NOS4A2

I was excited to try this at Christmas, and I enjoyed the prologue. Then it turned into 80s nostalgia and I was feeling the Stephen King vibes that I don’t enjoy

Ich habe das ohne Vorinformation gelesen und daher erst gedacht, es ist ein Vampirroman, das ist aber nicht der Fall, zumindest nicht im klassischen Sinn. Kann man gut weglesen und das Konzept von mentalen Landschaften ist interessant und schön plastisch geschrieben. Mit ein paar weniger Klischees wäre es noch besser gewesen.

i was captivated by this story.. but i had to take off a star because there was absolutely no need to slip in a random joke that included racial slurs, no matter the context. I already knew those men were vile, so that was a very irritating stain on an otherwise great read.

This was the horror novel I wanted for October. It was creepy, disturbing, and hair-raisingly suspenseful.

It features a villain who is disturbing because he truly believes he is helping children by sucking all the life out of them and turning them into vampires, and a henchman who does the dirty, horrifying work of torturing and murdering the people who get in their way.

I loved the characters and the setting, and I loved the idea of people who can navigate their own personal worlds with help from a talisman. I’d heard mixed things about the TV adaptation, but I enjoyed this book so much that I think I’ll give it a chance.

Amazingly creepy. I really like Joe Hill's writing style. He blends the weird, the creepy, and the wonderful all together.

There were some slower sections of the book, but overall it did continually keep moving forward. It was a very satisfying read. I would definitely recommend it, even if horror isn't usually your thing.

Imaginative, exhilarating, frightening, Joe Hill's "NOS4A2" is a wild sleigh ride through a thrilling wonderland of creativity and a perfect seasonal read.

One of the best Stephen King books I've read.

It is not fair judging a child in their parents merits, nor can it be easy growing up in the shadow of one of the most prolific and popular horror writers today, but Hill's NOS4R2 really shows the anxiety of influence. The first part of the novel reads very much like a King setup, with detailed life stories and the terror children face in a strange world, complete with scatological humor. The second part gets better, the pace picks up and Hill's influences become more diverse and surprising. The final battle even reveals some unexpected Clive Barker.

All in all, however, the novel does not succeed in its own, nor as an imitation of King.

This is really well written but I have to put this down for a while and finish it some time later. I'm a father of a 9 month old and reading a book about a villain that preys on children and their mothers is too uncomfortable for me right now.

I'll definitely come back to this one though, as the first 30% of it felt like Hill really hitting his stride.

Starts off as a supernatural novel of a girl who can collapse space on her bike and a librarian who can see the future in Scrabble tiles, but it eventually becomes the story of a mother trying to rescue her kidnapped son. There's still the underpinnings of supernatural events, but it's not nearly as much of a vampire novel as the title would seem to indicate. There are a couple of "Hollywood" moments, where oversized and unrealistic explosions save the hero and advance the plot in a tidy fashion, but those are just brief distractions from an otherwise riveting novel. (And yes, 'riveting' is something of a lazy reviewer's word, but Janet Maslin, in her review in the NY Times, described the novel as 'throat-grabbing," which is perfect and there's no way I can come up with something better.)