Hornsby Joe Hill
Synopsis: Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache ... and a pair of horns growing from his temples.
A very intriguing and interesting book. Joe Hill creates very real characters that you can care about and pull for and this book has a very definite line drawn between what's good and what's evil so you're on a side. It's got horror elements but it's more of a theological argument most of the time. He does all this without too much seriousness or heaviness. There is plenty of humor here and just good storytelling.
The horns are introduced right away, but not explained and sort of just become part of the story. The lead character, Ig, is the only suspect in a crime in which his girlfriend was murdered. Ig was never charged or tried, but he was never cleared. In the court of public opinion he is and always will be guilty because his rich and connected parents pulled strings to make the investigation go away. Everyone, including God it seems, has abandoned him. Everyone, that is, but the devil inside. He now has power... for revenge? It's a pretty compelling set-up and as it unfolds it toggles between past and present and ranges from the supernatural to the realistic. It's all quite amusing.
In the end, I wasn't really satisfied with the explanations of the horns and why they come to be, but it's still interesting plot point and the book is a good read if you care for the Luciferian dark fantasy style.
7/10
