From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to save it, led by one powerful and enigmatic man known as the Fireman.The fireman is coming. Stay cool.No one knows exactly when it began or … cool.
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.
Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.
In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.
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I love Joe Hill’s writing as much as I love his dad’s—and that’s a lot!
Joe Hill does it again with this gripping page-turner. hats off to you, sir!
I am so very bored with this book. I had to read some reader reviews to make sure that it isn’t just me. Unfortunately it’s not. Like many others, I really liked reading his other novels and have been looking forward to this one for quite some time. And knowing that Kate Mulgrew was the narrator was another thing I was looking forward to going into this book.
Harper’s husband is instantly unlikable. He is a disgusting human being and probably the most interesting character because of his hatred.
Living/Hiding in a community is too familiar to The Walking Dead series, when the group was forced to interact with communities like Woodbury and Sanctuary.
There are other books on my TBR list. So I will not finish this book just for the sake of finishing. I might come back to it later, and then again, I probably won’t. I’m hopeful his next novel is as good as NOS4A2, Heart-Shaped Box, and Horns.
It was a page turner. A Little unrealistic but I had a hard time putting it down. I really enjoy it.
Joe Hill’s The Fireman tells a familiar story, the break down of society, that’s had a lot of different twists. Yet he has managed to find a completely new voice for a post apocalypse epic. And it is pretty epic.
The world is totally unprepared for Dragonscale, or Draco Incendia Trychophyton. I loved that it wasn’t the standard end of the world plague, which is just the beginning of what makes Hill’s tale unique.
He’s created a cast of damaged characters that have inherited the earth. But like any good post apocalypse tale, ultimately it’s a story of hope and overcoming immense odds.
This one sticks with you long after you finish.
I like joe hill this was a good book but some parts left me wanting something more still I enjoyed the read just not quite as much as Horns for example
Joe Hill delivers all the thrills and excitment you would expect from Stephen Kings son.
You can tell who he is genetically related to. Love his style of writing. It is different than his dad’s but just as captivating. Don’t start reading if you have something else you have to do…it won’t get done.