The Fireman - Softcover

Hill, Joe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062661035 ISBN 13: 9780062661036

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2017

Synopsis

Dragonscale is a terrifying new plague. A highly contagious, deadly spore imprints its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected. There is no cure. No one is safe.

Nurse Harper Grayson has discovered the telltale gold-flecked designs on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, made a pact that they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. But now Harper wants to live...until the fetus she is carrying comes to term.

Convinced that his wife has made him sick, Jakob abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who carry the spore. But a stranger in a firefighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he is afflicted with Dragonscale but has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted...and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

About this title

Review

An Amazon Best Book of May 2016: I admit, when I hit a saggy part in a story, I do skip ahead to see if the plot will pick up again. At no point in Joe Hill’s doorstop-weight novel did I have that urge, for each and every page had me entranced. Set in New Hampshire right about now, The Fireman opens with a man spontaneously combusting outside the office of school nurse Harper Grayson. He’s not the first victim of Draco incendia trychophyton, the spore responsible for this transformation, but he’s the signal that Dragonscale has spread to Harper’s small town. It also spreads to Harper soon after she realizes she’s pregnant. Highly contagious and 100 percent fatal, Dragonscale soon plunges the world into chaos. (An oddly affective moment is when Harper logs onto Google and finds, instead of the search engine, the words “Goodby.”) But Hill smartly focuses on Harper and her attempts at survival, keeping the stakes small but extremely personal as the uninfected hunt down and murder the infected, supposedly to protect the rest of the town but really to indulge in sociopathic tendencies now unleashed. The Fireman starts with a hot burn, simmers as Harper joins a group of infected hiding in a summer camp, and then heats up again as the near-utopian community ruptures. Hill weaves questions about the power of leadership, group-think, love, catastrophe, and family into the plot. His smartest move is to give no clear-cut answers to these questions, making The Fireman more substantial and real than a typical apocalyptic thriller. And his humdinger of an ending provides just the right closure. --Adrian Liang

From the Back Cover

A terrifying new plague is striking cities one by one. Dragonscale is a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no cure. No one is safe.

Harper Grayson, a dedicated nurse, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term.

Convinced that his wife has made him sick, Jakob abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious stranger in a dirty yellow firefighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

Harper must learn The Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0062661035
• ISBN 13: 9780062661036
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 768