TLC Book Tour: Joe Hill, NOS4A2

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Welcome to the TLC book tour for NOS4A2 by Joe Hill!

Vic smelled the vast vault filled with books before she saw it, because her eyes required time to adjust to the cavernous dark. She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue and cleverness.

Joe Hill's complex romp, NOS4A2, is a horror novel, but it is so much more than that.  It is a book lovers book, first and foremost.  Not only does Hill reference old vampire legend, he is clearly a reader and the things that he loves make appearances in his weird and twisty tales.  For instance, their is a minor character, last name De Zoet, who likes to listen to the Frobisher Cloud Atlas sextet.  Not only is this Hill making an homage to David Mitchell, Hill's book has the same kind of dizzying tumbling through time that makes Cloud Atlas such fun to read.

And it is scary...

But it is hard to explain...

Vic McQueen, "the Brat,"  is a little girl, with an old bike that helps her find lost things.  When she wants to find something, she simply rides her bike into the woods behind her house, and a creepy old bat-covered bridge appears and takes her where she wants to go.  However, this time/space breach doesn't come without a cost.  Each time Vic crosses "her bridge," she experiences splitting headaches and pain that becomes more and more serious.  One day, she uses her bridge to find Charles Manx -child-murderer (sort of) and almost vampire.  Her decision to find him is one, it turns out, which will haunt her for the rest of her life. The lines in her life- between fantasy and reality, between the past and the present- become increasingly blurred, until she is forced to confront what makes her so special. 

The book is almost 700 pages long; however, it doesn't really feel like it.  The chapters are cleverly plotted, filled with cliff hangers, and they make it difficult to stop turning pages.  Although I wasn't so scared I wanted to put the book in my freezer...

I did get a little spooked taking my dogs out at night...

Title:NOS4A2

Author: Joe Hill
Publisher:William Morrow
Date: 2013
Genre:Horror

686 pages.
Where I got it: From the publisher and TLC book tours.