King Sorrow
On sale
21st October 2025
Price: £29.99
SOME PROMISES SHOULD NEVER BE MADE…
***A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK***
‘A tour de force…King Sorrow is huge, sprawling – and absolutely fantastic’ THE GUARDIAN
‘Joe Hill gloriously resurrects the doorstop horror blockbuster for a startling new century’ ALAN MOORE
‘A soaring epic and painfully intimate. You won’t be able to stop burning through the pages’ PAUL TREMBLAY
‘Perfection from start to finish’ DAILY EXPRESS
‘A commanding, captivating read’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Epic…a multi-layered, rich response to the horrors and hopes of living today’ DAILY MAIL
Bookish dreamer Arthur Oakes is a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters and beautiful buildings.
But his idyll – and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot – is shattered when local drug dealers force him into a terrible crime: stealing rare and valuable books from the exceptional college library.
Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for help: the wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren; brave, beautiful Allison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen. Together they dream up an impossible, fantastical scheme that they scarcely imagine will work: to summon the fabled dragon King Sorrow to kill those tormenting Arthur.
But the six stumble backwards into a deadly bargain – they soon learn they must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow each year or one of them will become his next victim. Unleashing consequences they can neither predict nor control, this promise will, over the course of four decades, shape and endanger their lives in ways they could never expect.
‘A brilliantly Faustian fable with a heart as huge as a dragon’s, and a stinging twist in its tail. I devoured it.’ RUTH WARE
‘A wild, genre-defying journey, packed with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns’ DAILY MIRROR
‘A glorious, wild ride’ NEW YORK TIMES
‘Epic! KING SORROW is Hill’s best and most ambitious work to date’ LINWOOD BARCLAY
‘Magnificent – by far and away Hill’s best book to date’ SFX
‘When they talk about “natural born storytellers,” it’s Joe Hill they’re talking about’ JOHN SCALZI
‘A monster of a book…a vast, brimstoned, relentless zinger’ NICK HARKAWAY
Praise for Sunday Times bestseller Joe Hill:
‘Fantastically compelling’ THE OBSERVER
‘Clever, gripping and packs a hell of a punch’ JOANNE HARRIS
‘Character-driven stories that enthral and thrill’ DAILY MAIL
‘Original and gripping’ GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
***A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK***
‘A tour de force…King Sorrow is huge, sprawling – and absolutely fantastic’ THE GUARDIAN
‘Joe Hill gloriously resurrects the doorstop horror blockbuster for a startling new century’ ALAN MOORE
‘A soaring epic and painfully intimate. You won’t be able to stop burning through the pages’ PAUL TREMBLAY
‘Perfection from start to finish’ DAILY EXPRESS
‘A commanding, captivating read’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Epic…a multi-layered, rich response to the horrors and hopes of living today’ DAILY MAIL
Bookish dreamer Arthur Oakes is a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters and beautiful buildings.
But his idyll – and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot – is shattered when local drug dealers force him into a terrible crime: stealing rare and valuable books from the exceptional college library.
Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for help: the wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren; brave, beautiful Allison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen. Together they dream up an impossible, fantastical scheme that they scarcely imagine will work: to summon the fabled dragon King Sorrow to kill those tormenting Arthur.
But the six stumble backwards into a deadly bargain – they soon learn they must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow each year or one of them will become his next victim. Unleashing consequences they can neither predict nor control, this promise will, over the course of four decades, shape and endanger their lives in ways they could never expect.
‘A brilliantly Faustian fable with a heart as huge as a dragon’s, and a stinging twist in its tail. I devoured it.’ RUTH WARE
‘A wild, genre-defying journey, packed with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns’ DAILY MIRROR
‘A glorious, wild ride’ NEW YORK TIMES
‘Epic! KING SORROW is Hill’s best and most ambitious work to date’ LINWOOD BARCLAY
‘Magnificent – by far and away Hill’s best book to date’ SFX
‘When they talk about “natural born storytellers,” it’s Joe Hill they’re talking about’ JOHN SCALZI
‘A monster of a book…a vast, brimstoned, relentless zinger’ NICK HARKAWAY
Praise for Sunday Times bestseller Joe Hill:
‘Fantastically compelling’ THE OBSERVER
‘Clever, gripping and packs a hell of a punch’ JOANNE HARRIS
‘Character-driven stories that enthral and thrill’ DAILY MAIL
‘Original and gripping’ GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
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Reviews
PRAISE FOR SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER JOE HILL
With King Sorrow, Joe Hill gloriously resurrects the doorstop horror blockbuster for a startling new century
King Sorrow riddles and refracts the cultural and historical horrors of our last forty years through the eyes of a badass dragon and a group of close friends who know one another too well. It's a soaring epic and painfully intimate. It's humane and hideous. You won't be able to stop burning through the pages.
A brilliantly Faustian fable with a heart as huge as a dragon's, and a stinging twist in its tail. I devoured it
A monster of a book, as gripping and wickedly insidious as the title character. Not a page is wasted along its scaly length, from human villainy to diabolical plots, government folly to the desperate search for redemption. A vast, brimstoned, relentless zinger.
Epic! KING SORROW is Hill's best and most ambitious work to date. Those Game of Thrones dragons are mere geckos next to Hill's monster.
Original and gripping, a page-turner.
Clever, gripping and packs a hell of a punch
A fantastically compelling read
Joe Hill's best novel yet! Morphing from an evil fairy tale to all-out epic horror thriller, King Sorrow is big, meaty and irresistible. This book is both a wild ride and a skilled character study in power, corruption and consequences. You'll never look at dragons the same way again-and you'll hope no dragon ever glances your way.
When they talk about "natural born storytellers," it's Joe Hill they're talking about.
KING SORROW is a wise, furious, intricate puzzle-box of a novel - part horror, part fantasy, and shot through with tenderness and humor and grace. Joe Hill has created something wholly, entirely unique here. 'Dazzling' is an understatement. It is an absolute damn joy to read.
Joe Hill's best novel yet! Morphing from an evil fairy tale to all-out epic horror thriller, King Sorrow is big, meaty, and irresistible. This book is both a wild ride and a skilled character study in power, corruption, and consequences.
King Sorrow is an epic that will linger with you long after the last page is turned, a timeless tale that's also a haunting time capsule. Joe Hill somehow delivers it all, from the terrifying to the hilarious to the heartbreaking. A relentless and thoughtful tour de force, King Sorrow proves Joe Hill is one of the great storytellers of our generation.
Scary, romantic, crazed, deranged, absurd, and of course funny. King Sorrow is a wild ride that hits on all cylinders all the time. I don't know how Joe Hill does it. I just hope I never run into King Sorrow - he's scary enough that you think he might somehow escape the book and glom onto you next.
Joe Hill walks the tightrope between horror and fantasy with grace and menace. This is a tale infused with terror and hope.
A badass reinvention of the Faustian bargain on the grandest of scales. King Sorrow's menacing voice soars through these pages like Joe Hill's own, making you want to turn and turn and turn them and still long for more. Reminiscent only of Hill's own very best.
A commanding, captivating read
A monster of a novel in both size and scope, but you'll still find yourself wishing it was even longer. Fantastical yet grounded, it's epic, exhilarating and haunting in equal measures
A wild, genre-defying journey, packed with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns
Behemoth, Leviathan, Juggernaut: think of anything big, scary and mobile, then apply it to this blockbuster of an epic by Hill....the scope is vast, as befits a multi-layered, rich response to the horrors and hopes of living today.
A glorious, wild ride. Balancing this many characters and subplots in an 880-page novel is tricky, but the payoff is tremendous. I teared up when all the threads and characters and decades came together
Perfection from start to finish