 4, 2010
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I've been waiting for the release of Joe Hill's second book ever since I finished his debut masterpiece "Heart Shaped Box." Sadly, Hill hits a bit of a sophmore slump here and Horns fails to live up to its potential.
To start, Joe Hill is a fabulous writer. His prose is some of the best in horror today and his use of imaging and metaphors are that of a writer with far more books under his belt. Furthermore, his characters are welll drawn and multifaceted. Where Hill falls in Horns is on the plot itself.
Horns styles itself a horror novel, but mostly it is an almost Jodi Picoult look at love and tragedy and its effects on three main characters. Ig makes for a good main character and the first 70 pages which deal with his new horns and their ability to make people tell the horrible truth about their sins is fascinating. Ig is a suspected murderer and he finds out the true feelings of his accquaintances and relatives. Sadly, after a roaring first fifth of the book, the real murderer is revealed and we are plunged into a long flashback taking Ig and the other characters from teenagers to adulthood with a few present day chapters sprinkled in.
The horns chapters are good, the flashback chapters are good, but they never seem to find a happy connection with each other. The ending also feels rushed and like the final gasp of a writer who just wanted to get the book out of his life as soon as he could.
Horns isn't a poor book by any means, there are many plasures to be had with it. However, it does not rival Heart Shaped Box in any way. We can only hope book number three will be a return to glory.
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