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+--- Thread: Heart Shaped Box and Horns by Joe Hill (/showthread.php?tid=2398)
Heart Shaped Box and Horns by Joe Hill - Greg_phpbb3_import1 - 12-15-2011
The secret that I don't think is really a secret is that Joe Hill is Stephen King's son. That would be kind of a tough act to follow.
Heart Shaped Box is about an aging heavy Metal Rock star that buys a ghost and then bad things happen. At first, I was really creeped out by this book. I was reading it at bedtime and stopped because it was getting a little too spooky. I know, suddenly I am 12 again. But I was excited for that experience for my jaded heart. But several chapters later it was more of the same. Still a little spooky, but getting repetitive. The stakes were high to begin with so it kind of left the author no where else to go. I also was looking for a different ending, but that's my expectations not the authors fault. It was okay but not super. Kind of like a Stephen King novel.
Horns was much better. Ig wakes up from a strange experience near the anniversary of his girlfriend's murder to find he now has horns on his head. The horns give him the power to have people tell him what they are really thinking, which isn't a very pleasant experience for Ig. He is the accused in his girlfriend's murder and people in the town of Gideon don't really like him. And now they are being psychically forced to tell Ig exactly how they feel. In the course of his wanderings, Ig learns the truth about what happened to Merrin and how she died.
I liked this book. It seemed much lighter in tone than heart shaped box. It has a lot of backstory about Ig, Merrin, his brother Terri and friend Lee growing up in a small isolated New England town. This reminded me of another book, too. But if you are going to read a Joe Hill book this year, I'd read this one.
Re: Heart Shaped Box and Horns by Joe Hill - King Bob - 05-08-2013
Did not read that one, but his short story collection I think titled something like "20th Century Ghost Stories" was quite good, although I can't remember any specific story right now.