Horns = Dilemna

Once upon a time in 2007, a fellow named Joe wrote a novel, called Heart-Shaped Box. It was a ghost story that, despite a few tired tropes like an abuser who claimed a religious motivation, had energy, power and a very interesting redemption arc. Since Joe's dad was a writer who'd dabbled in supernatural-themed stories, he chose to use a shortened form of his full name as his pen name, to establish himself rather than ride Dad's coattails. Thus did Joseph Hillstrom King, son of novelists Stephen and Tabitha King, become Joe Hill.

Box's success led to reprints of a collection of his short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, but a second full novel didn't appear until February of 2010. In Horns, Hill tells the story of Ignatius (Ig) Perrish, a fellow whom everyone suspected in the rape and murder of his girlfriend Merrin. But because he was never tried or even charged, Ig has lived in a kind of limbo in his little hometown, wasting away. After a night of blackout drinking, Ig awakes to discover he has two horns growing from his forehead. Although other people can see them, they seem to forget about it as soon as Ig leaves. In the meantime, Ig finds that people will tell him sins they have committed or want to commit, and he can suggest that they go ahead and do so. By touching people, he learns what wrongs they have done in their lives. He reasons that, having found prayer and God useless in helping find peace after Merrin's death, he will instead use these new powers to find the killer himself and take his revenge. Along the way, he learns many unpleasant things about the people close to him.

And along the way, the reader learns how unpleasant it is to have raised expectations disappointed. Hill tries to give us the flavor of Ig and Merrin's "true love" by telling parts of their story in flashbacks, which wind up offering nothing but confusion. The priest whom Ig has known since he was a boy is no help, since he's actually a lecher who talks about leering at young Merrin as well as having an affair with the dead girl's mother. Religious people might be offended at yet another hypocritical religious authority figure, but why ascribe to malice that which can be explained by lazy storytelling? Box gave us a protagonist who saw his own failures and risked himself to set them right; Horns gives us one who sees his sins and decides to double down with them.

More flashbacks suggest that the actual killer may be some sort of supernatural force or being himself, but that's never fleshed out well enough to care either. Horns' theology seems to center on sin, but in no coherent way. Some sins seem to actually be virtues, while others are just ordinary wrongs that somehow take on crushing weight in the minds of the guilty, and still others are true evil that the increasingly demonic Ig wants to avenge. But since his new powers stem from sin, why would he have a desire to oppose evil? That's one of many questions you might ask Horns, but it -- along with a host of others -- will not be answered (The theologically minded might note that, in his afterward, Hill says he learned a great deal from a Bart Ehrman book, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Explain Our Most Important Question -- Why We Suffer. Those who look to Ehrman for coherence stand on very soft ground, which could explain some of Hill's inconsistency).

Some might think that with Horns, Hill has gone from sharp storytelling to dull repetitiveness in just two books when it took his father quite a few more, but that's not entirely accurate. He still has an energy and an ability to rein himself in that King's work no longer displays. A closer comparison would be the failed promise of Christopher Moore. After a rollicking debut with Practical Demonkeeping, he clunked out Coyote Blue and although he rebounded with Bloodsucking Fiends, he's been a confusing, dull rehash ever since.

There's reason for hope, of course. There's an interesting story somewhere in Horns, so it's possible that Hill can regroup and offer something that matches the high mark set by Heart-Shaped Box. And even if he doesn't, his confusing clunker of a book is only 358 pages, compared with the eleven-hundred-page clunker his dad released last year. That alone is an improvment.