This post has been updated since it was originally published. I’ve included more Joe Hill books than I’ve read, but haven’t been able to keep up with his prolific output. Forgive this list for not being complete.
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You are reading: Joe hill books ranked
author: joe hill
I continue to read joe hill’s books even after they have been shown to be of uneven quality. The unusual thing about Joe Hill is that, although I didn’t find his first two novels spectacular, I felt a strong urge to continue reading what he published. it has a kind of magnetic attraction that draws me in and keeps me reading until the last page. A lot of his novels suffer from being too long, but with each one I really wanted to see how it ended.
the main reason i want to highlight joe hill is because of the absolutely wonderful locke & wrench. It is without a doubt one of my favorite books of all time, of any genre. more on that shortly.
You’d think an author who could achieve that high status with a reader would have a totally captivating bibliography, but it fluctuates wildly. but the fact that he has written, in my opinion, a very bad novel and a mediocre one does not make him a bad author. he is still young and obviously full of original ideas.
Just because I really didn’t like Firefighter doesn’t mean I won’t write another one even better than Locke & key masterpiece later. no author is perfect and maybe not all of his books are for you. it is a sign that they are not producing the same formula with each volume. that they are actually expanding and trying new things in their literature is a good thing, even if they stumble.
this is how i would classify the works of joe hill, starting with the worst and working up to the best.
the firefighter
The Firefighter is another post-apocalypse plague book that follows a group of survivors as they struggle to keep the fetus messiah of one of the members alive. the basic plot and structure have been done a million times before. the new thing was the plague. hill created a new charming mess that is as ghastly as it is glamorous.
Victims spontaneously combust, sometimes immediately, but sometimes after developing what they call dragon scales. a skin disorder that causes victims to appear to have developed campfire-colored scales and cracks, complete with the fiery glow. Victims may try to hide their infection for a while, but it spreads throughout the body and will eventually kill.
Overall, I didn’t really care for the fireman. several times I wondered if I really needed to finish all 768 pages. the book is slow and many of the characters are deeply unpleasant. It felt like trying to read a Stephen King novel. For full disclosure, Hill is King’s son and I’m not (!) a huge fan of King.
The firefighter premise is established and then the characters do nothing except awkwardly expose themselves in clunky dialogue. each character was a cliché and a stereotype that made them boring and predictable. I didn’t care for any of them and found myself longing for the plague to take over and just kill every single one of them.
However, after all that, I still wanted to see how it played out, so I read the whole thing. the premise of a beautiful plague intrigued me. the images were captivating. I can still imagine the way he describes dragon scales as veins of burning embers on people’s skin, even years after reading the book. This is definitely a low point for Hill’s books, but it still has its moments and you might like it more than me.
plunge
dip is perhaps the most forgettable joe hill book i have read so far. It is a supernatural horror graphic novel, part of DC’s Hilll House line of comics. It is a seafaring tale that has better images than a story.
This series shows that Hill is always willing to try new things and take some risks. That’s why he has become almost as popular as his father, Stephen King. he’s already become quite prolific and some of those books are flops, but at least he’s not predictable or repetitive.
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the plunge can be skipped in my opinion, but maybe you’ll connect with it more than I do.
nos4a2
nos4a2, pronounced nosferatu, is basically stephen king except the clown is michael jackson and it’s set at christmas. If that doesn’t sound scary to you, then I don’t know what would! The premise is that an ancient evil driving a Rolls Royce (nos4a2 is his license plate) kidnaps children and takes them to a wonderland called Christmasland where they are not as safe as they might first feel.
I would say I liked this one after forgiving some flaws. once again, it’s too long. just under 700 pages makes for a huge drop in the second third of the book. the beginning caught me and interested me, but it was a difficult task to go through the middle to see what would happen at the end.
but I’d say it was worth finishing. and if I remember correctly, I found myself still finding time to get there. not like some overly long novels that require two years of reading a couple of pages at a time until they’re finally finished, I think I finished this one in a month.
Despite all of Joe Hill’s flaws, he sure can paint a picture of words. i can vividly imagine christmasland and the world it created here at nos4a2. I found it interesting and unusual. hill is creative and passionate, he just needs a better editor.
This book has since been made into a TV show, I haven’t seen it and therefore have no opinion.
basket full of heads
joe hill’s basketful of heads could be moved up or down this list based on personal taste. if you like supernatural horror stories, this is definitely for you. you may like it a lot more than the next two complete on the list. if you’re not a fan of unexplained phenomena or magic, you might like it less than nos4a2.
The basic premise is that a young adult woman comes into possession of a magical ax that can sever heads and keep them alive. she therefore ends up with a basket full of these heads.
The protagonist is both tough and endearing, which really pulls this graphic novel off. If you’re a fan of the comics, this horror entry to the Hill House line of spooky comics is definitely worth a look.
horns
joe hill’s horns are much more fun than previous entries on this list. it’s more of a black comedy than a horror one and it makes a punchline of the darkness that we all keep suppressed to keep a society going.
Our protagonist wakes up with devilish horns on his forehead and the ability to make everyone around him speak without censorship. every sarcastic comment, nervous rambling, and white lie pours out from everyone he comes into contact with. he obviously thinks he’s pretty crazy, but then tries to use his new power to get out of his personal and legal troubles. The humor that comes from this premise wears off pretty quickly, but Hill makes up for it with a couple of more poignant moments.
this is a perfectly good book turned into a perfectly adequate movie starring daniel radcliffe. At a reasonable 370 pages, it’s one of Hill’s most accessible novels and a great place to start.
heart-shaped box
For me, the heart-shaped box beats the horns by a hair. It has a similar protagonist and dark humor style, but the heart-shaped box is definitely more in the horror category and I just relate to it more. Our main character, Judas, is obsessed with the ghoulish and is a collector of all things spooky. I get this, this would be me if I had more money. purchase a box advertised to contain a ghost. I have checked the price of that same thing for a Christmas present for a friend. a box with a ghost! what could possibly go wrong?!
well it turns out a lot apparently. this particular ghost has a vendetta against judas so shit starts to turn sour real quick. i love this idea i have heard of people coming back to torment others on purpose but this is a whole new level.
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I’ll say it again, joe hill is creative. my only issues with this book that i can remember is that it just didn’t have that extra oomph that would have pushed it to a five star book. this is one of his earliest novels and you may not have felt the same connection to the characters that you have in his best writings. but the pictures of him are still amazingly good. This was the first of Hill’s books that I read and, as with all of his others, there are particular images he describes that have stuck with me vividly. the heart-shaped box is haunting if nothing else.
strange weather
Weird Weather is a collection of four short novels: Instant, On Air, Rain, and Loaded. As with any storybook, some are stronger than others, but reading Hill in a shorter form like this was a delight. the stories are more contained and to the point. we get your creativity and visuals without the bloated exposition or meandering subplots. I look forward to more Joe Hill short stories in the future.
snapshot is about a teenager who is being stalked for a long time by a man with a magical camera that can erase memories with every photo he takes. As someone who is very terrified of getting alzheimer’s or any other memory disorder, this story really disturbed me. Some of the character descriptions and photos looked as if Hill had rewatched Memento before sitting down to write.
aloft is definitely the strangest of the four stories. It is about a man who parachutes for the first time and lands on a solid, unexplained cloud high in the sky with no way of getting back down to earth. an interesting premise for sure, but I kept hoping he would add to something else. if it was a symbol of something deeper, he crossed my mind.
rain is a standard horror tale about an apocalyptic event that causes the sky to rain needles of glass. that is all. but in actual hill form, the visuals are outstanding and you’ll feel like you’re right in the middle of terror.
loaded is by far the best of the four stories and the main reason for choosing this book. It’s honestly one of the best things I’ve read all year. the story follows a small town security guard who stops a mass shooting. he’s the good guy with a gun that people theorize about. But what is unraveled is a deeply disturbing story that kept me on the edge of my seat as he commented deeply on America’s gun crisis without sounding preachy.
full throttle
full throttle is a more recent addition to the joe hill library.
Full Throttle is the rare collection of short stories that is solid throughout. I rarely give 5 stars to short story collections because there are always weak links. Not so with this one, each and every story is captivating and original. There are also two additional stories co-written with Stephen King that are very entertaining.
joe hill continues to prove that he lives up to his father’s high standards. she is not living in the shadow of his father, he is absorbing his power. in the tall grass was my favorite of the co-writers and it’s really scary. Like so many King and Hill projects, it has since been made into a movie, but once again I haven’t seen it because the story was too good to sully.
Buy It Here: Full Throttle: Stories
locke & key
That brings us to the absolutely phenomenal Locke & wrench. this is one of those books that you can’t read fast enough but at the same time you don’t want it to ever end. locke & key is about a grieving family that moves into a big creepy mansion. classic. the youngest child, attracted to being the cutest little thing, finds a magic key that does much more than open doors. the children/teenagers in the family begin to find more keys that unlock their own special supernatural power and thus unravel a story that I found to be equal parts amazing, powerful, emotional, witty and captivating.
gabriel rodriguez deserves special credit on this one for taking the images out of hill’s head and displaying them on the page in such an eye-catching way that I sometimes linger on the panels like a hungry dog looking at a treat that’s out of his mouth. scope. it’s best to jump in and read the series, I really don’t want to give too much away. I just know that by the end I was absolutely in tears just because of the sheer emotional connection I felt with the characters and getting to the end of their story. I can’t wait to read this again and again and highly recommend it to everyone.
I have since re-read this joe hill series and it totally holds up.
It has since been made into a TV show as well, but I haven’t watched it because I’m afraid it doesn’t live up to my own opinion of the books.
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