After four best-selling, extremely well-received dark fantastic novels and an outstanding comic book series, Joe Hill returns to shorter fiction, with Strange Weather a collection of four short novels of horror (Snapshot), fear/terror (Loaded), wonder and heartache (Aloft), and an apocalyptic event (Rain). Though not necessarily connected by a theme, these eclectic tales reflect the writer’s voice, range and talent.
A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman, Joe Hill.
“One of America’s finest horror writers” (Time magazine), Joe Hill has been hailed among legendary talents such as Peter Straub, and Jonathan Lethem. In Strange Weather, this “compelling chronicler of human nature’s continual war between good and evil,” (Providence Journal-Bulletin) who “pushes genre conventions to new extremes” (New York Times Book Review) deftly expose the darkness that lies just beneath the surface of everyday life.
“Snapshot” is the disturbing story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by “The Phoenician,” a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories, snap by snap.
A young man takes to the skies to experience his first parachute jump. . . and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero’s island of roiling vapor that seems animated by a mind of its own in “Aloft.”
On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails—splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. “Rain” explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world.
In “Loaded,” a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for the gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning.
Masterfully exploring classic literary themes through the prism of the supernatural, Strange Weather is a stellar collection from an artist who is “quite simply the best horror writer of our generation” (Michael Koryta).
In his afterword and also the promo material, Joe Hill says short novels, stories of the length in Strange Weather are “all killer, no filler.” There’s just enough space in the story to give the characters weight, while also not long enough for the story to become padded. I’ve got to agree with Joe’s assessment and this thought seems to be bearing fruit – just look at the enormous success of the Tor.com imprint which is primarily short novels/novellas.
The four short novels here are all very good, three of which are outstanding. The first of the four is Snapshot and features a first person narrator recounting a very strange event from his youth in California. The story begins as a coming of age tale, told through the voice of a man looking at, perhaps even reminiscing about his past. Young Mike is growing up with a single father and soon realizes “the Polaroid Man” who goes by the name “The Phoenecian” takes random photos, but these are much more than just photographs. Mike’s neighbor Mrs. Beukes begins wandering the neighborhood and it is up to Mike to take care of her and set things right. Hill does a fantastic job with giving Mike a recognizable, geeky set of character traits (overweight, smart, etc) while also giving the kid heart and surrounding him with a few people who seem to care about him. He’s a good kid who stumbles onto something that may be Lovecraftian, be it H.P. or connected to his own Lovecraft from Locke & Key. The story begins with a sense of normalcy and soon escalates with a delicious sense of mounting terror and horror.
The second story, Loaded, is the most powerful of the four and paradoxically the one most grounded in reality. Hill pulls absolutely no punches in this story, beginning with a tragic shooting, and transitions to an all-too familiar scenario in today’s world: a mall shooting which plays out through the eyes of a few characters whose connections to each other aren’t immediately clear. As the story moves along at the brisk pace in the tightly woven plot, the dread increases with each turn of the page. There’s such a sense of terrifying believability to Loaded that one could be mistaken for thinking the story is actually not fiction.
The third story, “Aloft” feels more whimsical than one might expect from a writer like Joe Hill who typically spins dark tales. That’s only the surface of the premise, though. The protagonist, Aubrey, is dealing with some challenges in his life and is at something of a crossroad when he goes skydiving with bandmates and friends. Aubrey is hesitant to go through with the jump, but the choice is taken from him when the plane’s engine starts having problems. Aubrey lands on a solid, strange looking cloud he spotted as the plane reached jumping altitude. He lands on the cloud and discovers a castle and much more. It is a story of self-discovery for this protagonist that felt very personal, a character asks himself questions that aren’t always easy to pose to oneself. The somewhat whimsical nature had me picturing the story with Miyazaki animation. In other words, a story that perfectly balance lightness with serious undertones.
Hill closes out the quartet of short novels with “Rain,” a novel that tells of an apocalypse as it occurs and just how unexpected it is. Told almost in real-time, the story conveys how as strange, nail-like solid crystal rain blankets civilization and society’s reaction to it. What makes this tale so believable is civilizations/society grasping-at-straws to try to figure out what the raining spikes are and who is to blame. While “Rain” seems like it could be the prologue of a post-apocalyptic novel or maybe even series, the length is just about right in that the story is mostly complete. Like in many of Hill’s stories, the fantastical scenario is grounded by the characters who inhabit it.
The physical book itself is quite lovely, too. Great colors, striking imagery, and use of font really makes the book pop. Further is inside the book, each short novel ends with an image, the first “Snapshot” closes out with a wonderfully creepy piece of art from Joe’s Locke & Key collaborator Gabriel Rodriguez. Additional interior artwork provided by Zach Howard (“Loaded”), Charles Paul Wilson III (“Aloft”), and Ray Dillon (“Rain”).
At this point, it is tough for me to write an impartial review of anything Joe Hill writes, I’ve been following his career since 20th Century Ghosts published in a limited edition about a decade ago and have enjoyed everything he’s written and/or created. In fairness, I’ll say that while all the short novels here in Strange Weather were quite strong, the one that connected with me the least was “Aloft.” Going up from there the stories I enjoyed going from bottom (and I hesitate to use the term since they are all excellent), “Rain,” “Loaded,” and finally “Snapshot.” Truthfully; though, these are all stellar stories and once again demonstrates that despite length or medium, Joe Hill is one of the 21st Centuries pre-eminent writers, not just of the dark fantastic, but of American Literature. Strange Weather is a must read.
Highly Recommended
© 2017 Rob H. Bedford
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, William Morrow
Published October 2017
https://www.joehillfiction.com/
Excerpt: http://ew.com/books/2017/05/03/joe-hill-strange-weather-excerpt/
My interview with Joe Hill: https://www.sffworld.com/2017/10/interview-with-joe-hill/
