The next book to be featured this season on the Sara Cox Radio 2 Book Club is King Sorrow by Joe Hill—an epic horror opus in which six college friends summon the eponymous dragon-demon to wreak bloody vengeance on those who have wronged them.
The book was released on 21 October and Joe’s interview with Sara is on BBC Sounds from Tuesday 11 November.
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King Sorrow
Bookish dreamer Arthur Oakes is a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters and beautiful buildings.
But his idyll – and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot – is shattered when local drug dealers force him into a terrible crime: stealing rare and valuable books from the exceptional college library.
Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for help: the wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren; brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen. Together they dream up an impossible, fantastical scheme that they scarcely imagine will work: to summon the fabled dragon King Sorrow to kill those tormenting Arthur.
But the six stumble backwards into a deadly bargain – they soon learn they must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow each year or one of them will become his next victim. Unleashing consequences they can neither predict nor control, this promise will, over the course of four decades, shape and endanger their lives in ways they could never expect.
About the author
Joe Hill is a Sunday Times bestseller and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box, The Fireman, and Full Throttle. He won the Eisner Award for Best Writer for his long-running comic book series, Locke & Key, co-created with artist Gabriel Rodriguez. Much of his work has been adapted for movies and television. His second novel, Horns, was translated to film in 2014 and starred Daniel Radcliffe. His third novel, NOS4A2, is now a hit series on AMC, starring Zachary Quinto. The first season of Locke & Key was released on Netflix in early 2020 and became an overnight smash. His story, In The Tall Grass, co-written with Stephen King, was made into a feature for Netflix, and became a mind-bending cult horror sensation. Most recently, Hill has returned to graphic novels – his latest comics include Basketful of Heads, Plunge for D.C. and Dying is Easy for IDW.
A word from Joe
“Every writer worries when their novel is finally sent out into the world. With King Sorrow, I managed to compound that anxiety many times over: I had the usual worries that maybe it was no good, it’s my first novel in almost ten years, and it’s a great long beast of a novel (which always asks a lot of a reader)… and above all, I wanted it to be a lot of fun, a big prestige mini-series of a book. A sort of Game of Thrones set in the modern day.”
“So when my editor told me King Sorrow had been selected for the Radio Two Book Club, I just about came out of my chair (and when I told my wife, an Englishwoman and lifelong devotee of the club, her eyes half-popped out of her head). Someone liked it! Librarians—a panel of wonderful librarians—liked my book, even though one of my heroes, Arthur, has to steal books from a library?!? It’s an honour and a delight and a relief. The story is, in part, my love letter to libraries and librarians and the treasure trove they hold and protect for our communities. I’m delighted if, in some small way, it speaks to any reader. But for it to speak to librarians and booksellers, in particular, is a special pleasure. Thanks so much and rock on”
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