When Charles Talent Manx, an unstoppable monster who transforms children into his own terrifying likeness, kidnaps her son, Victoria McQueen, the only person to ever escape his unmitigated evil, must engage in a life-and-death battle of wills to get her son back.
Stephen King’s son Joe Hill has become a best-selling author winning several Bram Stoker and British Fantasy awards as well as an Eisner Award. In 2013, he wrote his first 700 page novel NOS4A2 that received critical as well as commercial success. This horror novel would do so well that it spawned an AMC television series that would last for two seasons.
You can definitely see Joe Hill’s father’s influence in the writing style of the novel but in its themes also. The novel jumps between two different time periods 1996 and 2008. In the first period, a young girl by the name of Victoria McQueen or Vic for short discovers that she has unusual powers where she can transport herself to another dimension called Christmasland by traveling on her Raleigh Tuff Burner Bike over a sinister bridge. This soon places her in contact with a malicious child abductor named Charles Manx who drives a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate ( standing for “nosferatu” the Romanian word for vampire). Manx is a demonic creature who abducts children from the real world and turns them into vampire creatures so that he can absorb their energy. Vic defeats this evil man but will encounter him again in 2008 when Manx returns to make Vic’s son one of his new victims. This will propel Vic into a spectacular battle where there will be casualties.
The novel is fast paced and will keep the reader enthralled as it propels the reader into Vic’s epic battle with Manx in two different periods of her life. The characters are vividly written and Manx is a truly diabolical villain in the same category as other memorable King adversaries like Pennywise the Clown and Randall Flagg. The vampire children are especially creepy as well as heartbreaking considering they are Manx’s victims and pawns. The story has enough action and brooding atmospheric description to keep the writer absorbed for its entire length. Joe Hill has produced a novel that is a worthy addition to his father’s legacy and establishing him as an accomplished writer in his own right.
Availability: Book; eBook in cloudLibrary Rating: **** Stars (I really liked it) Reviewer: Van, Reference Librarian
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GENRE: Adult Books for Young Adults; Books to TV; Horror
AWARDS: Library Journal Top Ten; School Library Journal's Adult Books 4 Teens: 2013
THEMES: Creepy Clowns & Bad Seeds (Menace often lurks behind things that seem innocent at first glance.); Final Girls (Final girls are the lone female survivors of a horrific event -- from serial killers to supernatural monsters. They battle, and even defeat, the creatures ordinary humans can't face. Whether through virginity or ingenuity, a final girl is a heroine for the ages.); Vengeance is Mine (Hell hath no fury like a character scorned.) CHARACTER: Well-Developed PACE: Fast-Paced WRITING STYLE: Compelling
SUBJECT: Boy Kidnapping Victims; Christmas; Courage in Women; Good & Evil; Kidnapping; Monsters; Mothers & Sons; Secret Places; Supernatural; Magic Transformations
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