It feels like I'm the last person to find out Joe Hill is Stephen King's son. In the acknowledgements he talks about riding motorcycles with his dad.
“It was a happy ride, following him along his back roads in the sun on my shoulders. I guess I have been cruising his back roads my whole life. I don't regret it.”
He does the old man proud too. Great characterization (which does comes at the cost of a hefty page count.) Still, I loved NOS4A2. I'm relatively new to literary horror and protagonist Victoria MacQueen's first meeting with Charlie Manx is deliciously chilling. It gets increasingly savage and brutal from there - author Joe Hill is relentless and Vic should be by rights clinically insane or dead halfway through the book.
It's a reimagining of the vampire myth, featuring an ass-kicking librarian with psychic Scrabble tiles, a time and space travelling Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, a kid named Bruce Wayne and lots of nerd love throughout.
Do yourself a favor and check out the audiobook. Kate Mulgrew narrates and absolutely kills it. She is pitch perfect and it's even more chilling in the telling.