The Fireman

Out of the frying pan and into the Fireman.

The Fireman, even at 750 pages, is a quick-paced read. The year is nowish and some new disease – Draco Incendia Trychophyton, known colloquially as Dragonscale or 'scale – has begun killing people. Identified by the gold-flecked black stripes on their skin, the infected will eventually start smouldering, and inevitably, spontaneously combust. So, not only is the healthy population afraid of becoming infected by the sick, but as homes and stores and forests begin to burn down around them, even biohazard suits offer little protection in the end. Society divides itself between those who are infected and just trying to stay alive and those who believe it is their duty to root out and destroy the threat. This is a really interesting concept, and as everyone seems to be talking about Joe Hill and what a master of horror writing he is, I happily picked this book up...and was pretty much underwhelmed by the experience. Spoilers beyond here.

FOX said the Dragon had been set loose by ISIS, using spores that had been invented by the Russians in the 1980s. MSNBC said sources indicated the ’scale might’ve been created by engineers at Halliburton and stolen by culty Christian types fixated on the Book of Revelation. CNN reported both sides.

The main character of The Fireman is Harper Grayson; a school nurse who discovers that she has the 'scale weeks after becoming pregnant. When her husband Jakob sees the tell-tale signs on her body, he assumes he is also infected and begins to fantasise about them dying on their own terms, with romance and music and a lethal cocktail. While at first Harper more or less sees the beauty of this plan (especially after watching nonstop terrifying coverage of the disease's spread on TV), she eventually decides that living until the baby is born is her only goal. When she makes a run for it, Harper is taken in by a cultish community that has learned to control their smouldering infections and prevent combusting: by singing together in harmony, this group is able to “join the Bright”; an alternate plane or hivemind that placates the spores that have infected them. I liked everything about this idea: that the spores combust their hosts as a means of transmission when they sense stress hormones that might threaten their own existence (and who with the Dragonscale on them wouldn't feel stressed?); and that whether a person is singing in harmony with a group, getting a thrill out of collecting likes on facebook, or participating in a lynching with an ugly mob, the brain release oxytocin (the “social networking” hormone) and this is the key to safety. Too bad the healthy people are more interested in eradication than containment and won't listen to reports of how it can be controlled: and especially since the Cremation Crews that patrol the streets are setting free the infectious spores with every mass immolation. Here's the kind of thing I didn't like:

Sometimes I think every man wants to be a writer. They want to invent a world with the perfect imaginary woman, someone they can boss around and undress at will. They can work out their own aggressions with a few fictional rape scenes. Then they can send their fictional surrogate in to save her, a white knight – or a fireman! Someone with all the power and all the agency. Real women, on the other hand, have all these tiresome interests of their own, and won’t follow an outline.

There were a lot of references to writing (Jakob was an aspiring novelist), and in the end, I found it to be all a bit wink-wink-nudge-nudgey. And as to the content of that quote: acknowledging that that might be a male fantasy doesn't change the fact that this is exactly what Joe Hill has written: every time Harper gets into trouble, the Fireman – a British professor of mycology at NHU who has learned to control his spores to put on pyrotechnic displays – shows up and saves her. I did not find Harper to be a strong female protagonist and I was constantly annoyed by her obsession with Mary Poppins. I liked the Marlboro Man and his shock jock radio program; loved Jakob getting unhinged and the mental image of him tearing through everything with a snowplow (but hated that his failed novel was called Desolation's Plough). I was also annoyed by the fact that, even though Harper, Nick, and the Fireman could all shoot balls of flame from their hands (and the Fireman could do so much more), they were constantly in danger from the Cremation Crews and didn't think to use their powers until death was imminent. I was also annoyed that we are told that Jakob is a talented acrobat (he can ride a unicycle and walk a tightrope) and we are shown that Harper is an expert archer, and neither of them need to use these skills later on. And I was annoyed by this:

I spent three hours hiding in a cupboard today, with my ex not a dozen feet from me. I had three hours to listen to him talk about the things he's done to the sick. Him and his new friends. Three hours to listen to him talk about things he'd do me if he had half a chance. From their point of view, we're the bad guys in this story. If he sees me again he'll kill me. If he had the opportunity, he'd kill everyone in camp. And after he did it, he'd feel he had done a good day's work. In his mind he's that guy in the cowboy hat from The Walking Dead, wiping out the zombies.

I've seen reviews that say The Fireman is a welcome break from all the zombie stuff in pop culture today, but this infection of spores is not dissimilar from a zombie apocalypse; there are the infected humans who go on living and the healthy ones who are frightened of catching it; of being killed by standing next to someone as they go up in flames. What's the difference, really, between that and zombies? From a certain perspective, the folks with the 'scale are the bad guys; the Cremation Crews are doing exactly what “that guy in the cowboy hat” does. And can we talk about that? “That guy in the cowboy hat”? You've heard of fictional zombies and The Walking Dead but not Rick Grimes? This kind of talking-about-without-naming happens a lot: a character talks about reading a Cormac McCarthy novel once, about the end of the world. People hunting dogs and each other and frying up babies, and it was awful or The aspiring novelist in me wants a secret tunnel hidden behind a false wall, or a poster of a famous movie star, or possibly in the back of a wardrobe. So, in addition to nonstop references to Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, C. S. Lewis and a spoonful of sugar, Joe Hill squeezes in a reference to his Dad's work there, too, wink-wink-nudge-nudge. I just didn't like the writing. The prose is mostly short, declarative sentences, the dialogue is forced, and the humour doesn't rise above jokes about farting smokerings or the Fireman constantly trying to prove that the British are more “inventive” at cursing than Americans. This is an example of “artful” writing that made me roll my eyes:

Father Storey drowsed in one bed. Nick in the other. With both of them asleep in the same pose, and with the same frowning look of concentration on their faces, it was impossible not to see the close familial resemblance. The child was still inside Father Storey somewhere, as a fly remains perfectly preserved in a bead of amber. The old man waited for Nick, a baggy overcoat that he would be ready to slip on in six decades.

This is my first Joe Hill and it's not in his typical horror genre, so I can't quite dismiss him wholesale. As I opened with, this is a very quick read despite its size, so I can't deny that it kept me going. I liked the concept, but not its execution. I liked the momentum behind the inevitable battle between the infected and the Cremation Crew, but I didn't like the very end at all. I really didn't like all the soap operish drama at the Camp; so much of this could have been cut to keep the action tense. This is a low three stars for me overall.