Review: Horns by Joe Hill

After success with short fiction (especially ‘20th Century Ghosts’) and graphic novels (‘Locke & Key’), acclaimed author Joe Hill returns to long fiction with ‘Horns’ (2010, Gollancz), his much-anticipated second novel. Whilst Hill reworked the traditional ghost story for his debut, ‘Heart-Shaped Box’, he grounds this story into a character-driven look at the darkness in humanity.

The story centres on Ignatius Martin Perrish, or Ig, who wakes with a terrible hangover. He can barely remember anything from the previous night, not least how he got the horns that seemed to have sprouted from his head. At first Ig thinks they aren’t real, and that he is in a dream, but the horns are tough and bleed and throb – definitely a part of him. Then he discovers what they can do, and it is here we tap into the horror in the story.

Ig came from a well-off family, his father a musician and his older brother, Terry, a talk show talent. Everything was going very well for him, until his childhood sweetheart, Merrin, was raped and murdered. Ig was the only suspect, last seen arguing with Merrin. He was never charged for the crime, but the town has been blaming him for it for a year. A lot of people hold various grudges and dark opinions about Ig, and he is about to hear them all.

You see, the horns make Ig the devil, a conduit which others talk to in a trance-like state, confessing their darkest secrets and deepest, dirtiest desires. Ig immediately finds this out as he steps out of his bathroom. His new ‘girlfriend’, Glenna, confesses she cheated on him with an old best-friend, Lee Tourneau. She then asks if she can scoff a box of doughnuts down, which she would normally never do, and Ig learns he has the power to allow people to crave to their darker desires. Ig leaves to go to the doctors, but only hears more disturbing stories there. It also becomes obvious people don’t remember their encounter with him – the sight of the horns takes them elsewhere. He visits several places on his way to the inevitable – his parents’ house. The truth he hears he is utterly heart-breaking. But it gets worse, when he talks to his visiting brother. Terry begins to confess to something that happened a year ago, something he was forced to keep secret. Something involving Lee Tourneau and Merrin. It seems Ig must use his powers for a little revenge, because (as the blurb wonderfully explains) ‘it’s time devil had his due’.

The premise to this story alone was enough to send a shudder of excitement through my reading bones. I love such stories, psychological horror that exposes the dark side of people, especially when it exploits those we are led to believe should always be upstanding role models (a priest, for example). Hill does a wonderful job of building up the powers of Ig’s horns. A first they are an extreme burden, and as each person confesses it just piles on the hatred the town really has for him (and the way many people in the town are playing each other). When revenge is firmly in his mind, Ig begins to use those powers to his advantage (especially the persuasion part). His confidence grows, with a little dark humour to boot. But many attempts also backfire. For instance, a bodyguard tries to simply ruff him up but can’t stop attacking him, because that’s secretly what he wants to do (although Ig never grants him the power to do this). And, of course, there is someone the devil cannot affect, because that someone is like the devil too.

The story begins as a rather fast paced arc from what-the-hell-is-happening-to-me, to the quest for revenge. However, there are several flashbacks that unfortunately break this up. The flashbacks are brilliantly written, the first showing when Ig, Lee, and Merrin all met as adolescents, another showing Lee through his eyes and not through what Ig thought he knew. They help to strengthen each character and I loved them (especially the adolescent phase, it was just so real). They also included key points to the plot. However, they really did interrupt the flow, almost as if Hill started out with one genre in mind and then changed his mind as he went along. Ig also has the power to touch someone and see glimpses of their dark past – really, he could have done this in fragments to get some of the past information, especially in regards to Lee’s flashback. Certain other elements were also bizarrely built up and then disregarded, which actually worked (to some extent). Ig begins to stay in a shelter, where he spent his childhood, near where Merrin was found dead. Hundreds of snakes come out of the wild and stay by him – animals of the devil, so to speak. Lee blatantly says he hates snakes, and I thought Ig would predictably use the snakes to scare him, but Lee just ignores them (they are actually petrified of him) and does something else. Bizarre, but unpredictable, nonetheless.

The interruption of the flow is perhaps the only criticism I really have with this novel, and that is clutching at straws. It is very well written and further places Hill as an essential figure in our dark genre. Stripping back humanity is one of the best forms of horror, because darkness lurks everywhere, and this novel is one of the better examples of that. Hill’s ability to write wonderful, deep characters has grown immensely. Get it now!

Review by Craig Bezant