Just Finished Reading: The Fireman by Joe Hill (FP: 2016)

No one really knew where it came from but there were enough rumours to go around. Some speculated that it was a weapon either released on purpose or by accident by the Russians or ISIS or religious fundamentalists. There was even one theory that it was released due to the melting tundra and was what really caused the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Now, it seemed, it was our turn. But at least they had a name for it: Dragonscale or simply ‘scale. It was a fungus that invaded the body somehow (no one really knew how in the early days) and set up home there eventually penetrating all of the organs including the brain. The most obvious sign was mottling on the skin in weird and unique patterns mixed with amber-like granules – hence scale. But it was the scales effects that caused the most concern – and the most damage. When the infected experienced heightened emotions the scale ‘glowed’ and heated. When the emotions were strong enough the fungus became hot enough to ignite the infected person in a burst of Spontaneous Human Combustion so hot that the infected could start fires and start them they did. Before a mass programme of isolation was in place buildings, forests and whole cities burned. The authorities learnt too late for some that the sight of a combustion nearby could cause a ripple effect among other infected and result in firestorms. With little to go on and government action failing across the country self-styled ‘clean-up’ squads thought they had the right answer – shot the infected on sight.

Into all of this school nurse Harper Grayson managed to get pregnant. If that wasn’t complicated enough her semi-psychotic boyfriend wanted them to go through with their mutual suicide pact as the world ended around them. But she had another life to think about now – even after she got the ‘scale and had maybe a few months to live if she was lucky. Determined to go to term and bring a new life into the world Harper left her home looking for a rumoured community where they said they could control the disease. With nothing left to lose and the clock ticking she had no option – unfortunately her boyfriend and his new friends had other ideas….

I’d heard lots of good things about both the author and the novel so, as I have developed quite a ‘thing’ for post-apocalyptic lit, I thought I’d give it a try. The first thing that hit me was the size of the book - at 762 pages it’s a BEAST. Unfortunately, despite it being generally well written, this is actually far longer than it needed to be. Losing 100 pages, actually losing 200 pages, wouldn’t have made much difference to the overall storyline. It’s not that the narrative was padded, it wasn’t, but that the extra pages didn’t add very much at all to the plot. Generally the characterisation was very good – the lead character Harper was well drawn as was the ‘Fireman’ (with some reservations). The ‘scale community was interesting if a little too heavily plotted at times. The evil ex-boyfriend was too much though. I mean, how many times do you have to put a bad boy down before he stays down. I think that’s the biggest ‘beef’ I had with the whole book. Just too many damned cliff-hangers! The ending, once we literally slogged there, was pretty well telegraphed about 100 pages in advance so I wasn’t overly impressed by that. Likewise (as is usual for such things) the government vanished pretty early on leaving the mopping up to street thugs and crazy people. I’ll have much more to say about this in response to my next review but I’ll just say a few words here. I know why authors tend to eliminate governments early on in these novels. Part of it is the ‘wet dream’ aspect of living free of government oversight or being a responsible citizen. I get that. Part of it is that it eliminates right away a whole lot of complications in the story most of which would be pretty boring. But it’s just so bloody unrealistic. Even in a global disaster some form of government would survive and be in your face pretty quickly – and permanently – once the shit went down. Although, if you go by novels like this (and most post-apocalyptic movies too) you’d think that governments vanish in a puff of smoke once the hammer falls. Anyway, this was (overall) a reasonably well told end of the world narrative with some interesting ideas and set pieces. As you can imagine it’s also quite brutal in places so the easily disturbed might want to give it a miss.