Joe Hill's last novel, NOS4A2 was an engaging horror romp which lasted for more than seven hundred pages, but maintained to keep both tension and inteJoe Hill's last novel, NOS4A2 was an engaging horror romp which lasted for more than seven hundred pages, but maintained to keep both tension and interest in the reader to the very end. In comparison, Hill's latest novel is completely unlike its predecessor, with whom it only shares its enormous length. To put it simply - The Fireman is an overly long, convoluted, uninteresting and ultimately very disappointing effort.
At its heart, The Fireman is a post-apocalyptic novel, with a premise that has by now been done hundreds of times: the majority of humanity is inflicted by a ravaging disease, leaving only a small group of survivors trying to scrape by. This time humanity is afflicted by a disease which becomes known as Dragonscale - its symptoms include dark marks on the skin, which spread across the body and eventually cause the individual to literally erupt into flames and burn to death. Dragonscale spreads rapidly, and soon consumes millions of people - as well as the environment, causing uncontrollable forest fires and so on. Although the demise of humanity is not a new theme, you have to give it to The Fireman - it is probably the world's first novel about human extinction by spontaneous combustion.
The problem with the book is that not much else about it is new, or even particularly interesting. As we read the The Fireman, we get the sense of crossing through familiar territory - one which has been done many times before, and much better so. Since every post-apocalyptic story requires a bunch of survivors, we find ourselves in a tight spot. Consider this - how does one escape a disease which literally consumes human bodies and turns them to ash? Easily - by learning how to not be unharmed by it. And not only that - it turns out that you can learn how to control the disease and use it to your advantage.
That's right. The disease kills most of humanity, but luckily for a selected number of people - who happen to be the characters which the book focuses on - it can also provide handy superpowers. Joe Hill said at a panel that his book would be "less like Matheson, and more like Crichton" and cited Crichton's first novel, The Andromeda Strain as an example. The only link with Michael Crichton that I can find in this book is Joe Hill's attempt at quasi-scientific explanation of Dragonscale and how it affects human bodies - something which he later totally throws out of the window by essentially allowing several characters to overcome its malicious effect by their own feelings, as apparently this is all what it takes (and somehow we have to believe these same characters never thought about broadcasting their solution to the problem to the entire world, but then again if they did we would not have a book to read and review).
As I mentioned, people in this book not only escape death by learning to coexist with a disease that should burn them to death, but also learn how to control it and use it to their advantage. This means that later in the book characters in the book are able to generate fire literally from their fingertips, control and shape it - throw fireballs and whatnot, or in case of one character create creatures made of fire. This is why the supposed inspiration by Michael Crichton was so puzzling - Crichton was a writer interested in science and technology, famed for his research and the ability to plausibly convey and explain his theories, and would not employ a purely fantastical cop-out as a solution to them. What made his books interesting was not his prose style , or the depth of his characters- he was a passable writer at best, and his characters are forgettable cardboard cutouts - or even in most cases the story itself, which usually consisted of little more than a bunch of frenetic action sequences. What made Crichton's novels so interesting were the ideas within them, which usually focused on mankind's technological progress and the way it affects our life and society. Usually, Crichton would have his characters engage in long discussions about the nature of what they were experiencing - its moral, ethical and scientific implications - and these formed the most interesting part of the book; it is especially evident in books such as Sphere, which is probably his best novel.
This is precisely what The Fireman lacks - any kind of complexity, something to chew on, somethink would give readers a lot to think about. This is a novel which does not give any answers except the most obvious ones, and does not ask any questions. Its characters are very forgettable and barely, and there is no real reason to care about any of them. Even the eponymous character, en English guy who wears a fireman's suit and is henceforth nicknamed "The Fireman" is little more than a convenient plot device to rescue our protagonists in their moments of trouble - he rarely makes an appearance throughout most of the book until the very end, and spends most of his time hiding away in a remote cabin. Interactions between these characters are boring and simply unimaginative, including what is probably a most ham-fisted romantic relationship written in recent fiction. Poorly designed characters who do not grow as people hurt the book twice, as they make it hard for us to care about the story, since it is difficult to care for what these uninteresting people experience. Because why should we?
Not that the story itself is complex and interesting; it really is not, and the vast majority of it reminds me of a very (pardon the pun) watered down version of The Stand. It is darkly ironic that Joe Hill began writing under a pseudonym because he wanted to escape his father's shadow, yet in this book he falls completely under it. The Fireman features all of the classic Stephen King tropes - the constant foreshadowing at the end of the chapter (in the vein of "it was a good plan, until everything blew up", "he never saw her again), many references to popular culture, endless references to music that the author likes (which sound completely unbelievable when put into minds of the characters many years younger - how many 26 year olds think about the difference between The Rolling Stones and the Beatles?), a crazed sociopath ex-husband/lover, crazy religious woman leader who seems to find her way here from The Mist...there is even an unsympathetic character named Harold who is almost a carbon copy of his namesake from The Stand, not to mention a mute character named Nick who is the epitome of innocence and good, just like the mute Nick from The Stand. All this can be explained as a homage or an Easter egg, of course, but if the book features little else than homages and Easter eggs, what is left? Not much.
Yes, despite all this, The Fireman is the longest of all of Joe Hill's novels so far, and perhaps his most disappointing ones. Its length is in no way justified, and feels padded to the bone; I do not think I exaggerate when I say that you could skip entire chapters and not miss out on much, if anything. It reads well and fast, since Joe Hill is a good and able writer, but there is little point in reading most of it. There is nothing enlightening or innovative in this book; neither the story or the characters are deep enough to become memorable and worth revisiting. For a novel focused on the element of fire, it inexplicably lacks the spark to keep the flame going; and it eventually goes out, quietly and without much smoke. I have given the book two stars only because of my sympathy for its author, and because it is not completely terrible - but it definitely is uninspired, unimaginative, uninteresting and definitely unworthy of your time....more
