 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are talking about Joe Hill's second short story collection, Full Throttle. It's actually his third collection, but Strange Weather is a collection of novellas. His first short story collection was 20th Century Ghosts, which was his first published work that he released other than short stories that he released through PS Publishing and so on and so forth. Today we're talking about Full Throttle. Right off the bat, this is a very pretty book. It's got this snake, snake. Got a snake on there. I like what they did with it. They have these khaki endpapers. It's very nice. I appreciate it. I'm gonna go ahead and jump into it. I'm gonna go story by story. Overall, I thought this collection was okay. The main reason I thought it was okay is because I'd read much of what was in here. I think there was only two stories. At first, when I did the release day video, I thought I'd read all of them, but I hadn't. I hadn't read Fawn and there was another one. We'll get to that when we get into it, but I'd read all these before and several of them were underwhelming. We'll get to that in the collection itself, but one of the things that you will notice as you're reading this, and even Joe Hill mentions it in the outro or the intro, whatever it is. By the way, the introduction is the best part of this book, I feel. He tells a story about he actually throws Stephen King under the bus about driving drunk with him in the car without a seatbelt. So child neglect for the win, but he talks about how this book is pretty much just a cover album. He pretty much took other people's ideas and wrote his own stories based on those ideas, which is another thing that kind of doesn't sit well with me, but more on that in a minute. As we go through each and every one, of course you have, right off the bat, you have Throttle, the story that he wrote with his dad. There's two stories in here that he wrote with Stephen King. The first one is Throttle. This one, of course, is an ode to the Matheson story, Duel, and the Spielberg movie of the same name. I think they're of the same name. This is an okay story. You're going to be hearing that a lot from me throughout this review, and I didn't reread it this time. I just, I'm going off what I remember from it, and I remember it being an okay story about bikers being chased down by a trucker. I believe it is. I didn't care too much for it the first time. I think I gave it three stars on Goodreads. I can't remember. Then again, I have misremembered things before and given them like five glowing stars, but my memory does not fit those reviews. So please don't pay any attention to any of the reviews I might have for these stories up right now because my feelings have changed over the years. So that's Throttle. Next up we have Dark Carousel. Dark Carousel was first released. I was surprised to see it here. Dark Carousel was first released as an LP or as an EP. I think it's an LP as a vinyl, as a record. Some people don't like it being called vinyl, but as a record, an audiobook on vinyl. That was an odd decision. And the story itself, several times in the afterward and the forward or the introduction in the outro, he mentions how much his writing and his stuff is like his father, which boggles the mind, man, because for his first three published novels, I think it was, I think he was outed either during Horwitt Korn's release or shortly thereafter. It might have even been before. He worked so hard to put space between him and his father. He used a pen name. He didn't use his father's connections to get published. He did the work and all of a sudden now he's no longer his own man. He is Stephen King's son. For those of you that don't know, he actually made a name for himself before anybody knew that he was Stephen King's son, which is funny because the shining is dedicated to Joe Hill King when his actual name is Joseph Hillstrom King. I always find that funny. But Dark Carousel, he says, is a Stephen King story and I couldn't agree more. The story is definitely a Stephen King story about a group of teens or 20-somethings. I don't know how old they are who not pull a prank, but they deal with an old man in a carousel who might have done something to wrong one of the girls and then the carousel seeks revenge for how they treat him. It's very creep show-esque. I was shocked when I heard that the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain was going to be in creep show and not this one because this one just screams creep show. It feels very much like creep show, especially the Cigar Shop Indian story. Whatever one that was, I think it's creep show too. It might have been creep show one. But going on, Wolverton Station, the story goes nowhere. I don't see that it has a purpose. You might enjoy it. You might see that it has a purpose, but I was very underwhelmed by the story. And I'm going to go ahead and say it now. It's the same thing with Twittering from the Circus of the Dead. I remember enjoying it all right, but these are novelty stories that they don't feel like they serve any other purpose, but to put you in a mindset of maybe either nostalgia or something else completely. Like this whole book is an ode to other things, which is very weird to me. It's like when Metallica came out with their album Garage Days. I think it was. All the songs they used to practice and play when they were a garage band. While that album is good, it is not their album. It's them covering. Now they do change a lot of stuff, like Bob Cigar's Turn the Page. They do change it, make it their own, that kind of thing. Joe Hill does that here. But there wasn't one story that I felt had the originality of stories like Pop Art in 20th Century Ghost. Nothing in here felt like it stood alone. Next up you have, by the way, Silver Waters of Lake Champlain. I enjoy this story from when I understand the Shutter reboot of Creep Show. Completely changed it because not much happens in the story, but I do like the visuals. This is, of course, and going back to Dark Carousel also, these two stories and another one on top of that, which is another reason why I'm going to keep on bringing this up. It's an ode to Ray Bradbury. Dark Carousel, of course, something we could this way comes. Silver Waters of Lake Champlain. I think I'm saying that right. Is it Champlain? Champlain? Champlain? I don't know. But this is Ray Bradbury's short story, The Foghorn. I think that is about the Lighthouse. I love that story and I like this story. It just doesn't feel like much of Joe Hill there. It feels more like the source material and less like a Joe Hill story. I do like it, though. I do appreciate it, but it's one of three Bradbury stories in this collection. If this was like a Joe Hill marketed, Joe Hill reboots Ray Bradbury, I'd be all for it. But it's not. It's supposed to be a collection of his short stories. I don't get that. What I'm getting is, like I said, it's a cover album. It's what it feels. He goes into detail more along these lines later on. I think it's in the afterward when he discusses how, if you did the same thing that cover artists do when they cover a song, it would be considered plagiarism. You have to add your own stuff to it. You have to. You can't just rewrite the same story over again, which Hill does, but I don't think that the covers come anywhere near to being as good as the original source material in any of these stories. Next up is Fawn. Once again, we're back with Ray Bradbury. He even evokes the sound of thunder in the introduction to the book. He mentions a sound of thunder. He mentions in the outro, I want to say outro, afterword, whatever it is. He mentions there. He's harping on it. That's why I'm harping on it. How much these things came from other places. When you're reading Fawn, if you've read Bradbury's story or seen the, it's not atrocious. It's an okay direct to video movie of the sound of thunder. You will know what's going to happen. You know what's going to occur because you have the original source material balanced by Joe Hill's own writing and you know where he's going to go with the story. Just like you rewind back to Dark Carousel, you have the same issue. You have this story about a carousel that comes like magical carousel. You know where it's going. If another complaint I had just thought about this is Dark Carousel went on far too long. It just kept going and going and I remember having the same problem with his novella snapshot. It should have ended 30 pages before it did and this one could have easily ended 10 pages. That's Dark Carousel, by the way. Next up, Late Returns is the second one that I had not read. I enjoyed this story quite a bit. I liked it. If there is, if this is another cover story, I don't truly know what it's from, but I mean it's one of those age old stories. People, especially horror authors, fantasy authors period, whether it be dark or light fantasy, they love talking about libraries and this bookmobile story was cool. It just doesn't do anything new. I liked it, but it doesn't do anything new. You know exactly where it's going to go. You know it's going to become nostalgic. You know all this. You understand where it's going to go and that's the problem with these stories because you've read stories like them before. Even if you cannot pinpoint the story that you're thinking about, you've been here before. I'm not trying to evoke needful things, but you've been here before and that's the problem pretty much with this entire story, this entire collection. All I care about is you. I don't like sci-fi and fantasy all that much. This is a, I don't know, cyberpunk. I don't know how you would, it's about machines and all that. I don't, I've read it and I forgot about it right after I read it and I still, it didn't stick with me whatsoever. And when you have a short story, I believe it's one of the longer stories in the collection. No, never mind. It's only 30 pages. It didn't stick with me. Another thing while we're talking about the short story structure, real quick, these short stories are not short stories. The vast majority of them are novelettes bordering on novellas. I don't think there's a single short story in here. I don't think there's a single one under 7,000 words. 7,000 words I believe is about, I want to say 15 pages roughly in, not manuscript, but in this form. I could be wrong, but I'm just looking at some of the stuff that I have written that was over, you know, just around the 7,000 mark and none, none, all of these stories are longer than that. And novelette from what I think I remember it being from 7,000 to 14,000 words and then from 14,000 to 25,000 you have a novella territory, that kind of thing, 40,000 on. There's muddy area and there's also a lot of debate about what the industry standard is, but these aren't short stories. These are novelettes. These are big chunks. He, just like his father, he writes, when he gets involved in a story, he's going to give you a whole hunk of story. And these are more like either creep show episodes or they're definitely not a kiss in the dark from the stranger. That's Stephen King, that's a Stephen King quote by the way. They're definitely not that, they're definitely more, they're definitely meatier than your average short story. Thumbprint is another one. It's one of those things with Hill trying to be political and I think he completely misses the mark. I don't like the story at all. The more I think about it, the more I dislike it. It's another one of those gun violence war, war activists kind of things and I'm just not there for it. I think Loaded was a far better story and that's the novella from Strange Weather. Another note is their novellas, King and Hill, their novellas are about the size of, you know, Indie small press novel. It's about 50 to 60k words, 50 to 60,000 words. The thumbprint, it's whatever. The devil on the staircase is kind of like an odd one out. I read this in the, do I have the paperback sitting around here? Yeah, I do. Hang on. Okay, so this is the paperback version of horns and then you look back here and this is the devil on the staircase. It's formatted. Give you guys a second so you can see it. It's formatted like stairs and Hill talks about how the formatting was a pain in the ass because if they changed the font or anything it would screw up the stair structure which I think is cool just like from an industry standpoint. But the story itself, it evokes Italo Calvino, I think it is. On a winter's night a stranger, he wrote that short novel and it evokes that author which is something I never would have thought that Hill would have tackled. I just don't think that it's in his, I didn't think that it was in his wheelhouse. And while I don't care too much for the story, the story is very predictable once again. And Calvino was just a better all around author. I think Joe Hill is a good author. He's not as good as Calvino. But I mean we're talking about literary and we're talking about genre and Hill is far more genre than he is literary. There's a much deeper meaning when it comes to Calvino stuff whereas Hill is just trying to entertain you. He's like king. There is literary merit there more so for king than with Hill I feel. Another note on Hill said I'm going to keep on comparing him to his father because he compares himself to his father throughout this whole book. So I'm going to, I told myself back when I reviewed the fireman that I was going, before I reviewed the fireman that I was going to stop comparing these two because obviously he was his own man and doing his own thing. Nosferatu and all this stuff and they were hints in Nosferatu like the mention of Pennywise and so on and so forth. And then all of a sudden here comes the fireman and that entire book is just an, that entire book is an Easter egg for either Harry Potter or Stephen King's The Stand which was upsetting to me because I was hoping for something far more original. But it's a Harry Potter order of the phoenix by the way. But with, there's something, when I, when I read The Shining, here's what I'm getting at. When I read The Shining recently, there's a part in there where Stephen King says, and it really hit home for me, there comes a time in every author's career that he has to decide whether or not he's going to continue to do the same old thing or if he's going to strive to do better, to push farther. And I think Hill has hit that mark and he's decided he's not going to try any harder than what he's already doing. That is upsetting, that's bothersome. I am still a Joe Hill fan, but at this point in time, I've disliked almost as many of his books that I have fanboyed over. So I'm really, I'm on the fence here people. Twittering from the Circus of the Dead already talked about it. It's a short story written in tweets. I mean, about zombie apocalypse. It's whatever. Mums was an interesting story. I got a kick out of this one. It's probably my favorite story in the collection. So I also lied, because this is the third one that I hadn't read before, before picking up this book. But Mums was a good time. I think the less you know about the story, the better going into it. I did enjoy it. I mean, there's some politics in it, if I'm going to be honest, but I thought, well no, I didn't think it was well handled. I think that it was more satirical than you normally get from Hill, because Hill is usually far too on the nose. And while there's a lot of on the nose stuff in here, it's certainly not like King's Elevation. But Mums was an entertaining story. In the Tall Grass with Stephen King is another one. It's probably my second favorite in here. It has one of the most disturbing scenes I have ever read in it. It really bothered me for a long time. And no, I'm not going to do a review of the Netflix movie, because I'm going to leave Earl to that. But the reason I'm not going to is because I really don't have anything to say. The movie doesn't make any sense into the context of the story, especially not the scene that I like so much. And yes, the scene does disturb me. It did bother me. But that's why I like it, because it was so emotionally affecting. It bothered me a great deal. And it is one of my favorite Joe Hill stories, whatever you want to call it. In fact, I probably need to do my favorite Joe Hill stories and favorite novels and all that stuff. If you want to see that, let me know down there in the doobly-doo. And then last, certainly not least, you are released. This collection ends strongly. It starts strongly, middle of it. It's kind of, and then it ends strongly. I would give the whole collection of three, three stars. But another thing I'm going to throw out there, well, as far as you are released is concerned, the story is another one of those stories that kind of hides its politicality. It's not even a word. I don't know. It kind of hides its politics under overt messages about politics and society and that kind of thing. But there is a stronger undercurrent there, which I appreciated. King and Hill are much better when they allude to things. Every author is better when they allude to things. And when they don't just go, okay, here's my stance. Obviously, this is my stance. But there's also another thing to be said. If social media wasn't a thing. If we rewind back to like the, you know, the 80s and the 90s, early 90s, of course, if we rewind back to those days, knowing, not knowing their politics, and we read these stories, would we be having the same attitude and the same outrage that we have nowadays when the politics pops up in the book? That's an interesting thing. Without going into politics down there in the doobly-doo, I want to know if you guys think of it, is it because social media that we are like, oh my God, who mentioned so-and-so? Or is it because we're actually upset by these things? Because if you go back to like Dr. Sleep, Dr. Sleep mentions Bill Clinton, it mentions Nixon, it mentions Reagan, it mentions all these things, and none of the reviews mention those people. Yet you get to things like the Institute and that's all you hear about is how, oh my gosh, he evoked the current president. But like I said, without going into politics, without going into whose side you're on or any of that, cesspool nonsense, all I want to know is, do you guys think social media has the more to play than anything else when it comes to our outrage over breaking the fourth wall and throwing in like the most recent politician? I'd love to talk to you guys about that stuff. But you are released as a great story. It's one of my favorites in the collection. I enjoyed it immensely. But like I said, as far as the entire thing, I'm going to give it three stars. I think I liked it better than Strange Weather and I definitely liked it better than The Fireman. But it also, I had a lot of time in between these stories because I had read all of them previously as either Kindle exclusives or ebooks or Kindle singles, whatever they're called. So I might have liked some of these stories more or less either because I read them so long ago and I had a chance to digest them. If I were to sit down and read this, first off, I don't think I'd get through the entire book. I think I'd get to that middle and I would completely stall out and then I'd go back to another story in the middle and then I'd stall out again. I think that's what would happen to me if I were to read this collection just sitting down. One final note on the audiobook. If you happen to get the audiobook, the best part of the audiobook too is the intro read by Joe Hill himself. I think he reads You Are Released also and of course he does the outro afterward, whatever it's called. I highly suggest you do not skip these things because like I said, the introduction is the strongest story, the strongest writing in here is that introduction. It is a hell of a lot of fun and it's a look into how he grew up and how his relationship with his father molded who he became as a writer. It also has a lot of insight on how he tried his best to make a name for himself without his father which is something I respected but now he's just kind of fallen away from that. But have you read Full Throttle or any of the short stories in there? You don't have to read the whole collection to chime in is what I'm getting at. Leave your comments down there in the doobly-doo. If you didn't like certain things please go into detail about why but also please give spoiler alerts if it's a if it's a plot point. Also if you didn't like it, I want to know why you didn't like it. People all the time go this book sucks and I'm like oh well I mean I guess it must be so because you said so and they're like well you asked how I felt. No I want to know why. I want the input to be able to say to be able to actually have a discussion with you about what you liked and what you didn't like or either or. But yeah leave all that stuff down there in the doobly-doo but until next time I have been E, you have been U, this has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye!