Joe Hill has become a trusted, brand name storyteller over the course of the last decade or so. With novels and stories garnering awards and Hollywood attention, it is fair to say that when any new work of his is released, it is a Publishing Event. Full Throttle is Joe’s first short story collection since 20th Century Ghosts, the book that put him on the map. Sure Strange Weather was a collection, but those were longer novella length stories. Full Throttle features thirteen short stories, including two stories Joe co-wrote with his father, Stephen King.
In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in thirteen relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including “In The Tall Grass,” one of two stories co-written with Stephen King and the basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.
A little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in “Faun.” A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in “Late Returns.” In “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain,” soon to be an episode on Shudder TV’s Creepshow, two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water’s edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality . . . and other horrors that lurk in the water’s shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in “Throttle,” co-written with Stephen King.
Replete with shocking chillers, including two previously unpublished stories written expressly for this volume (“Mums” and “Late Returns”) and another appearing in print for the first time (“Dark Carousel”), Full Throttle is a darkly imagined odyssey through the complexities of the human psyche. Hypnotic and disquieting, it mines our tormented secrets, hidden vulnerabilities, and basest fears, and demonstrates this exceptional talent at his very best.
The title story, “Throttle” is the first collaboration with Papa King and is a tale of bikers being chased by a trucker. Nothing supernaturally horrific, but more of the horrors of men and how fathers and sons don’t always have the best relationships, especially when the son is not falling line with dad’s expectations. It was a gripping story that worked great as an opener.
The title of “Dark Carousel” more than hints at the story itself and hints at Joe’s Ray Bradbury influences. Joe explicitly calls out Bradbury in the introduction of the collection as one of his biggest influences Some troublemaking kids run afoul of a carnival hand after one of their group thinks they’ve been robbed. Good pacing with a pervading sense of dread and doom plus an empathetic narrator make for a fun story. I could almost see this story fitting in the world of Hill’s Locke & Key comics he co-created with artist Gabriel Rodriguez.
One of my favorite stories in the collections takes the portal fantasy to a dark conclusion. “Faun” tells the tale of a big game hunter who one day discovers a portal to another world populated by creatures out of fantasy – fauns, elves, ogres and the like. Naturally, he capitalizes on this find and makes the portal world a place he can charge people to hunt these strange, unearthly creatures. There’s a great examination of masculinity, fatherly pressure, and how something you think you know and control may have its own goals. A great story all told. Think of the premise as if greedy men discovered Narnia and tried to exploit it. More than anything, “Faun” seems to hint at a much larger story yet to be told, as the story only offers a glimpse into another world, and a full history that can unfold. I’d love to see this one revisited in some fashion.
Perhaps the most touching story in the collection, and one of the more emotionally impactful fantasy stories I’ve read in a while, was “Late Returns.” Here Joe touches elegantly on the amazing power of story, how it can connect people, bring them peace, and has a far deeper meaning than the words on the page. Part remediation on grief, part love letter to fantastical tales of the past, Hill packs this story with great emotion that is equal parts heartbreak and compassion. There was a television show in the 1980s called Amazing Stories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Stories_(1985_TV_series)) that was sort of an optimistic foil to The Twilight Zone and “Late Returns” would work wonderfully as an episode. “Late Returns” is also the first of two stories to appear for the first time in Full Throttle. In fact, a reboot of Amazing Stories is hitting Apple TV so perhaps it could happen.
“Thumbprint” is a haunting tale of a military veteran who returns home under less than favorable circumstances. At increasingly frequent turns, she finds slips of paper with thumbprints following her, almost taunting her. She questions her sanity and who is sending her these messages.
“Twittering from the Circus of the Dead” is an effective, jarring story told as a stream of tweets. A family is taking a cross country journey when they encounter a circus of dark wonders. In bursts of tweets often spaced only a moment apart, Hill is able to convey a creeping sense of dread until he brings this Twitter stream to a slam-bang conclusion.
In a seemingly dark fairy tale, a gun-toting White Nationalist family takes center stage. “Mums” centers on the young boy coming into a sense self-awareness as his mother attempts to skirt him away from his controlling father. Dad isn’t exactly happy with the state of the world and is looking to take drastic measures. The young boy sleepwalks, experiences bizarre dreams, but soon has a strange awakening. “Mums” is the other story appearing for the first time in Full Throttle.
“In the Tall Grass” is the second of the two collaboration stories between Joe and Stephen King. This is a very dreadful tale that starts innocently enough, a brother and sister hear cries for help from a field of grass. They then enter said field to try and find the young boy. Of course they don’t and of course they are separated and lost themselves. This a taught story that takes a few unexpected turns. Good stuff where you can’t really tell what parts are Joe and what parts are Papa King. This story will soon be a Netflix film.
The final story perfectly captures the stress of flying. That in itself is uncomfortable, especially given the wide swath of personalities and ideologies potentially on a single plane. When it is announced that something global may have happened and that the flight is diverted, chaos, fear, and discomfort are increased. This final story goes by the title, “You are Released” and is equally as terrifying – and plausible – as many of the stories in the collection.
Other stories include “By the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain,” which features siblings who find a dinosaur (maybe not a dinosaur) washed up on shore of Lake Champlain, “The Devil on the Staircase” which was fascinating from a form perspective, the body of the text forms stairs; “Wolverton Station” highlights the horrors of corporate life; and “All I Care About” is somewhat reminiscent of Ray Bradbury’s story “I Sing the Body Electric,” which began as an episode of The Twilight Zone.
The collections is bookended with two non-story pieces from Joe. An introduction lays out some interesting groundwork for what to expect and there’s a note section at the end wherein Joe gives some background on each story, a bit on the genesis of the story and where (if) it appeared elsewhere prior to Full Throttle.
Like most short story collections, some stories will connect with the reader more than others. When Hill’s stories connected with me, the connected with me on an almost molecular level and were outstanding. On the whole, Full Throttle is a great collection and just more proof that Hill is one of the great storytellers of the early 21st Century.
Highly recommended
© 2019 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | 480 Pages
October 2019 | William Morrow Books
https://www.joehillfiction.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
