The Fireman is Joe Hill’s fourth novel, it is his biggest novel and as a post-apocalyptic tale, it is his widest in scope. What is so remarkable is that for such an expansive novel, it might also be Joe’s most intimate. When a particularly disturbing spore-based infection spreads across the country like literal wildfire, nurse Harper Grayson does what she knows how to do, help sick people. One day while helping in a hospital, a Fireman comes in with a sick, mute boy. This boy is not showing complications of the Dragonscale, but rather a problematic appendix although the Fireman is clearly showing signs of the combustible affliction. When Harper returns home she and her husband have a night of passion, conceive, but “they” make a plan to end it if they both become infected. By “they” I mean her husband states it and assumes Harper agrees. When she shows signs of Dragonscale, the fun really begins.
Dragonscale, the common name for Draco incendia trychophyton, leaves its bearers gold and black markings that resemble tattoos or even scales of a dragon. What makes this beautiful feature a sign of danger is that people afflicted with Dragonscale have a tendency to catch fire and ignite things around them. As a result, wildfires run for weeks and months, decimating the landscape. Nobody is safe, President Obama spontaneously combusts. As such Jakob, Harper’s husband, is upset when Harper decides not to end her life and she leaves him in a violent struggle. Running from her home, the Fireman and his friends appear again and they bring Harper to a Camp Wyndham, a refuge for those stricken with Dragonscale. As is the case with many post-apocalyptic tales, the cause of humanity’s demise serves to peel away layers of civilization and the people themselves become the truly frightening creatures.
The intimacy becomes even more focused as Harper is drawn more into the community of Camp Wyndham. As a Nurse, she is an important figure with no doctors or other people with nearly as much medical training as Harper possesses. The Fireman, so named because he dresses the part, but also because he’s learned to control the Dragonscale and the fire he generates, becomes an even more curious figure for Harper in no small part because he lives apart from the community. There’s some archetypal superheroic elements about the character, he has powers no others have, he as an immediately identifiable costume, he is looked upon by many of the people of Camp Wyndham as a protector. He even has a sidekick in Abby, the young girl who dresses in a Captain America costume and helped to bring Harper into Camp Wyndham. However, our “hero” is much more complex man known as John Rockwood once you see beyond his “costume.”
As Harper spends more time in this camp, which is not unlike a cult devoted to Dragonscale, she learns some unsettling things about members of the camp. It is no wonder there’s a cult like feel, when people with Dragonscale come together in harmony, there’s a collective, near religious feeling of peacefulness referred to as the Bright. This middle section of getting to know Camp Wyndham for all its people, faults, and alarming elements is quite long. Probably half of the novel resides within the middle third, if that makes sense. I found it to be rewarding though, allowing for a full fleshing out of the characters as well as Camp Wyndham as a collective of characters.
The final section switches gear again into something of a road novel. At one point over the course of the novel, a character even mentions Cormac McCarthy’s powerful apocalyptic novel The Road. Hill’s novel is nowhere near as bleak despite the similar end-of-the-world scenarios, largely due the driven character of Harper. She is determined throughout the novel to survive and give birth, despite any and all situations that arise. Most of the novel is told from her point of view and it is such a realistic, refreshing, no bullshit point of view despite Harpers proclivity to humming a “Spoonful of Sugar.”
Throughout the novel we get some glimpses of Harper’s “estranged” husband Jakob’s activities as well as “news” from the outside world courtesy of a radio personality who goes by the name of The Marlboro Man. Think of Howard Stern or Anthony Cumia only without the restraint, and the freedom to go about killing off people with Dragonscale and talk about it on the radio. The Marlboro Man isn’t the only voice, or hinted at voice, on the radio nor is this other voice quite so nihilistic.
If I had to level any criticisms, it would be that Harper’s husband Jakob is not as well-developed a foil/character as is Harper. His actions are a bit predictable, as is the novel he’s been secretly writing which Harper discovers. Also, while there’s no indication that there are more novels to come about Harper Grayson and her friends, the way in which Joe ended the novel leaves me wanting more and very open for a story to be continued.
The Fireman isn’t the first nor will it be the last post-apocalyptic horror novel. Not to make a comparison to The Stand for multiple, obvious reasons is impossible, but it is a very favorable comparison. That said, The Fireman is a novel that will stand out extremely high in 2016, in fact, just before this review was written, it was announced that The Fireman is debuting at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Although I maintain that Locke & Key (the comic series Joe Hill wrote, Gabriel Rodriguez drew, and IDW published) is Hill’s strongest and most powerful work, The Fireman is on just about equal footing with NOS4A2, Joe’s strongest novel.
I guess what I’m saying is that this is a wonderful, tour-de-force of a novel that I can’t recommend highly enough.
© 2016 Rob H. Bedford
May 2016
http://www.joehillfiction.com/
Excerpt: http://www.ew.com/article/2015/12/09/joe-hill-fireman-cover-excerpt
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, William Morrow
