NOS4A2 (utgåvan 2013)

A fascinating concept that is brought to intense life by the writing of Joe Hill. It kept me in suspense for the entire length, and not just in the suspense of a good thriller, but in the suspense of heartache and queasiness you get from seeing someone very bad about to do something very wrong. I loved every minute with NOS4A2! ( )

A few days ago, I was scrolling through updates on my Goodreads feed while sitting in my car in the middle school parking lot waiting for my son. The front cover for this book by Joe Hill caught my eye immediately.....a bloody license plate with one of the most clever personalized plates I've ever seen. NOS4A2 - Nosferatu. Oh yeah.....I have to read this book! Immediately! It is awesome at times how a smartphone can give instant gratification. I had the audiobook checked out from my local library and downloaded in less than a minute.

Instant. Total. Gratification. Horrifying gratification. Best horror audiobook I've listened to in quite awhile.

Not only did the story instantly have my attention....but the narrator of the audio book is Kate Mulgrew (she played Captain Janeway on Voyager). I knew right away that I would not be wasting almost 20 hours of my life listening to Mulgrew read this tale to me. :) As a narrator, Mulgrew is superb. I have partial hearing loss and at times female narrators can be difficult for me to understand. But Mulgrew's voice is a bit lower than most women's voices, so I had no problems whatsoever. It's not just that though.....her performance is excellent! The voices she does for the characters....the expressiveness.....just PERFECT!!! I will definitely be looking for other audiobooks she has narrated.

The story itself is incredibly creative and viciously horrifying. Charles Manx. Murderer. Sadist. Kidnapper. He lures children into his Rolls Royce Wraith, a magical car that takes the kiddies to Christmasland. In Christmasland, it's always snowing....bright, fluffy holiday snow. The kind Bing Crosby sang about. Holiday music is always playing and kiddos can have all the candy, popcorn, cotton candy and goodies that they want. But....they can never leave. And they really aren't children anymore. While Manx doesn't kill or molest the children, he loves to torture, kill and otherwise completely ruin the day for adults. Or he has his murderous lackey do it for him. There are a few other people who can travel into this other dimension. They all have something that allows them to enter....an object that catapults them from the real world into Manx's horrible other dimension. For Victoria McQueen it's her bicycle. As a child she discovered she could ride across a nonexistent bridge and find lost things.....but she learned there was much more to that other place than just finding things. It cost her dearly. Later in life she tells herself that she was crazy, mentally ill, that none of it ever happened. But it did. Years later she learns it was all real......and Manx is much, much more than just a murderer who drives a magic Wraith to Christmasland.

Listening to this book just before Thanksgiving was perfect timing. I don't think I will be able to listen to carols or look at holiday decorations this year without thinking about Charles Manx and his sleek Rolls Royce. And the horrors of Christmasland.

This book had great suspense, real horrors and moved along at a nice pace. The audiobook is 20 hours long, so it took me 2 weeks to finish it.....totally worth the time! I definitely recommend it for anyone who likes a bloody dose of holiday horror!

Happy Holidays! If you see a Rolls Royce Wraith driving slowly through your neighborhood this holiday season.....bring the kiddos inside and lock the door! :)

For more information about the author and his other books (which I plan to read, and hope that they are just as grisly and demented as this one!), check out Joe Hill's website: https://www.joehillfiction.com/ ( )

My previous experience with Joe Hill's writing came only through Twentieth Century Ghosts--which I adored. That collection of short stories may be my favorite single-author collection of horror stories to date, so I had high hopes for this novel, especially considering who the author is and that I'm a big of his father Stephen King's writing. I say all that because, having finished the book, it's hard for me to know whether or not my final reaction would be the same if I hadn't had such high expectations here.

I enjoyed the book, for the most part--and I can't even really say that it dragged--but as much as the concept fascinated me, I often found myself wandering into other books rather than sticking to and finishing this one. That's not normal for me, especially when it comes to horror novels, but there was something about this one that just didn't quite compel me in any given moment to come back to it. I think, on reflection, that it comes back to the main character. Much as Vic is sympathetic, believable, and engaging, there's a certain fatalism to her character, and to the extent that I can put my finger on why I didn't care about her as much as I want to, I think it comes down to the fact that it often feels like she doesn't care about herself. She cares about her family, and even about the world and strangers... but it often feels like she doesn't care about herself. This isn't a matter of her being suicidal or anything else that would require some trigger warning beyond what the very nature of this book would suggest, but it's difficult to really care about someone when, from the moment you meet them, you feel like they don't quite care about or take themselves seriously enough, and in the end, that's my impression.

There are other, smaller things that bugged me, but this is where I think we come back to that question of expectations. I had incredibly high expectations for this book. So, while I can nitpick and say that maybe we spent a little bit too much time with the bad guys as the novel progressed, or say that Hill was a bit heavy-handed at times and didn't quite have the instincts to just let something go when it could have been more impactful/powerful (vs overdone), I do think those are criticisms that wouldn't have occurred to me if I'd had no expectations going in. I adore his father Stephen King's writing (and I'm sure he personally probably gets sick of being compared to him), and you can absolutely see the influence; the big difference, for me, is that I don't yet trust all of Hill's instincts and trust him not to gut me like some horror writers do in who they kill and when--and to be honest, I trust him even less after reading this book--and that I do think some of the gore and some of the passages were just, for lack of a better way of putting it, somewhat over the top.

The last variable is, truly, one of marketing as much as anything. Given the title, I really went into this looking for a vampire read. I expected a book about vampires, and it's kind of that simple. Instead, while there's a connection... this is not a book about vampires. I can see where the license plate comes from, and I can see how it's clever, and I can see why he and others might have thought it was a good title... but to be honest, it's not a good title. For one thing, it just doesn't fit. Even if Hill's version of vampires is at the center of this book, them being vampires has nothing to do with anything. Giving the book this title almost sets up readers for disappointment, in my opinion. I can think of a dozen different titles that would have been more appropriate and not set up an expectation that was doomed to fail, but here we are, and yes, this annoys me. Because if I hadn't wanted a vampire read, I would have picked up some other horror novel, and I would have gotten to this book eventually/sooner than later when it would have better met my tastes/expectations.

So, all in all, would I recommend it? It's hard to say. It's nowhere near as good as Hill's collection of short stories, and it's got its weaknesses. On the other hand, when I picked it up, I generally kept reading for a few hours and it certainly provided an escape. I will be reading more of Hill's novels, but if I could go back, I probably wouldn't start with this one. ( )

It's been a long time since a book has truly captivated me, a book that has allowed me to truly escape reality in it's beautifully written pages. NOS4R2 was perfect for me, it allowed me to explore my own 'inscape' and was transported across a bridge to a land of nightmares.

This was one sinister read, Charlie Manx will be haunting my dreams for a while and I'll never think of Christmas as the same again.

it isn't perfect but it's a brilliant read, Joe Hill has once again proven why he is one of my most beloved authors. ( )

I put off reading this book until pretty much the last moment this year because I didn’t want to be disappointed. I read my first Joe Hill (Horns) early in the year and was underwhelmed. It was fine, but not great, and I was afraid I would feel the same about this. But I could not have been more wrong. NOS4A2 scared me, made me laugh, and made me ugly cry, not an easy feat for any book, and actually only the 2nd horror story to bring me to tears. I read all 692 pages, even after suffering a literal allergic reaction to the book (someone with cats clearly borrowed it from the library before me), and it officially became one of my favorites.

It broke my heart and gave me hope and left me feeling emotionally wrung out in the best possible way. This will definitely be a re-read for me, and one that I will recommend to anyone willing to listen. ( )