The fireman is coming. Stay cool.
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, 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 antidote. No one is safe.
Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, 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. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.
Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—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 and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’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.
In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.
Review:
After reading, Joe Hill's NOS4A2 and Heart Shaped Box, The Fireman fell short to high standards. The concept kept high marks, original, thought-provoking, and tantalizingly morbid for an apocalyptic book. Hill definitely carries his father's (Stephen King's) DNA when it comes to creative ideas. Unoriginally, disease and sickness from the flu to zombies paint the dim setting for the apocalyptic novel, but a disease carrying spore that burns its victims alive is different.
Hill did a nice job with characterization. Harley, the protagonist of the story became the kind of heroine the normal average American wanted to see win. Harley reeked with flaws on top of a grand liberal heart that wanted to save not just her own life, but every one else's.
Hill did a fascinating job creating mystery around the Fireman before letting the reader into his heart. Other characters included children like Nick and Allie who showed incredible strength in the midst of paranoia, and hatred for their kind.
This book fell short in pacing. It was too long, and would often spend pages in pointless dialogue that did little to move the plot forward. For example, in one scene where the Fireman and Harley began to get to know each other better, several pages of dialogue followed on whether or not Harley was a Beatles, or a Stones girl.
Would I recommend The Fireman by Joe Hill? Absolutely, if you don't mind skimming a bit to read interesting characters in a world bleeding with the fresh and profound.
