The Fireman

A Novel

By: Joe Hill

Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew

Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's Summary

From the award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to save it, led by one powerful and enigmatic man known as the Fireman.

The fireman is coming. Stay cool.

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it's Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies - before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she's discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: They would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob's dismay, Harper wants to live - at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine, too...if she can live long enough to deliver the child.

Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads - armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn't as alone as she fears: A mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow firefighter's jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as the Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted...and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman's secrets before her life - and that of her unborn child - goes up in smoke.

©2016 Joe Hill (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

Too childishly written.

I am a huge fan of Joe Hill. With that said, I was not enthused by this book at all. I decided to continue listening, however, in hopes that it would get better. It did not. Kate Mulgrew is a wonderful narrator. I really liked her voice and she played all of the parts very well.

I couldn’t finish this one!

I’ve tried three separate times to finish this one. I just can’t!! It’s moving way too slow for me. I’ve read a few of Joe Hill’s other novels and have liked them.
I rated this one based on the few chapters I did make it through.

Not interesting at all :(

OK Joe has the talent to write but the story was terrible on so many levels. I’d need a double scotch to be able to deal with the protagonist Harper. Her everything Mary Poppins was killing me. She was, 1/3 grown woman, 1/3 nurse,1/3 grown woman enthralled with children’s story. She is a pregnant nurse who becomes a gymnast in the latter part of her pregnancy. Throughout the whole story her method dealing with and resolving difficult situations was to sing a Mary Poppins song. Walt Disney and P.L. Travers should sue Joe Hill.

Draco Incendia Trychophyton had the potential to be an interesting disease. Instead it was a back drop with barely 15 minutes of uninformative discussion. Nothing on a reputable research on the transmission of the disease or how people chose to fight the disease. What is discovered by a cult of people is singing nursery rhymes and pop music high will lessen the dangers and give them a euphoric "high" People who do not make the connection between their emotions dragon scale … well they go up in flames.

The book is to long for all practical purposed and contains NO real action. We are there from the conception of Harper's baby to the delivery of the baby and it was grueling. We endure 9 months of pregnancy with a group of saccharinely sweet infected people living in fear of the cremation squad. The cremation squad are fanatics incense to eradicate the infected people. The irony, the leader goes by the name Marlboro man who of course smokes cigarettes and one of his groupies is Jacob, the now deranged husband of Harper.

For the younger generation, the Marlboro man was an advertising character created by a cigarette manufacture. The Marlboro was a filtered cigarette, which was considered feminine. So they created an advertisement depicting a rugged cowboy smoking. As a side note whenever Jacob and Harper get together sparks fly.

In the end Joe illustrates the most frightening threat is the one we present to ourselves. That is a laborious 22 hours and 22 minutes of discussions that was agonizing to endure to illustrate the inhumanity of man and the journey man makes to retrieve the hope in Pandora’s box.

I was listening and became enthralled with my cloths ironing (LOL) before I realized that I missed hours of the story. I read a few reviews and discovered it was one of actions parts but not worth going bad to read how it unfolds.

I read this for the underlying sense of impending threat of the unknown usually presented in Hill’s novels. Instead I was bored by the “musical”, a poor musical of May Poppins.

As someone else said...disapointing

I've read Horns and Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill, as well as a graphic novel collection of his. This novel is not up to the same level of quality. There are so many cliches and tropes in this novel: The disease that may not be a disease, the quiet brooding loner, the lovely young lady thrown into strange circumstances, the abusive husband who will show up again later in the book.

Kate Mulgrew does a good job of narrating the book and I would give another one by her a try.

Disappointing

After reading Heart Shaped Box, Nos4a2 and Horns - I really had my hopes high on The Fireman. So disappointing! The story wasn't bad but I never connected with the characters. I actually felt guilty that I didn't really care very much about Harper & her baby by the end of the book. Give me more flawed characters like Ig Parrish & Judas Coyne so I can jump on board and enjoy the "ride" of the story with them. Perhaps one scene from first person perspective that "ignites" from the DragonScale would help us understand the horror (Nedry from Jurrasic Park or Chrissie Watkins from Jaws come to mind).

THIS BOOK IS HORRIBLE!!!

this is such a terrible book. the story is about a contagious disease that makes people spontaneously combust and catch fire. but the author wants you to believe that a small group of people are able to overcome the disease by singing along as a group at Church. i guess if you like that kind of thing you "may" like this book. but it's too much for me. I can't even bring myself to listen to the book anymore. way too touchy-feely. the only reason I got the book was because it was recommended so I decided to take a chance on it. I really wish I hadn't. I wouldn't waste a credit on this book.

Starts well but

I would not recommend this book it started off interesting then spiraled into some apocalyptic religious, spiritual jumble. Don't judge this book by it's cover - looks exciting but it's not.

Hoping for more

The first hour was great. After a few hours I wondered if it was going to get better. I tried so hard not to give up. I hated every character so much I was almost wishing for their death. I recommend skipping this one.

Never could get interested

Never could get interested,way too slow to develop, narrator did her best but just not for me.

Awful

Such a blatant rip off of the stand! I'm so disappointed in joe hill. I've read his other books and liked them a lot. This was horrible. I thought maybe he wrote it in high school or something.