Chigworthy
06-20-2008, 12:27 PM
"Fuckin' piece of shit!"
This is what my wife heard the other day. She thought I had stubbed my toe or dropped something, because it's my catch-all phrase of anger. She asked me what was wrong. When I told her, she thought I was dumb. And I was. I had noticed the forgotten copy of Joe Hill's "Heart-Shaped Box" on our kitchen table, and just the mere sight of it gave rise to the foul humours. I spent 8 bucks on this garbage, hoping to find a good horror story. It came highly recommended, and seemed like a good ghost story.
I never finished it. It is god awful. Not 5 pages in and I realized I was holding a bad Stephen King clone. I read King like the Dickens (get it?) in elementary school, but I found that his horror stories always seem to have the same voice. Well Joe Hill's book has that voice, if you sucked the life out of it. The characters are flat and stereotypical, and all sorts of things happen for no reason other to advance the plot. It became my mission to struggle through the book and extract 8 dollars worth of contempt and hate from the experience.
The "Death Metal" celebrity named Judas Coyne (yuck.) is the protagonist of the story. Somehow, he is a death metal singer/guitarist that has opened for Led Zepellin in the early 70's. What? He also names his two dogs Angus and Bon. Get it? Wait, what? Death Metal singer? Well he buys a ghost off an auction site to add to his macabre collection. Cuz he's a death metal guy, he has a snuff film, a trepanned skull, and the obligatory Gacy drawings. Yet he doesn't show any reason or use for these things. They are just a line filled out on a character design worksheet: Death Metal singer from the early 70's, loves AC/DC, classic rock, and collects death stuff.
Anyway the ghost begins fucking him up, as well as his young "goth" chick girlfriend. There are no fewer than 366 points in the book that describe the sexy, self-hating stereotypes of goth chicks, because Judas Coyne always dates them. He's a death metal guy, so of course he dates goth chicks, right? Oh yeah, she's an ex-stripper goth chick, the best kind for a death metal guy.
Just when it seems that the ghost is invincible and can't be beaten, Coyne's AC/DC dogs somehow sprout ghostly dopplegangers that can hurt the ghost and scare it away. Coyne ponders this and remembers something he read in one of his death books about witches having familiars. Well since he's a death metal guy, he must also be a witch of sorts, so it makes sense that his two german shepherds are his familiars, and can magically ward off malevolent ghosts.
Cue some hard rock road songs for the death metal guy and his goth chick, because they're hittin' the road in Coynes restored Mustang (are you fucking kidding me?). You see, Coyne ties the ghost to an old flame from Florida that died. She was a goth chick, too. And she had magical powers, learned from her dad, who was also magical and is now the ghost.
So Coyne's gotta head to Florida and somehow stop this ghost. Good thing he brings his familiars with him, because the ghost suddenly has a ghost truck, and can follow him on the highway. All sorts of road trip mediocrity occurs, like the time when they're eating breakfast in a diner, and all the southern white folks are giving them dirty looks because they look different.
After an excruciatingly long build-up to the confrontation in Florida, they arrive at the dead girl's house, fight with her family briefly, then realize that they should have gone to Louisiana, where Coyne grew up, because that must be the key to getting rid of a mean old ghost and his ghost truck. I guess it's deeply symbolic for a man to confront the dying father that he hated, and that symbolism usually clears up any hauntings. They make the trip from Florida to Lousiana in about three paragraphs, keeping up with the pacing established in the foureen chapters it took them to go from New York to Florida.
Once at his childhood home, a decaying white trash pigfarm, Coyne's dying abusive father gets possessed when the ghost crawls into his mouth. Here's where I tapped out, although I probably should have finished so I could enjoy the song that Coyne started working on, somehow knowing that his music was gonna be the only way to stop Ghost Truck.
Later on, I read some reviews on Amazon, relishing the no-stars ones. Turns out Joe Hill is Stephen King's son, so that might explain why this pile of shit got such good reviews. It also explains why it reads like something written by Stephen King's son. For some reason, this book makes me very angry.
This is what my wife heard the other day. She thought I had stubbed my toe or dropped something, because it's my catch-all phrase of anger. She asked me what was wrong. When I told her, she thought I was dumb. And I was. I had noticed the forgotten copy of Joe Hill's "Heart-Shaped Box" on our kitchen table, and just the mere sight of it gave rise to the foul humours. I spent 8 bucks on this garbage, hoping to find a good horror story. It came highly recommended, and seemed like a good ghost story.
I never finished it. It is god awful. Not 5 pages in and I realized I was holding a bad Stephen King clone. I read King like the Dickens (get it?) in elementary school, but I found that his horror stories always seem to have the same voice. Well Joe Hill's book has that voice, if you sucked the life out of it. The characters are flat and stereotypical, and all sorts of things happen for no reason other to advance the plot. It became my mission to struggle through the book and extract 8 dollars worth of contempt and hate from the experience.
The "Death Metal" celebrity named Judas Coyne (yuck.) is the protagonist of the story. Somehow, he is a death metal singer/guitarist that has opened for Led Zepellin in the early 70's. What? He also names his two dogs Angus and Bon. Get it? Wait, what? Death Metal singer? Well he buys a ghost off an auction site to add to his macabre collection. Cuz he's a death metal guy, he has a snuff film, a trepanned skull, and the obligatory Gacy drawings. Yet he doesn't show any reason or use for these things. They are just a line filled out on a character design worksheet: Death Metal singer from the early 70's, loves AC/DC, classic rock, and collects death stuff.
Anyway the ghost begins fucking him up, as well as his young "goth" chick girlfriend. There are no fewer than 366 points in the book that describe the sexy, self-hating stereotypes of goth chicks, because Judas Coyne always dates them. He's a death metal guy, so of course he dates goth chicks, right? Oh yeah, she's an ex-stripper goth chick, the best kind for a death metal guy.
Just when it seems that the ghost is invincible and can't be beaten, Coyne's AC/DC dogs somehow sprout ghostly dopplegangers that can hurt the ghost and scare it away. Coyne ponders this and remembers something he read in one of his death books about witches having familiars. Well since he's a death metal guy, he must also be a witch of sorts, so it makes sense that his two german shepherds are his familiars, and can magically ward off malevolent ghosts.
Cue some hard rock road songs for the death metal guy and his goth chick, because they're hittin' the road in Coynes restored Mustang (are you fucking kidding me?). You see, Coyne ties the ghost to an old flame from Florida that died. She was a goth chick, too. And she had magical powers, learned from her dad, who was also magical and is now the ghost.
So Coyne's gotta head to Florida and somehow stop this ghost. Good thing he brings his familiars with him, because the ghost suddenly has a ghost truck, and can follow him on the highway. All sorts of road trip mediocrity occurs, like the time when they're eating breakfast in a diner, and all the southern white folks are giving them dirty looks because they look different.
After an excruciatingly long build-up to the confrontation in Florida, they arrive at the dead girl's house, fight with her family briefly, then realize that they should have gone to Louisiana, where Coyne grew up, because that must be the key to getting rid of a mean old ghost and his ghost truck. I guess it's deeply symbolic for a man to confront the dying father that he hated, and that symbolism usually clears up any hauntings. They make the trip from Florida to Lousiana in about three paragraphs, keeping up with the pacing established in the foureen chapters it took them to go from New York to Florida.
Once at his childhood home, a decaying white trash pigfarm, Coyne's dying abusive father gets possessed when the ghost crawls into his mouth. Here's where I tapped out, although I probably should have finished so I could enjoy the song that Coyne started working on, somehow knowing that his music was gonna be the only way to stop Ghost Truck.
Later on, I read some reviews on Amazon, relishing the no-stars ones. Turns out Joe Hill is Stephen King's son, so that might explain why this pile of shit got such good reviews. It also explains why it reads like something written by Stephen King's son. For some reason, this book makes me very angry.