The fruit does not fall far from the tree...this Joe Hill novel could have been written by Stephen King it's that good...the son is a worthy successor to the father (not that the old man's stopped producing class work of course).

I mainly know Joe through his amazing fantasy comic series Locke & Key, with the odd short story along the way. This is the first of his novels that I've tried but I know it won't be the last. It's a monster of a read (almost 900 pages according to Amazon - Kindle counts are a little too flakey for me 🤣), incorporating monsters both human and demonic...it has that knack of giving us anti hero and quasi hero characters that we want to succeed (but also need to see punished a little); it has some lovely descriptive qualities of both the everyday and the less common (of course we all expect a severed head to drop through a windscreen moments after the decapitated husk has crashed onto the trunk of a beautifully described motor).

There are some powerful endorsements coming with this book - Alan Moore for instance describes it as a "doorstop horror blockbuster", Paul Tremblay "humane and hideous"...who am I to argue with such skilled and proven genre greats?

My attention was gripped at the start and maintained to the end, and again the genetics stay in play as the lad likes to keep things twisting away...and those twists go on to the end.

Thank you for keeping my summer hot Joe Hill

I'm a bit conflicted with this book. I've read four books by Joe Hill and enjoyed them all so I was looking forward to this one. However, for me, it was too long at 900 pages. At about 20%, I started to skim, particularly the bits padding out a character's past explaining how they got to be who they are now. At that point, I thought the story was three stars. As I got closer to the end and having read the unexpected twists and turns, I couldn't not give it less than four stars.

Joe Hill is a great author with an easy engaging style. If you like horror and/or fantasy, read this book. (Assuming you have time.)

When submitting a review I always think that it is wise to start by stating where your particular tastes lie. I have been a fan of Joe Hill ever since he released his debut novel ‘Heart Shaped Box’ in 2007. It remains a perennial favorite to this day followed by NOS4A2 then Horns and finally the fireman.

I was personally very disappointed in ‘The Fireman’ and so when it was announced last year that in 2025 after a near decade long wait there would finally be a new novel, I had very mixed feelings.

I’m very pleased to say that very soon after starting King Sorrow those fears were quickly laid to rest and many heartfelt thanks to the publishers Headline for providing me with the advance read.

Attempting to fully characterize this book is no easy task being part coming of age tale, part rite of passage, part romance, part fantasy and indeed part horror.

In order to give you a brief summation of the plot I would say that a group of undergraduates with an appreciation of all things occult manage to summon a dragon one night in a drug induced attempt to deal with a couple who are blackmailing one of their own.

The dragon agrees to provide them with full protection from their enemies providing he is given a name of someone he can kill.

However, the catch to this particular offer is that not only is this not a one time deal but they are expected to give him a name to kill every year for the rest of their lives and if this agreement is not abided by he will take one of them instead.

Perhaps it is no coincidence, given the fact that we follow this group of friends from adolescence to adulthood across several decades whilst trying to vanquish a demonic force, it brought to mind Stephen King’s ‘IT’ in many respects.

And whilst this comparison is intended as high praise indeed, I would go even further to say that unlike its predecessor the near 900 pages on offer here are very easy to get through.

I liked the way Hill played with our relationships to these characters with one character clearly set up to be the story lead only to not be and another set up as a paragon of trust again only to not be. It is also fair to say that the person who ultimately turned out to be our main protagonist also turned out to be a surprise.

What was less successful was how clearly signposted the ending was with more than 200 pages to go. It was explained to the reader that there was really only way to kill this dragon and as exciting as the denouement was there was absolutely no deviation from this path which could have benefitted from the kind of twists and turns that Hill had successfully peppered throughout the book prior to this.

The lore surrounding this didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me either as we are asked to believe that King Sorrow is at his weakest directly after his easter kills when surely having received what he craves he would be at his most powerful !

That said, my personal opinion is that the key to good writing is empathetic characters to the point where once the reader’s relationship to them is fully they would be prepared to follow their story anywhere which is the case here.

There are also some set pieces involving our antagonist which are truly heart stopping and the way King Sorrow haunts his victims prior to killing them is deeply unsettling.

Personally I would love this to be turned into a HBO/Netflix/Amazon limited series now that ‘the Black phone’ has proved there is a healthy appetite for the right adaptation of Joe Hill’s work.

So, all in all I thought this was terrific return to form for Mr. Hill and at a substantial nearly 900 pages, an easy read. I just hope we don’t have to wait a decade for the next offering.

"King Sorrow" (2025) is an epic new horror novel by Joe Hill, author of "NOS4A2", the plot spanning 33 years, about a group of six college friends from Maine. When one of them gets into trouble, they come up with a desperate plan to help.

It's 1989, and when Arthur, student at prestigious Rackham College, who has a mother in prison for manslaughter and is intensely focused on literature, is blackmailed for stealing rare books from the library in order to to stop a prison attack on his mother, he turns to his friends Colin, Donna, Allie, Van, and Gwen. Meddling with drugs and the occult, the kids decide to use a supernatural ritual from a strange, apparently human-skin-bound grimoire to summon the cruel, dragon shaped King Sorrow from the Long Dark. While this solves Arthur's immediate problem, they find themselves in a Faustian bargian, that compels them to select one victim for the demon to consume each year until they die. Over the next three decades, they struggle to keep the evil pact while trying to get rid of King Sorrow, and live with the consequences of what they started. This secret shapes not only their personal lifes, but also their relationships, and identities.

"King Sorrow" is as much a horror or urban fantasy story about dark magic as it's a novel about loyalty among friends, love, power, corruption, the weight of responsibility, and guilt. The book might be a doorstopper, but it's also a page turner containing numerous plot twists, dark humor, and captivating characters you care about. The cast is huge, so reading requires quite some commitment. Hill takes his time to indroduce and develop his emotional story and protagonists, cleverly weaving real life with the supernatural. The initial late 1980s setting feels quite nostalgic with its wired telephones and IBM computers. After that, each part of the book takes place in a different year with the world changing around the six friends, which is fascinating to see on its own from a historical point of view. One of the best sections takes place on a transatlantic flight and could almost pass as a stand-alone novella. The ending is almost as ambivalent as the the one in "It", the masterpiece by Joe Hill's father Stephen King, and the human antagonists of Arthur and his friends, the Nighswander family, are almost as scary as the eponymous dragon.

Maybe Joe Hill could have made the book a bit shorter, but "King Sorrow" is a masterpiece of its own that will haunt the reader even after finishing the last page. I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Headline and NetGalley for providing me this ARC.

Well worth the 10 year wait. A classic in the making with elements of his dad's writing intertwined

It's been ten years since the last book by Joe Hill and it's been worth every second of the wait , although I hope we don't have to wait another ten !
Coming in at nearly 900 pages King Sorrow is a chunker , but don't let that put you off as there isn't a part of this book that feels too long or spare.

We follow six very different friends that manage to summon a dragon and make a deal to protect one of their own , not realising that it's more than a one time deal .
What follows is a story that covers several decades and ties together real world events with a touch of the magical .
Hill takes us from secret government facilities to beneath a bridge in Cornwall. Living in Cornwall myself I loved seeing nods to the original Gwen and Arthur . Speaking of nods there are a few hat tips to Dad Stephen , Greg Stillson anyone !

What made this book work so well for me was the character work. I both loved and hated these characters, sometimes both at the same time !

I would definitely recommend this book , it's one of the best I've read this year .

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for the advance reader copy.

King Sorrow is an epic read: Joe Hill at the very top of his game



Thank you, first of all, to NetGalley for my ARC of this fine book.

I won’t spoil the plot, because this is one of those books that’s best experienced with as little foreknowledge as possible. At its core, it’s about a group of friends who summon a dragon to help them deal with some problems . . . and then follows the decades of fallout from that fateful decision.

What really blew me away was the evolving dynamic between the friends. As the years pass, we watch relationships fracture and twist: friends become enemies; lives unravel; and love is both found and lost. Hill captures the inevitability of consequence with real weight, and yet he never forgets to make you care deeply about these characters.

There are plenty of winks and nods to his famous father’s work - some subtle, some delightfully blatant - but they always feel like affectionate tributes rather than distractions.

When this book finally hits shelves, I can’t recommend it enough. Pick up a copy and devour it the way a dragon’s flames devour flesh.

Five stars. Absolutely fantastic.

When a group of friends decide to see if they can summon a demon to do their bidding, and end up with King Sorrow -- a dragon from a dimension somewhere beyond imagination and reality -- they find themselves trapped in a Faustian pact where they must choose a soul to offer each year to this interdimensional beast. But as the years take their toll on the group and they find themselves fighting the morality of their choices, they realise that to rid themselves of the King, they must journey into a shadow world of fantastical creatures, some of whom of may be even worse than King Sorrow himself...

King Sorrow is a HUGE book. Like his father, Hill writes epic-sized novels that superficially fit into one genre, but take on so many others. Here, Hill blends elements of crime novels (especially in the early third, where a group of young people find themselves in debt to the wrong people), fantasy (the nature of King Sorrow himself and the later appearance of trolls and giants in the real world), and horror (the faustian pact entered into) along with Government conspiracies, family dramas and so much more.

Luckily, also like his father, Hill is able to keep a tight control on all of these elements and blend them into a tale that keeps those pages turning, with incidents that continuously deepen the stakes and keep them personal, and an approach to lore that makes the unusual accessible in a way that few writers are really able to do. Perhaps the action does sag a little in certain sequences, and maybe the book could have ideally lost maybe a hundred or so pages, but the fact is that you buy into Hill's world and characters easily, and you find yourself drawn into the psychological realities of a cast who find themselves dragged so unwillingly into something so insane that you just have to find out how they will escape. Add to this that Hill's prose has the beautiful energy of a natural storyteller, and you have a book that may have some flaws in its length and padding, but that you still absolutely adore, and will want to keep reading up until its breathless conclusion.

I've adored Hill since Heart Shaped Box, and King Sorrow is another excellent addition to his canon!

It feels like there aren't many horror authors writing these big, heavy books anymore—whether they can't, don't want to, or aren't afforded the opportunity to (I suspect the latter), I rarely seem to pick up a new release that exceeds the 400-odd page mark. That means that any author publishing one would invite the King comparisons, but of course, they're going to be even more prevalent here. Despite this being a 5* review, please set your expectations. This isn't an IT, a Stand, an 11/22/63. What it is to me, however, is a thrilling, touching, and sometimes brilliant story that kept me fully engaged for each of it's almost 900 pages.

The premise is relatively simple—you can sum it up by saying that there are 6 friends, one of them gets into trouble and they work out how to summon a dragon to help him, without realising they're entering a Faustian bargain that'll hang over their heads for the rest of their lives. It's what Hill has done with it that really impressed me. The novel starts in 1989, ends in 2022, and each book or section of the story takes place in a different year. It's wildly ambitious and I did wonder how a story about a dragon would be able to sustain such epic length and scope.

The answer to that question is the characters. The friends, their relationships, and their evolution is really what kept me turning the pages with every opportunity I got. New people come and go into their lives, some disappear after the chapter is done, others will stick around and make an impact until the very end. The core group of friends evolve as the book goes on—some become reprehensible, some try and push back against their situation and become better people, some do both—and while there may be some I didn't like at times, I always appreciated the time I spent with them.

If you're looking for a long, ambitious page-turner, that is as comfortable throwing a lengthy action sequence at you as it is sitting with quiet and emotional character moments, this is likely to be the book for you. King Sorrow takes fantasy elements and explores the fallout from smashing them into the modern world, with Hill tying in both real life and fictional people and events—but more than anything, it's a book about relationships. How they evolve over time, how absolute power can bring you closer together, or push you violently apart. And there are, of course, the odd obligatory nod towards some of Hill's father's own characters over the years.

I was very pleased to be given the opportunity to review this book by Joe Hill, this is the first book I have read by Joe Hill, though I have a few of his books on my tbr pile.

King Sorrow tells the story of what happens when a group of college kids dabble in something they shouldn’t. It is a mammoth tale, spanning over a couple of decades.

The amount of time I spent in this story and with the characters I felt that I really got to know everyone, I particularly liked Gwen and Robin. I really felt I was rewarded sticking with the book by the last 30% of the novel, as I felt the quality of the writing and story was at its absolute peak at that point.

I was a little confused at times with what year the action was taking place, but again that seemed to be less of a problem later on in the novel, so maybe it just took me a while to get used to it.

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves horror and stories based around the occult. I’m looking forward to reading the next Joe Hill novel.

Diverse and interesting characters. All with different personalities and quirks all individually memorable and enjoyable even the characters we should hate we love!
Amazing mix between fantasy, horror and also some historical fantasy. Very thought provoking at times with unpredictable twists. A book I will be thinking about for a very long time

This is a very heavy read. It was enjoyable but the sheer size of it was offputting to begin with. It follows the same group of friends, Arthur (imprisoned mother, intense focus on literature); Colin (generational wealth and tech focused); Donna (twin and traumatised); Donovan (twin and drug-addicted and fracturing); Allie (lesbian in desperate denial); and Gwen (working class and the most sensible of the lot).

The book spans thirty or so years punctuated by the group growing up amongst their yearly ritual of unleashing King Sorrow, a dragon tulpa or demonic entity, to kill one person each year. This does not end well for them.

It’s such a well-crafted storyline with the characters being flawed and achingly human. Donovan is my overall favourite with Colin being relegated to second place due to his tech obsession. There’s no real absolution for anyone just a moving forwards regardless, and it was a fantastic read to be along ok the journey with them, even as it didn’t end how would be expected.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.!

After Arthur performs a good deed while visiting his mother in prison he finds himself blackmailed by an unscrupulous family into stealing rare books for them from his college library. He and his college friends get together to find a solution to this situation before it gets out of hand.
A fantasy thriller with some unforgettable characters.
I enjoyed this epic story about good versus evil so much that I just couldn’t put this book down.
This is the first book I have read from this author and I’ll be looking out for more of his work. I have been an avid fan of his father’s books for many years.
Thank you to NetGalley and Headline for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t even know how to begin talking about a book like this. King Sorrow by Joe Hill wrecked me. Every single one of these 900 pages meant something. I clung to the words, dragged them out, savoured them. And when it was over, I felt completely hollow. Like something had been taken from me. I would’ve read another 900 pages without a second thought.

This is easily one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I don’t say that lightly.

These characters didn’t feel like characters. They felt like people I knew. People I loved. I cried with them, ached for them, and carried their weight long after I turned the final page.

At its core, it’s about six college friends and the tangled, messy beauty of growing up, falling apart, and clinging to each other in the dark. But this isn’t just a coming-of-age story. One desperate night, they make a deal to save a friend, and the price is steep. The devil they strike a bargain with takes the shape of a massive, terrifying dragon, and from that moment on, their lives are never the same.
It’s a sweeping, brutal, and beautiful epic novel. Heartbreaking and haunting in equal measure. King Sorrow burns itself into you.

Releases October 21st 2025. You do not want to miss this one.

"What's King Sorrow, if not a weaponized act of the imagination? He's a bad dream with teeth."

Joe Hill's mammoth novel brings together a group of friends in their earlier years. Arthur has found himself in trouble where he is being blackmailed to steal rare books. He turns to his friends Colin, Donna, Allie, Van and Gwen, in order to stop those that are taking advantage of him. Dabbling with the occult they summon the help of a dragon known as King Sorrow. Although this erases the trouble Arthur was in they had not realised King Sorrow's conditions are to give him a victim every year for the rest of their lives. How can they break free from this evil? Over the span of a few decades, these lifelong friends will have to work hard in keeping their promise to King Sorrow whilst trying to take him down and living with the consequences of what they started.

Much like a lot of readers of Joe Hill, I have patiently waited to get my hands on his first huge novel in quite some time. I remember reading Fireman when it was first published, to think that was almost 10 years ago.

Although this book is huge it does start off at a fast pace, it shows the dynamics of this group of friends and as expected the more the story evolves the deeper the understanding of each of these characters surfaces. There were many twists in this story that had me pausing and processing before moving on.

I loved the big character of King Sorrow. He very much reminded me of Smaug, there were several scenes that felt like parallels to great dragon stories or films I've experienced before however Joe Hill does manage to make it unique to the story he is telling.

Also couldn't help myself when I came across references that will be familiar to readers of his works and those of his father.

Overall this was an epic fantasy horror story that will be enjoyed by many. It was definitely worth the wait.

First up, this is a very long book. Some might say "epic", to which I'd agree, but it's also far too long. In any passage of the narrative or a sub-story, there's page after page of waffle before the author gets to the conclusion of what's going on. So it's a gargantuan piece of work, but I loved it none-the-less!

It's refreshingly nice to see that Joe Hill has such a unique writing style, very different from his father (whose books I love), but also nice to see that an incredible level of imagination is a common family trait.

A bunch of very different friends dabble with the occult, and the tale then takes place over decades, with delightful twists & turns, some surprises at the end.

Starts off with a novel blackmail plot, then 12%, a drug induced supernatural experience. Saying much more would need to include spoilers. A very captivating read.

One moan is that I don't know if the author has ever been to the UK, but when the UK pops up, it's portrayed in quite an old fashioned stereotype way. "Crap food & weather" is a bit like me describing the weather in the US based on Chicago, or the food available in the US based on the choices available in Nebraska. We also don't all walk around in tweeds, baggy sweaters, have 100% Scottish red-headed barmaids, and far from us considering spam is a superfood (I've never had it, nor has anyone I know, and I'm middle aged), the two highest consumers of spam are the USA (Hawaii especially) and South Korea. The author also chooses Magdelin college at Oxford, but it's actually practically the only college that does NOT offer English Literature (Balliol is the main one, plus seven other Oxford Uni colleges). So a bit patronising as a UK reader.

So epic, enjoyable, too long in places. I'd recommend to friends who have the patience to read it, as it's not written in "page turner" style and does need some attention. Very clever piece of authoring.

Thanks to the ARC from NetGalley.

I enjoyed this monster of a book a lot. I have read some of Joe Hills previous novels (and many of his fathers). It was so long it could almost have been 2 separate novels, the characters were well written and the locations and events exciting. Anyone who enjoys a fantasy novel will love this. Highly recommended.

This book had me invested from the very first chapter! king sorrow was fast paced from the start and I’ve been looking forward picking it up every day!
It’s a mammoth of a book at 895 pages, around the 500 odd mark, I felt the story could have been wrapped up and it started to feel like a real slog to read.
However I really enjoyed all the different paths this story went down. The character development is well done and I can imagine this would make a great movie!
Truly original and fantastic, worth the read!

This is a big old book full of damaged and imperfect characters which I love! Creepy, nerve wracking and tense at times, a really good read!

So, a book about dragons, eh?

They say you should start with the good things and mention the not-so-good things later. So, good things first: this book is an unreal PAGE-TURNER! It’s incredibly engaging, full of twists, interesting characters, lovely insights into history, thought-provoking ideas and a lot of humor (some of it quite dark!). I never expected it to be this good. I never thought I’d say I loved (!) a book about dragons - one of my least favorite subjects to read about - but I truly loved it! Several times while reading, I thought: wow, amazing, wow, wow, bravo, Joe Hill!

So, “King Sorrow” is a dark fantasy about a group of six friends at Rackham College in Maine. One of them gets into trouble and then there is a desperate (and not quite so serious) plan to use a mysterious, human-skin-bound journal to summon a dragon - King Sorrow - to solve the problem.

But their problems are just about to start! The book’s scope is epic, following the group (and others) across nearly quarter of a century. Hill explores how the burden of their “dragon secret” shapes their lives, friendships and identities. The story is as much about the human condition - loyalty, love, power, corruption, guilt and the weight of responsibility - as it is about dragons and dark magic.

Now, some critiques. There are too many characters. It takes a while to remember who’s who, understand what’s going on between them and keep track of who did what. By the time you’re more or less familiar with everyone - more towards the end of the book - you’ve already forgotten some of their earlier roles and involvement. That said, some characters do stand out. Arthur, for example - I thought he would be the main protagonist. Robin - such a quirky character, loved her! But I wonder if she were included just to tick a certain box. Secondly, the beginning: it’s long. Really, really long. It goes on forever - almost more than 20% of the book - and such a detailed introduction doesn’t really add much to the story. I mean, what takes 200 pages here was summarised in one sentence in the synopsis.

That said, I loved the book! I enjoyed many long evenings with it and have already recommended it to a number of people—both those who love dragons and those who don’t care for them. I think it deserves FIVE stars!

With many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.