This epic horror story follows a tight-knit group of six friends who accidentally let out an ancient, evil dragon-like creature from another world. While the friends seek to protect themselves from a real earthly threat, they make a pact with King Sorrow: they must offer a human life to the dragon each year. In the following decades, the six must deal with the consequences of this decision. It turns out that opening the door to horror is nearly impossible to close once you’ve opened it.
Publishing year: 2025
Page count: 896
Rating: 🐲 5/5
When you choose a course of action, you accept the consequences – those you intended and those you didn’t.
King Sorrow, Joe Hill
The Reading Experience
When I first held the book in my hands, I found it quite intimidating because it’s almost 1,000 pages long. I haven’t read any thick books in a long time (thanks to my studies). I didn’t know how it would feel or whether I would enjoy it. My concerns were completely unfounded.
The book starts slowly, but then goes into great detail and describes the characters very precisely. It then picks up speed and does so quite well. Suddenly, things really took off, and I thought to myself, “Oh man, what just happened here?” That was the point at which I was so captivated that I didn’t want to put the book down. Unfortunately, I have to go to work or do boring household chores every now and then. I actually read the book every spare minute I had because I really wanted to know how it would continue and how it would end. Joe Hill is really good at building suspense and keeps it going until the end. I love his lively writing style. When I read, I always have a picture in my head.
The story really worked for me. It had all the elements I love in books and genres. The story is really high quality.
The main characters are very well described and you can get a good picture of them pretty quickly. There’s something for everyone in terms of likability. I really liked some of the characters, while others not so much. I was really surprised by some of them in terms of my feelings toward their characters, whether positive or negative. Some of them really surprised me with their motives, others less so. But that’s perfectly fine and how it should be.
Hill isn’t afraid to fill his story with characters who have flaws, are morally questionable, and are sometimes just plain unsympathetic. That makes them all the more human. There are no superhuman knights here. But when we need them, they can sometimes be just like superheroes. King Sorrow asks a simple but important question: Who has the right to decide who should live and who should die?
I’ve talked about the human characters, but I should also mention King Sorrow himself. He is a daring, dark, and captivating character who stands out from the crowd. The dragon is alternately clever, sarcastic, darkly humorous, and evil incarnate. He is one of Hill’s best creations.
Summary
King Sorrow totally caught me off guard. At first, I was intimidated by its nearly 1,000 pages, but once the story picked up, I couldn’t stop reading. Joe Hill’s writing is vivid, his characters are morally complex, and the dark, fascinating presence of King Sorrow himself kept me hooked the entire time. I absolutely loved this book from start to finish. It’s a story I’m sure I’ll come back to and read again sometime.
Readers who enjoy Joe Hill’s approach to character driven horror might also enjoy my review of You Like It Darker by Stephen King.
