There are spoilers.

Whenever I’m about to read a J.R. Ward book, I like to put on some mood music, particularly what the kids call a “rap” song called Pimp of the Year by a genius named Dru Down. I can always count on a sexy, fun, hot time when reading a Black Dagger Brotherhood novel. If the hero and heroine get naked and dirty with each other and I start hyperventilating? If the evil nasty things called lessers are planning something insidious and gross against our protagonists and our heroes know nothing about it? If I would ever find out who those ghost-hunting buffoons are and what they have to do with the Brotherhood mythology? If the massively muscled, ridiculously handsome tattooed and pierced bois wearing designer suits worth more than my annual salary start looking at each other in a funny way and think about grinding their pelvises together? If John Matthew and Beth (who are supposed to be siblings) manage to bump into each other in this massive house and spend two minutes together and maybe just say, “Hey, what’s doin’?” to each other? These are the reasons I always have a portable electric fan on hand and my cell phone within reach so my BFF Shuzluva and I can text each other our favorite passages while giggling and swooning at the same time. It’s harder than it sounds, I assure you. Have you ever tried typing a multi-sentence text message while on the verge of passing out from over-excitement? So I was very excited to finally get my hands on this book? Because John Matthew and Xhex were my favorite characters? And I wanted to see if John Matthew was somehow going to get his voice back? And if Qhuinn and Blaylock would get drunk and make out and have dirty sex on the floor of a bar’s restroom? I was mostly wondering how Xhex and John Matthew’s story was going to play out? If it will have a similar feel to Zsadist and Bella’s story? Because Bella was kidnapped by lessers in that one and Zsadist spends a significant time in the book trying to find her? Like John Matthew does for Xhex in this book? And do we finally find out why JM keeps getting those damn seizures? Am I going to keep talking like this?

Maybe?

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I think it was Plato who said that men and women started out as one being but then Zeus got jealous and split them apart so that they will spend the rest of their lives looking for their other half. At the heart of Joe Hill’s new book, Horns, is a story about a man who discovers that without his one true love, he is lost. He could devolve into the darkest part of himself and become a real demon. It’s only April so it might be a little premature to say this, but I’m gonna go ahead and say that HORNS is probably one of the best books I’ve read this year. I was riveted by it. I was in turns fascinated, horrified, repulsed, awed, and at a couple of points throughout the book, I had to look away from the pages because I was choked up and furiously blinking back tears. For a story about a guy sporting actual horns from his temple, it’s dark, funny, romantic, scary, and best all, real. I am totally in love with Joe Hill’s work. I’ve read everything he’s ever written, even the short stories and the comics. When I see an anthology featuring Joe Hill, I snatch it up (in the zombie antho The New Dead, there’s one that features an old-timey circus, Twitter, and of course, zombies). As much as I loved Heart-Shaped Box, I gotta say that HORNS is better.

Our hero Ig Perrish, the son of a Leonard Cohen-type legend and a showgirl, is an all-around good guy. He’s not as handsome or as talented as his older brother Terry, the host of a late-night show and a musician, but he is happy with his lot in life. His girlfriend, Merrin, is beautiful, kind, and going to school to become a doctor and they have been in love with each other since they were fifteen years old. For as long as Ig could remember, his heart has always belonged to Merrin and he has never wanted anyone else. The two of them meet at church when Ig notices a pretty redhead playing with her cross necklace so that it catches light and flashing it at Ig in what appears to be Morse code. Ig is convinced that he and Merrin are going to get married, have children, live happily ever after, and die in each other’s arms in their sleep. And then one day, Merrin, universally loved by man and critters, is brutally raped, murdered, and everyone in town believes that Ig did it, even his own friends and parents. All of a sudden, everything in Ig’s life starts to go wrong. He drops out of college, starts drinking heavily, shacks up with his high school’s skank, refuses to get a job, and spends every waking moment obsessing about his dead girlfriend. It gets even worse when he wakes up with a bitching headache, puts his hand up to his temples, and finds protrusions from his skull. He looks in the mirror and yep, horns.

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When we last saw the Dollagangers, they were escaping the attic in which they were locked up for almost four years, plotting revenge against their evil mother, and incest-kissing like it’s going out of style (has it ever ever been in style? No, it has never been in style). With their little sister Carrie in tow, Cathy and Chris lug their belongings into a bus to head down to Florida where they can have a new start and make their living as flying trapeze artists. Due to the heat, exhaustion, hunger, and all around weakness (not to mention the arsenic poisoning — spoiler!), the little tow-headed albatross starts throwing up. Cathy and Chris mop up the vomit with some napkins and are told they will be thrown off the bus by the driver when he catches them trying to stick the dirty napkins in between the seats (the disgusting pigs). Luckily, there is a magical and mute old obese black lady in there with them who sees the suffering child and offers to take them to the doctor with her (she carries a notepad around her neck with which she conveys her thoughts). At the next stop, the Dollagangers get off the bus with the old black lady who takes them to a perfect cookie-cutter house where she is the caretaker and housekeeper for a man she calls “doctor-son.” The doctor-son is a debonair, handsome, extremely kind, and lonely man called Dr. Paul Sheffield. If a man who is a complete stranger living in the middle of nowhere offered you and your siblings to live in his mansion-cottage in a lap of luxury, would you take it?

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Once upon a time, in a mansion deep in the heart of the South, a beautiful blond princess borne to a heartless, cold woman and a cold, soulless man, fell illicitly in love with a beautiful blond prince. This beautiful blond prince happens to be the very much younger half-brother of her father, which makes him a dirty uncle, though not quite so dirty, and yet dirty all the same. The parents of the princess who are very religious people are not so happy with this. They disinherit the princess and the uncle and throw them out of the mansion. The princess and the uncle, shamed and utterly humiliated, flee in the dead of night, never to be heard from in polite society ever again.

But fate is seemingly kind to pretty, blond people and the princess called Corinne and the dirty uncle called Christopher, change their last name to Dollaganger, manage to build a happy little life together, in love and utterly ensnared with each other’s remarkable golden blond looks. Genetics be damned, the two pretty pretty people make love like pretty pretty blond monkeys and produce two perfectly beautiful blond and blue eyed children with two arms, two legs, and are luckily intelligent and talented in their own special way. The blond girl-child is named Cathy and the blond boy-child is named Christopher, after their father. The two children are so utterly perfect and doll-like that they are nicknamed the Dresden Dolls. The girl-child is beloved by the father and shows signs of growing up to be one of those creatures seeking a man to marry who will love her the way Daddy had loved her. The boy-child is favored by the mommy. The mother Corrine, unsatisfied with her current lot and practically mocking fate to give her mutant deformed babies, gets pregnant again and has two more perfectly golden blond babies, fraternal twins called Cory and Carrie. Cathy pouts when she discovers she will no longer be the baby of the family and solicits a promise from her daddy that he will not love the new girl-child more than he loves her and as a testament to that promise, Daddy puts on a heart-shaped garnet ring on Cathy’s tiny doll-like finger.

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Jackie Kessler is a good writer. All the time I was reading The Road to Hell, I was thinking I hope she writes something else soon. However, this particular book wasn’t for me.

It’s not hugely surprising that it didn’t appeal to me. I’m not much of an urban fantasy fan and I’m really not keen on the sort of dry, arch first person POV employed by the heroine, so it was always going to be an uphill struggle for Kessler to win me over. Having said that, I have no doubt that there are lots of urban fantasy fans out there who will love Jesse’s voice. (Bam, for one, liked the first book in this series.

Before I get onto the reasons why I didn’t like The Road to Hell, let me indulge myself with a couple of examples of Kessler’s rather gorgeous prose, like this bit of the prologue:

As I die now, feeling strong arms holding me tight, hearing a voice whisper it’s okay, my mind plays back the events that set me on the road to Hell, good intentions and all. Faces flash behind my closed eyes, almost too fast to follow - the incubus’s fang-filled grin, the Erinyes hissing with reptilian fury, the angel crying fat, salty tears. My love, my White Knight, a name on his lips that isn’t mine…

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