A mysterious virus, known as Dragonscale, is wreaking
havoc worldwide. Dragonscale is highly contagious and
practically guarantees the infected person will
eventually die in a fiery inferno. Harper Grayson is a
nurse in the midst of this chaos, doing her best to
provide comfort and care to those infected with
Dragonscale. Unfortunately, Harper becomes infected with
Dragonscale. Harper's husband, Jakob, wants her to honor
their pact and kill herself but Harper now has someone
else to live for- her unborn baby. How will Harper
survive in the chaos? Her only ally may turn out to be an
enigmatic stranger known as THE FIREMAN.
In THE FIREMAN, Joe Hill takes an unlikely mix of characters
and throws
them into a nightmarish scenario. I particularly love
Harper and her nurturing personality. Her determination
to find joy in even the harshest of scenarios is
admirable, even heroic. THE FIREMAN is a bit off an
oddball and he never quite grew on me despite many of his
brave acts. I think it was his behavior about Sarah that
was so off-putting. However, I couldn't help but love his
care and concern for Nick. And yes, you'll need to read
THE FIREMAN to meet Nick, Sarah, and a whole host of
other fascinating and sometimes downright scary
characters.
Joe Hill hits this one out of the ballpark as THE FIREMAN
is long, full of details (many quite gruesome and
depressing), and yet I didn't want the book to end. On
the surface, THE FIREMAN is one heck of a good post-
apocalyptic horror novel in which a virus essentially
collapses society as we know it. However, don't dismiss
THE FIREMAN as just a horror novel as Joe Hill gives
readers a good look at the dangers of "group think"; I
couldn't stop thinking of the old video game, "Lemmings",
as we watched characters blindly follow others despite
all rational reason. I would love to discuss THE FIREMAN
with my book club as the layers of meaning would make for
a fabulous discussion.
Joe Hill crafts a frightening and far too realistic
scenario in which a virus causes the complete breakdown
of civil society. If you love a good solid horror story
that offers more a deeper story than just sheer goriness,
then don't hesitate to pick up THE FIREMAN. I guarantee
you won't regret it!
From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling
author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box
comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of
spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization
to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to save
it, led by one powerful and enigmatic man known as the
Fireman.
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 desperate season to come, as the world
burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s
secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up
in smoke.
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