Reading List: King Sorrow

Every so often I come across social media discussion about whether listening to an audiobook counts as reading. Because it's social media, many people have some very strong opinions on the subject. I am not one of those people. Reading it. Listening to it. All the same to me. Whatever your opinion on the matter, you're right. I don't mean that dismissively. I think there are valid points all around and I'm not going to get into a layered debate about it. What matters to me is whether or not I enjoyed the book.

Case in point: last month during a Spring Break drive between our Oklahoma home and Florida, my wife and I downloaded Joe Hill's superb novel King Sorrow.

Our drive to see our grandkids in Florida usually consists of two legs. The first is an 8-hour trek that takes us to Jackson, MS, where we spend the night. From there, it's about 4-and-a-half to our daughter's house in Florida. The drive back is the same. Drive about seven or eight hours, spend the night, drive home. We usually take that drive time to take in an audiobook. The audiobook for King Sorrow is 26 hours (this is an epic story spanning 30 years). Perfect for our drive. Plus, my wife LOVES dragon stories. We were road trip ready.

I loved King Sorrow. LOVED it. Loved the concept. Loved the characters (loved to hate a couple of them). Loved its twists and turns and gasp-inducing moments. This is a masterwork of storytelling.

King Sorrow is the story of a group of friends who use a rare grimoire to summon a dragon from a realm called the Long Dark. The dragon, named King Sorrow, agrees to vanquish their enemies on the coming Easter morning. One of the gang, Arthur Oakes, has been blackmailed by a drug dealer into stealing from his college library's rare books collection. The grimoire, called the Crane Journal, is particularly valuable because it is bound in the skin of its author. The group decides the drug dealer, a loathsome person named Jayne Nightswander, and her boyfriend Ronnie should be King Sorrow's target. Come Easter, the dragon delivers on his promise, subjecting Jayne and Ronnie to a gruesome death.

There's a catch, though. This isn't some one-and-done deal. The group doesn't get to say "pleasure doing business with you" and move on. No, King Sorrow demands a sacrifice every Easter or he will destroy the group instead. There are other rules and loopholes that raise the stakes. But, the gist of it is simple: provide King Sorrow with his sacrifice or pay the consequences.

The group of friends is eclectic. Arthur is a man of letters who possesses a love of literature and language. His expertise in folklore and mythology is critical in their dealings with King Sorrow and how they might defeat him. Gwen is a sweet local girl from the wrong side of the tracks who forms a romance with Arthur. There's also twins, Donna and Donovan McBride, who have a ying-and-yang connection. Allison is a beautiful young woman who is confused about her sexuality, made worse by her conservative evangelical upbringing. Then, there's Colin, a young man born into privilege who becomes an early adopter tech bro. Each year a group member must take their turn delivering a name to King Sorrow. Some take to this task easier than others.

With this plot, Joe Hill uses King Sorrow to explore the nature of evil inside each of us and the lengths we will go to either suppress it or act on it. Hill weaves real life events into the story such the Rwandan genocide, the terror acts carried out by Osama Bin Laden, and the Iraq War. Some members of the friend group see it as their duty to carry out King Sorrow's wishes in the name of stopping large threats or punishing those who carry them out. Some of the sacrifices are more personal in nature.

Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King and he sprinkles several King Easter eggs throughout. Most notably was an extended reference to The Dead Zone and describing a night sky as "full dark, no stars." And King Sorrow as a whole reminded me much of King's It, also a story about a group of friends dealing with a malevolent entity over a span of thirty years. Along the way, King Sorrow explores grief and the cost of holding on. There is also a significant amount of time devoted to the persistence of childhood trauma and the ripple effect of our choices.

My wife (who also loved the book) and I read King Sorrow on Audible. I say 'read' because it's a convenient short-hand. Again, I don't get caught up in whether or not listening to an audiobook counts as reading it. I'd rather talk about the story and the characters and how the book made me feel. Given the quality of the audiobook production and the superb narration by Ari Fliakos (as well as Ian Shaw's voicing of the title character), I'd prefer to say we experienced King Sorrow. What an experience it was.

And, honestly, that's how it is with the best stories, however we consume them. They're experienced. That experience is what stays with us. And King Sorrow will stay with me for a long time.