A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative, Joe Hill

Snapshot is the disturbing story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by “The Phoenician,” a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories, snap by snap.

A young man takes to the skies to experience his first parachute jump. . . and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero’s island of roiling vapor that seems animated by a mind of its own in Aloft.

On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails—splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. Rain explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world.

In Loaded, a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for the gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning. 

I consider Joe Hill to be pretty high on the list of Authors We Must Protect at All Costs. Like, he is a fucking treasure that we likely don’t deserve. Just an obscenely talented storyteller, I think. My first experience with his work was with Heart-Shaped Box. And I…didn’t completely love it. That said, there was more than enough there to get me to pick up another of his books, Horns. Which broke me into fucking pieces & I just loved it.

From there, I read NOS4A2 which instantly became an all-time favorite (and I really struggled with it for maybe 50-75 pages before everything clicked into place for me, and I realized how fucking special it was). The Fireman was the first of his books that I was ready & waiting for upon its release, and that will always be a special memory. On top of which, it’s an absolutely amazing book!

Anyhow, on to Strange Weather! I’m gonna do a little mini-review for each of the four stories!

Snapshot

This ended up being my favorite of the four! It’s creepy & weird & kinda funny, but also. CRAZY evocative of the late 80’s. Nostalgic without being gaudy about it, and I just loved Michael Figlione as a narrator. A really good-hearted kid, hopelessly uncool, and about to encounter something wholly evil during summer vacation. I mean, this is the stuff horror stories are made of. Fucking hell, I think his trip to the Mobil Mart is one of the most vividly written scenes ever from Joe Hill. And The Polaroid Man is a super creepy villain! Absolutely loved this story!

Loaded

This one…oof. At first I was really struggling with this one. It seemed like a bunch of completely disconnected vignettes, with guns & gun fetishism being the only common ground. But then Joe Hill starts expertly weaving this tale, connecting all these people, and all you can do is watch as they inexorably & violently converge. This is a brutal, nasty, & ugly look at gun violence in America. Extremely well written, but very tough to read.

Aloft

This is definitely my least favorite of the four, and even still, it’s an enjoyable read. The very beginning of this story, I loved. In fact, I think the first two chapters are probably some of Joe Hill’s funniest work. It starts off with the main character, Aubrey Griffin, in a plane, about to skydive. To impress a girl (I mean, there’s a more meaningful reason, but Aubrey’s obsession with his friend Harriett is the driving force behind pretty much everything he does). He gets squeamish about the jump & hilarity ensues. After the jump, things take a very bizarre turn in this one, and I just found it a bit…meh. I did enjoy some of the flashback scenes showing Aubrey & Harriett’s friendship, but the supernatural aspect to this story just didn’t do a lot for me.

Rain

It was funny to read in the afterward that Hill was trying to “spoof” himself, and his apocalyptic novel, The Fireman. While I didn’t really see Rain as a spoof in many ways, it definitely breathes the same air as The Fireman. This is another apocalyptic tale, only this time, mysterious & deadly rainstorms keep popping up. This leads our main character, the improbably-named Honeysuckle Speck, to make a dangerous trek through Colorado. Honeysuckle’s love for her girlfriend, Yolanda, is what drives the story. And as I mentioned regarding Horns, I think Joe Hill is VERY talented at writing super gut-punchy romantic parts, and this was no exception. I’m a sucker for almost anything post-apocalyptic, and this one pulled me in right away. Loved it!

I’m glad I finally got around to reading Strange Weather…there’s some treasures in this book! And I’m really looking forward to Hill’s upcoming short story collection, Full Throttle. The guy is an immensely talented writer, and the very definition of an auto-buy author for me!

The four short novels that comprise Strange Weather are in turn horrifying, hilarious, scathingly political, and gorgeously human. Each one is the work of an absolute master storyteller.