Gingerbread will never taste the same again.

If you’ve signed up for the Gollancz Geeks you’ll know that recently we sent out a call for NOS4R2 reviewers. Successful applicants will be notified on Friday. Andy James, Gollancz Geek and book seller extraordinaire, responded with not only a review of NOS4R2 but an update on the fantastic event last week at Waterstones Deansgate. Thank you, Andy, for all your hard work on the event and your brilliant review.
Even though I’m a huge fan of Joe Hill’s books, and the incredible Locke & Key Series, I was a little bit underwhelmed by the online hype from horror fans. The two main tag lines of “creepy” and “terrifying”, I always ignore. Books do not, unfortunately, scare me. It’s the same with films or TV shows. The reason why is probably over-saturation to horror books and films from an early age which leads me to never take any notice of lines such as “you will sleep with the light on”. I just need a little more than “scariest book of the year” and because ninety percent of horror published will use this, an author without Joe’s reputation will struggle to be seen by the general shelf browsing customer. I think I will write another post about how horror fiction is perceived in a chain bookstore. The other was “you will never look at a Rolls-Royce the same again”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Rolls-Royce in person so I thought this a bit of a weird selling point, to be afraid of something I will never see, but after reading this now I hope I never see one.

NOS4R2 is Joe Hill’s third book and it’s definitely, for me, the one to break all doubts of whether he can become a mainstream hit. It follows the story of Victoria McQueen and vampire-like Charlie Manx. As a child, Vic discovers she has a knack for finding things by hopping on her Raleigh Bike and using the Shorter Way Bridge, made from her mind, to arrive exactly where she wants to be. This to me is a brilliant tool for a quick change of scenery and really helps drive the plot along at Triumph motorcycle-like speeds.

Charlie Manx, also capable of using his mind to reach where we humans cannot, uses a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith to transport young children to Christmasland, where it’s always Christmas morning, whist draining them of all unhappiness and thus turning back his own body clock. The only problem for the unlucky child unable to escape the back seat is that constant happiness means you love everything that is placed in front of you. Even murder.

NOS4R2 is full of edge-of-your-seat moments and also some pretty dark scenes but without going over the top. Charlie Manx’s little helper Bing is a pretty horrific character who wears a gas mask and likes to speak in rhymes. He also likes to use stolen aesthetic gas on the children’s mums, which smells like Gingerbread, and takes them back to his ‘House of Sleep’. This makes for an incredibly evil and interesting double act. The whole cast are painfully memorable and it makes them extremely hard to leave as you finish this book.

I’m excited by the possibility that twenty years from now I’ll be picking up a copy of Joe’s latest book and thinking NOS4R2 was where  he started getting the recognition he deserves. Really tight and well thought out novels like this one, plus the film adaptation of Horns, should take his career to new heights, which is something the man really deserves.

Shortly after finishing this novel I was lucky enough to run an in-store signing with Joe at Waterstones Deansgate, Manchester and seeing the way he interacted with the queue and how he put a certain nervous bookseller completely at ease was fantastic and incredibly rare. He had an infinite amount of time for every single person and, which you can tell from his twitter feed, he seems completely in love with the industry, constantly referencing books and asking what titles are exciting people apart from his own.

NOS4R2 is a must read and not just for horror fans but to anyone interesting in genre fiction.  If that doesn’t sell this to you I think Dan Brown has a new one out.

You can Tweet Andy @Europa_outlaw and also visit his brand new blog!

We’ll be back on Friday with another brilliant Gollancz Geeks review!