Dear Reader,
It’s been almost a decade since my last novel, The Fireman, and how’s that for a head trip? It wasn’t like I pulled a J.D. Salinger vanishing act. I kept myself busy: there were screenplays and comics and short stories and novellas… and also marriage and a pair of little boys. In between diaper changes, tempis fugit was tempis fugiting.
I knew when I started this book that I was going to dedicate it to my wife, Gillian, and it felt important to put everything into it that I could. I think I wanted to impress her. You know the trouble a man can get into when he tries to impress his best girl. The result is a big scaly beast of a novel, into which I poured all that I know about writing stories (and maybe I learned a few new tricks along the way).
So here you’ve got a suspenseful tale of revenge; an air disaster thriller featuring a giant monster; a story about a brother and sister being held by a for-profit paramilitary outfit; and an Indiana-Jones style plunge into a troll’s trap-filled cave. There’s also a harrowing effort to rescue survivors from a building collapse, an attempt to steal occult objects from a cabinet sealed by an unnatural lock, and a brawl on roller skates… but those are more minor narrative detours. At its heart, it’s the story of six friends who bring something vast and terrifying into our world—King Sorrow, an ancient, wicked, and terrifying serpent who delights in slaughter—and spend the next quarter of a century in a desperate struggle to protect one another and escape his bleak shadow.
I hope this story will keep you good company—that it will keep you up late and chase you down into your dreams. That’s where dragons are hatched, of course: in our nightmares.
And of what do dragons dream? Fire. Always fire.
Happy Reading,
Joe Hill
