NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

Sounds like a great read....

NOS4A2

Don't slow down

Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Vic doesn't tell anyone about her unusual ability, because she knows no one will believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself.

Charles Talent Manx has a gift of his own. He likes to take children for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the vanity plate NOS4A2. In the Wraith, he and his innocent guests can slip out of the everyday world and onto hidden roads that lead to an astonishing playground of amusements he calls Christmasland. Mile by mile, the journey across the highway of Charlie's twisted imagination transforms his precious passengers, leaving them as terrifying and unstoppable as their benefactor.

And then comes the day when Vic goes looking for trouble . . . and finds her way, inevitably, to Charlie.

That was a lifetime ago. Now, the only kid ever to escape Charlie's unmitigated evil is all grown up and desperate to forget.

But Charlie Manx hasn't stopped thinking about the exceptional Victoria McQueen. On the road again, he won't slow down until he's taken his revenge. He's after something very special—something Vic can never replace.

As a life-and-death battle of wills builds—her magic pitted against his—Vic McQueen prepares to destroy Charlie once and for all . . . or die trying. . . .

Joe Hill's acclaimed works of fiction, Horns, Heart-Shaped Box, and 20th Century Ghosts, have already earned him international acclaim. With NOS4A2, this outstanding novelist—"one of America's finest horror writers" (Time magazine); "a major player in 21st-century fantastic fiction" (Washington Post)—crafts his finest work yet. Disturbing, mesmerizing, and full of twisting thrills, Hill's phantasmagoric, devilishly playful masterpiece is a terrifying high-octane ride.

Sounds good, like a Stephan King book alnost.

Joe Hill is Stephen King's son...so who knows...

The fruit doesnt fall far from the tree as they say..

I have to say that I am really disappointed. I have read two of his books now and I was not really head over heels over either of them. NOS4A2 was a big let down. Hill never really gets to the gist of the story and then lets you just sort of hang there and there is no sense of direction for what seemed to be a really promising tale.

His problem is that he bogs the reader down with a lot of stuff that really doesn't add the story and the few things he comes up with are pretty predictable. His characters are difficult to get know and they are often half formed and they have don't appear to really live or have any scope. There were a couple of times I was interested, like when Vic met the Librarian with the penchant for Scrabble and the introduction of the Gasmask Man, but other than that, I found myself wondering when the book would end.

The other novel I read of his was Heart Shaped Box. It had a great premise, but he petered out in the end....

Read it for free somewhere....