Name: The Fireman
ISBN: 978-0062200631

The Fireman

Janice Hopper

I mostly liked this book, but it was a bit uncomfortable to read. I really should stay away from mostly hopeless, dystopian books when difficult things are happening in my life. For those times, I should stick to Wodehouse or Pratchett or something. O.o

Anyway, I found it slightly terrifying that the author linked his fungal plague with the melting of the icecaps and the cycles of extinction. Burning to death from the inside out would be a bad way to go. Learning to have some control over it is better, I think. Learning how to send your fire like some kind of crazy superhero is getting out there a bit.

There's one suspense/horror trope very much at play here: the returning monster. I kinda hated that. The whole you-think-it's-dead-but-it-not-GOTCHA!!! thing was a bit tiresome to me. And little foreshadowing comment tics like "'I'll tell you tomorrow,' he said. But he never got the chance." annoyed me a little with their frequency. 

But it was a compelling story. I read it in a couple of days, even though I didn't need to read a book with dark themes right now. I read a bit of it as a cautionary tale of how some feelings of belonging can serve selfish OR unselfish ends. The feeling of group belonging when you're in a lynch mob may not be a lot different from the feeling of belonging in a group playing games at a picnic or something. One is a dark belonging, the other more benign. 

The story didn't go quite where I thought it would. That was good, mostly. But it's pretty dark.

Allie Adkins

I'm not going to lie, this was tough to read. Firstly, I was well out of my depth. I don't watch horror movies, and I've never read a horror novel, so it took me a while to get used to. Thankfully, my overactive imagination didn't give me nightmares, but The Fireman would be a grim movie! It's a long book, like I said, but it struggles with pacing issues. One day I would burn through (pun intended) several chapters without noticing the time, another it felt like every line I read was a chore.

Full Review at my Blog: https://oftenofftopic.wordpress.com/2...

Hannah Derzanovich

I enjoyed it! The society built post-Dragonscale was extremely interesting to read, and I loved (and loved to hate) most of the characters. This is probably the fastest I've ever read a 700+ page book.

I will say that the plot(s) didn't feel very established. I wasn't entirely sure what the goal was a lot of the time... And I got tired of the odd last sentences at the end of most of the chapters pretty quickly.

Casie Blevins

Rarely does a book ever piss me off. Occasionally a book will bore me, or I'll find the material trite, or silly, or not my cup of tea. This book was all of the above. Plus disappointing, perplexing, annoying, and infuriating. Where was the structural editor for this novel? Sleeping under his desk? The idea for this book was fantastic. Everything, and I mean, everything about it was poorly executed. Characterization was null or so over the top as to be ludicrous (penis lighter, anyone?) Pacing was way off, the novel was at least 100,000 words too fat and by the time that I stopped reading (around the 500 page count) I was genuinely tirading about the book and all of its faults. How could the publisher have allowed this to be published? Did they think that Joe Hill was such a big fat check for them that it wouldn't matter? For shame!!! I loved 20th Century Ghosts, it's one of my favorite books of all time, loved Horns, appreciated NOS4A2. I think Joe Hill is a talented author that should fire all of the idiot sycophants that surround him and get people who are in it for him to SUCCEED, with the best possible product, not skate by with a barely acceptable (and in my case intolerable) bloated beast failure of a novel.

Lori Keenom

I loved this book. It's about a post apocalyptic time where a spore that cause people to get what's called Dragonscale. Harper the loving nurse gets in while volunteering at the hospital. Jakob her jerk of a husband doesn't want anything to do with her after her finds out she is infected. So he leaves her pregnant and alone. She meats up with "the fireman" who has learned to control the scale. He takes her to Camp Wyndam, where there are others living with the scale. But, things are not always what they seem.

Ben Nathan

Very good premise, well executed. The only flaw in the book was the near constant use of foreshadow at the end of chapters. I enjoyed it, but I think if that hadn't been so often showing up, I would have been a bit happier.

Great characters, great action. Highly recommend.

The Fireman

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