Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with one hell of a hangover, a raging headache ...and a pair of horns growing from his temples. Once, Ig lived the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned American musician, and the younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, Ig had security and wealth and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more - he had the love of Merrin Williams, a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic. Then beautiful, vivacious Merrin was gone - raped and murdered, under inexplicable circumstances - with Ig the only suspect. He was never tried for the crime, but in the court of public opinion, Ig was and always would be guilty. Now Ig is possessed with a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look, and he means to use it to find the man who killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. It's time for a little revenge; it's time the devil had his due. HORNS: It's moving, sad, often funny, redemptive, and filled with hope.
This was an interesting book about love and how far people will go for it, hate, and the evil that exists within all of us. Ig’s story is tragic even before the book begins, but you feel like he’s better off in the end. The book jumps back and forth in time, showing us Ig’s past as well as his present transformation. When people see Ig as the devil, they feel compelled to blurt out their darkest desires, which leads to some very interesting, yet believable, conversations. I liked the concept that the devil can’t make you do anything you aren’t willing to do. Hill does a great job not only with dialogue, but with his description and setting. I could immediately picture the site of the old foundry, including the detritus left behind by years of teenage foolery. I found myself marking passages for later review, something I rarely do in a book in this genre. A few of the passages that caught my eye were:
'The service ended, and conversation rose like water filling a tub, the church a container with a particular volume, its natural quiet quickly displaced by noise.'
''It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can’t get out of, but I think this is very usual in life.''
'The maiden and the devil walked in the furnace light at the end of the day, and the devil admonished her…'
'Maybe all the schemes of the devil were nothing compared to what men could think up.'
While this book isn’t the type of horror to keep you up at night in fear of what lurks beneath your bed, it is the type to keep you up reading. I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to more stories from the mind of Joe Hill.
