Horns by Joe Hill.

Hey guys!

So I know it’s been a while since a review, but fear not, one has appeared! J

Today I am going to be reviewing ‘Horns’ by Joe Hill.

There are two reasons I bought this book:

(Warning: There is going to be swear words in this, which I have censored slightly, if you don’t like swears then do not read this or just ignore them and pass them off)

Reason 1: I heard that a film version of this book, staring Daniel Radcliffe, was coming out around late October time, I had to read it as I’ve heard positive things about Joe Hill. (Mostly because he’s Stephen King’s son, and he definitely did inherit his dad’s writing abilities)

Reason 2: I went to a Gollancz book festival at Waterstones around early August and I met Joe Hill. So I also bought the book to get signed  (yay!)

Anyways! On with the review:

Once, Ig lived the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned American musician, and the younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, Ig had security and wealth and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more - he had the love of Merrin Williams, a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic.
Then beautiful, vivacious Merrin was gone - raped and murdered, under inexplicable circumstances - with Ig the only suspect.

The morning after visiting Merrin’s grave, Ig awoke to find that Horns were starting to grow out of his head.

Now Ig is possessed with a power that allows him to uncover the deepest and darkest secrets by just touching people.

Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. It's time for a little revenge; it's time the devil had his due.

Holy Jesus, this book was amazing!
The genre of the book is titled ‘Dark Fantasy/Horror’ and it really does live up to that.

I found that the plot for this book was solid, at no time while reading this did I feel lost or confused. The main plot focused on Ig’s life after Merrin had died and how much of a train-wreck he had become. (But I mean, if you had been accused for murdering and raping the woman you loved with all your heart and being the only person who knew you didn’t do it, would mess you up a lot)

In every other chapter the book would show how each character met through past interactions, this allowed you to get a good understanding of peoples motives and people feelings. The way it was done though was so fluidly and intricately that when the book came to an end, everything was so perfectly explained.

There are two main things that I really liked throughout this story:

The first one is that you find everything out within the first 60-70 pages.
This may make you think “Huh? Obviously that ruins the rest of the story?”

Wrong, it made everything so much more gruesome. The fact that you found out who killed Merrin and how they did it was just so stupefying that you though ‘Nah, that person couldn’t of done it’.
But then you're like "Holy sh*t, What? Why? How?"

The second thing I loved about this book was the concept of Ig’s Horns.

The way that they are able to bring out the worst in people was slightly terrifying, not in the sense of being ultimately scared but in the sense of being freaked out, especially if you heard these hidden secret truths from a family member or a friend.

For example: there was a little girl in the story who was crying and being loud while her mum was trying to soothe her and telling her to stop.

Ig helps the little girl of the ground and the little girl tells Ig that she wants to burn her mother alive...

Creepy right?! ^^^

The characters were, in my opinion, very well created and had a great amount of detail and development implemented through out the book.

The first character we meet is Ignatius Perrish, the second son of famous musician David Perrish.

Ig is very up-front; He speaks his mind a lot and he’s the type of guy who has flairs of both darkness and innocence, which show up repetitively through out the book. This allows you to see how he will react to different scenarios.

The thing I loved about Ig the most was his sense of not-giving a sh*t, it really was essential to the character Ig is. He tries to be this manly guy who believes everything can be brought to justice when in-fact he only starts to realise everything is broken after his life falls apart.

The sort of secondary characters that play major parts in this book are Lee Tourneau and Terry Perrish.

Lee is a tall, blond, skinny guy that becomes Ig’s best friend after a series of unfortunate and stupid events.

When you first meet Lee, you believe he is just some sort of outcast kid who has a poor up-bringing and has a terrible life, but once the book divulges into his life and backstory you find out he is just a possessive, manipulative man who obsesses over Merrin and will not stop at anything to be with her.

He also has some weird perverted thoughts running around his head… he freaked me out the most, like seriously, just freaked me the hell out.

Terry Perrish is Ig’s older, richer and more handsome brother. He is a very level headed man who wants nothing more than to protect his younger brother and make sure that he has a perfect life.

He is very prone to getting himself into bad situations and always turns up at the wrong time.

Terry was probably my second favourite character; the only reason is because of his selflessness and bravado. The willingness he had to help Ig, given his history and previous encounters, in any circumstance shows me that even if you have a brother, who has come off the rails, you can still supply enough time to help them through their problems.

Honestly, this has been one of my favourite books this year to read. It had suspense, tension, hatred, anger, happiness, joy, sadness, etc to make it a really good story.

In October (I believe on the 31^st) a book-to-film transition is being released in cinemas and is staring Daniel Radcliffe as Ig. (Perfect choice I reckon and its a perfect halloween film!)
I cannot wait to see this film and compare it to the book! Hopefully, with the previous book-to-film transitions, it is as good as the book and follows it closely.

That’s all for my review!
As ever, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!

Joe - :D