Joe Hill’s ‘King Sorrow’: A humdinger of a horror tale that makes you think

Got a problem? Get a dragon!

The story revolves around the lives of a group of friends — Arthur, Donna, Van, Gwen, Ella and Colin. Arthur’s mother is in prison for an accident, and he is blackmailed into stealing rare books to keep her safe there and ensure that she gets her parole. His friends try to help him out, but their attempts end in a severe thrashing by the blackmailers.

Enraged, humiliated and angry, the five friends put their heads together and hatch a scheme so wild that even they do not believe it will work. They use one of the rare books Arthur has stolen (one that is actually bound in human skin) to summon a dragon. There is no meticulous ceremony here — no hoods, ancient runes or chanting secret words around a sacred fire.

The five simply do whatever each thinks will work — one starts singing dragon-themed songs on a piano, another gets high, and they all get sloshed as they call out in different ways for a dragon to come and help them. It is all rather chaotic and funny at one level.

At 900 pages, King Sorrow is a pretty intimidating book.(X@joe_hill)

A dragon with a “deep, plummy, good-humoured” voice

The not-so-funny thing is that a dragon — King Sorrow — actually shows up. He is not a magnificent, imposing creature but actually a voice in a helmet of water — “deep, plummy, resonant, good humoured.” He promises to kill the blackmailers by Easter, and although the five friends are too dazed to even believe it will happen, they realise they all now have dragon tattoos on their bodies.

As the days pass, they wonder if they actually imagined what had happened. But then Arthur’s blackmailers get in touch, terrified that they are being pursued by a huge snake-like creature, and reality hits them. Shaken by what they are going through (and feeling guilty for having been responsible for it), Arthur even tries to save the very people who tried to harm his mother and him, but the dragon pursues and destroys them.

Which ideally should have been the end of the matter. However, as Colin’s terminally ill grandfather, Llewellyn, remarks: “The problem with inviting the unnatural into your life is that it might decide to stay.” As Easter draws close next year, the dragon suddenly reappears, asking for another victim.

Feeding the Dragon: “We’re serial murderers too!”

The five friends realise that they had, without realising it, agreed to provide the dragon a victim every year. If they do not do so, King Sorrow will eat one of them.

While some of them are horrified by their predicament, others are not too ruffled. Colin (whose tendency to over-simplify and bring tech into everything gives him an almost Elon Musk-like air) even prepares a spreadsheet of “candidates” who deserve to die, with weightages allotted to different misdeeds and crimes, and says rather bluntly:

“We can make a desperate play to outfight him… or we can sacrifice a serial killer to him, a Ted Bundy type, and do a little good. Put another way, if we go to war against King Sorrow, we would essentially be risking our lives to protect a guy like Ted Bundy… You have to deduce who’s worth more to the world… us, or some sick serial murderer somewhere.”

To which Gwen replies: “But, Colin… we’re serial murderers too.”

A story of normal people… who need to feed a dragon

That is what King Sorrow is really about — the tussle between the friends to “feed” the dragon and their struggles with their own consciences as they condemn people to death, no matter how bad they are. The book is as much about inner conflict as it is about the sheer horror the dragon inspires — he might sound like an amiable English gentleman, but his menace is unmistakable.

It is also a coming-of-age book about the five main characters: their relationship with each other evolves, and their “list of victims” (or King Sorrow’s “menu”) changes as they grow older (the book spans a few decades).

It might be classed as a horror book, but King Sorrow is actually a detailed look at the life of five friends who find themselves literally making decisions of life and death. Hill has an almost Mark Twain-like ability to describe everyday life in a manner that transports readers to the places he is narrating. Arthur’s conversations with his mother in prison, Gwen’s struggle to get to a college, Van and Donna’s shenanigans and Colin’s casually wealthy lifestyle are beautifully captured.

Hill shares his father’s gift of showing readers both sides of the story — there are times when we found ourselves actually understanding the rationale of the bad guys and even the dragon. There are no black-and-white characters here, just an ocean of grey with slightly deeper and lighter stains at different places.

One of the books of 2025, even if you don’t like horror

Hill is very like his father in this attention to everyday life detail, but he tends to build up situations more elegantly and classically, all while moving the plot smoothly. King Sorrow will keep you awake at night, but you will end up wondering more about what Arthur or Gwen will do or thinking about what Colin will come up with next, rather than being terrified of the dragon.

In fact, the dragon does not even make an appearance until the 23rd chapter of the book, and yet we never felt bored — such is Hill’s storytelling skill. He does pay tribute to his father at places — King followers will smile when Hill writes: “The dark man fled across the snow, and Arthur Oakes followed,” which is very similar to the opening words of King’s seminal Dark Tower fantasy series: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

King Sorrow is easily one of the best works of popular fiction of 2025. You might pick it up for the dragon (we did), but will stay for Arthur and his friends as they struggle with their consciences as much as with the dragon who is threatening them. When it ends (we are not giving anything away), you are likely to end up feeling shaken and stirred, more than scared. And realising that 900 pages are not that much to read after all.

King Sorrow
Joe Hill
Headline
896 pp
₹1863 on Amazon India at the time of writing, ₹1999 in stores