King Sorrow by Joe Hill | ★★★★☆ 4/5 stars
I've been a fan of Joe Hill since I first discovered his Locke & Key comics. He has an ear for dialog and knack for mixing humor and pathos even in horrific settings. His stories can be mean without being sadistic, and there's almost alway someone we're cheering for.
King Sorrow follows a group of bright-eyed, gen x college students who, in 1989, find themselves mixed up with some dangerous people. As anyone would, they summon the eponymous dragon, King Sorrow, who agrees to help them solve their little problem. But of course our heros get more than they bargained for. King Sorrow protects them, defends them, but also requires a terrible annual tribute.
Our protagonists are a delightful mix of gen x archetypes: There's the studious academic with something to prove; the rich kid cum tech bro; the self-loathing, closeted queer; the damaged angry girl; the kindly but ultimately cowardly stoner; the poor but morally correct door mat. A breakfast club if ever there was one. We meet them all in college and follow them into their 40s. Along the way, the burdon of King Sorrow's bargain beats them all down, and they all turn toward their addictions for support, whether it be alcohol, drugs, self punishment, running away or overcompensating. Eventually they hatch a plan to rid themselves of the dragon, but by then their cohort itself is damaged, and trust becomes scarce.
That's the story on the surface, which I think is moderately successful. King Sorrow really does cross over from another reality and scorch the earth. People die in the flames. The public notices, as do some shadowy government types, much to the regret of our protagonists. The book is 800+ pages, and there were huge chunks of it that I flew through because the action was intense and I couldn't wait to read what happened next. The finale accomplishes what it needs to on a plot level, but I felt perhaps on a character level it left a little bit on the table.
There's another story underneath, of course. The allegory. These friends attend an elite college, all but Gwen, who starts out as the daughter of the help that works for the rich kid's family. They're all smart and attractive, they drink expensive scotch and smoke weed in Colin's fancy estate. They have access to just about anything they could want at that age. Then their real lives begin, and it seems like they're always chasing the dragon of the high they achieved in their youth. Certainly the emotional cost of their faustian bargain could be blamed for their shortcomings, but maybe it's the other way around. Maybe King Sorrow is a manifestation of their various addictions. Hill certainly spends pages upon pages describing several characters' descents into substance abuse, and getting clean coincides with defeating the very real dragon that haunts them.
As an allegory for falling into addiction and then getting clean, King Sorrow works quite well.
The following is a total aside, perhaps a connection only I made. I just so happened to be trying to learn how to play Jason Molina's "Ring the Bell" (recorded both under Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co.). It's one of Molina's all-time-great two-chord dirges. Molina notoriously suffered from severe alcoholism, and in fact died from it in 2013 at the age of 39. It's hard not to view all of his songs through that lens, this one being no exception. The fact that it also speaks of serpents doesn't hurt. Anyway, this song was banging around my skull the whole time I was reading. The lyrics couldn't have been a better fit for a person reading King Sorrow, to wit:
I know serpents will cross universes to circle around our necks
I know hounds will cross the universe to circle around our feet
They're always close
Always so close
Step by step one's beside me to kill me or to guide me
Why wouldn't I be trying to figure which one out
Why wouldn't I be trying to figure which one out
Now to return this doorstop to the library.