"NOS4A2 (pronounced Nosferatu) is a 2013 novel by American author Joe Hill and is his third novel.
The book was published on April 30, 2013 through
William Morrow and Company and focuses on a woman trying to save her son from a vicious killer who has set his sights on him."
NOS4A2
Joseph Hillstrom King (born June 4, 1972), better known by the
pen name Joe Hill, is an American author and comic book writer and the son of (the) Stephen King.
The book was published on April 30, 2013 through
William Morrow and Company and focuses on a woman trying to save her son from a vicious killer who has set his sights on him."
NOS4A2
Joseph Hillstrom King (born June 4, 1972), better known by the
pen name Joe Hill, is an American author and comic book writer and the son of (the) Stephen King.
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| Joseph Hillstrom King (AKA Joe Hill) |
I couldn't help thinking of a dark kind of
The Catcher in the Rye as I watched the video clip above of what NOS4A2 was about.
King even uses a covered bridge much like the bridge that you had
to cross to get to Salinger's country estate, oddly enough.
I also like the head tripping angle of the origins of Christmas icons like Santa, his elves and reindeer.
Reading Graham Hancock's book Supernatural also rammed home the mushroom/shamanic connections of Christmas and Christmas imagery to me.
to cross to get to Salinger's country estate, oddly enough.
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| CHRISTMAS-LAND? |
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| Joe's inspiration, I wonder? |
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| DMT visions |
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| Christmas wreath on a door |
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| Pineal glands and owls? |
(1932857842).
Another Joe ... Joe Rogan on Christmas, Santa Claus, and Mushrooms in the video above ... and if you know Joe he uses the F word quite a lot, so if you get offended by that word
(Father Christmas? No.) then please don't listen to it.
ATTENTION: Spoilers galore if you haven't read the book.
"The book takes place over several time periods, with the book opening in a hospital in 2008. Charles Talent Manx, known for abducting children with his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith, briefly wakes out of a coma in order to threaten a nurse that was caring for him.
Her fellow coworkers don't believe her claims, saying that he was incapable of waking or talking.
The book then shifts to 1986, where Victoria "Vic" McQueen discovers that she can find things by riding her
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| Wonderland Playlist |
"The book takes place over several time periods, with the book opening in a hospital in 2008. Charles Talent Manx, known for abducting children with his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith, briefly wakes out of a coma in order to threaten a nurse that was caring for him.
Her fellow coworkers don't believe her claims, saying that he was incapable of waking or talking.
The book then shifts to 1986, where Victoria "Vic" McQueen discovers that she can find things by riding her
Raleigh Tuff Burner bicycle
through a bridge called the "Shorter Way Bridge",
previously thought to have been destroyed.
Once on the other side, she is always where she needs to be to find whatever it is that she was looking for.
The process takes a large toll on Vic mentally and physically, especially as she has to lie about how she finds things.
She eventually travels to an Iowa library where she meets Maggie, a librarian that can use Scrabble tiles to find out where to look for missing items or information.
The process also takes a large toll on her, causing a severe stutter.
She warns Vic against Manx, whom she can only refer to as "the Wraith" due to her being unable to divine his given name.
Vic then begins to travel home, but loses her bike in the process and develops a terrible fever. During this time Manx enlists chemical plant worker Bing in order to gain access to a
gingerbread-flavored sevoflurane that the factory produces.
Believing that Manx is taking the children to a place called "Christmasland" where nothing bad happens, Bing willingly goes along with Manx's plans and uses the sevoflurane to capture children."
"Years pass and Vic once again uses the Shorter Way after she has a fight with her mother.
She tries call her demolitionist father to stay with him, but is rebuffed.
In retaliation Vic uses the bridge to travel to Manx's house, thinking that her abduction would hurt her mother.
Once there she begins to experience inexplicable events such as seeing a child with rows of sharp brown teeth and cold air coming from his nose despite it not being cold enough.
Vic barely manages to get away from Manx, especially after his house catches on fire.
In her hurry to escape she runs into Louis "Lou" Carmody, who takes her to a gas station to call the police.
While the police are being called Manx drives up to fill the gas tank and is captured, but only after he sets fire to a man trying to capture him.
Years pass and Vic begins a relationship with Lou and becomes pregnant with a son, Wayne. Unhappy and still scarred over her experiences with Manx, she begins painting motorcycles and later develops a successful series of children's books as a way of dealing with the memories.
During this time she's also tormented by phone calls from unknown children who verbally torment her for getting Manx arrested.
Her relationship with Lou suffers and ends as a result, with the two remaining relatively amicable.
She eventually goes clean, but is confronted with the reality that Manx is still out there when Maggie appears on her doorstep.
Unwilling to believe that he still exists, she sends Maggie away and accuses her of lying.
Meanwhile Manx has escaped, reunited with Bing, and has killed Vic's neighbors, taking residence in their house.
The two bide their time as Vic and Wayne fix up an old motorcycle they discovered.
It's only when Vic takes the bike out for a test drive
(during which time she once again encounters the Shorter Way)
that the two move in and kidnap Wayne, beating Vic fairly severely in the process.
Wayne manages to call Lou, telling him that Manx has captured him.
Vic calls the police to report Wayne's abduction, giving them an altered version of events that doesn't include her seeing the bridge.
Her story isn't believed because Manx died within the hospital and was autopsied.
FBI psychologist Tabitha Hutter is brought on to the case but still doesn't quite believe Vic, not even after a traced iPhone call from Wayne shows that he is traveling inbetween the worlds."
"Vic decides to go after Manx and Wayne using the Shorter Way.
"The book then cuts forward to October, where it is revealed that Vic
died shortly after she and Wayne returned to reality, having escaped
Christmasland and Manx.
Lou has lost a lot of weight and has begun seeing Tabitha.
However Wayne still has nightmares where he sees the remnants of Christmasland and its inhabitants, where he is one of them and participates in gruesome games.
During his waking hours he finds that he's still losing his humanity and that his transformation into one of Manx's creatures is still ongoing.
Realizing that the now-dead Manx is still influencing his child, Lou takes Tabitha and Wayne out to the remains of Manx's home and smashes various ornaments that are hanging around the property.
As the ornaments are destroyed various children that Manx had kidnapped and transformed appear, completely human.
Lou smashes the ornament that stood for Wayne, reversing the transformation.
In the epilogue, Manx's "True Children"
(including his biological daughter Millie)
manage to keep their ornaments and escape from Christmasland in their demonic state."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOS4A2
Have yourself a trippy little Christmas,
but try to avoid those bad trips to Christmasland;-)
through a bridge called the "Shorter Way Bridge",
previously thought to have been destroyed.
Once on the other side, she is always where she needs to be to find whatever it is that she was looking for.
The process takes a large toll on Vic mentally and physically, especially as she has to lie about how she finds things.
She eventually travels to an Iowa library where she meets Maggie, a librarian that can use Scrabble tiles to find out where to look for missing items or information.
The process also takes a large toll on her, causing a severe stutter.
She warns Vic against Manx, whom she can only refer to as "the Wraith" due to her being unable to divine his given name.
Vic then begins to travel home, but loses her bike in the process and develops a terrible fever. During this time Manx enlists chemical plant worker Bing in order to gain access to a
gingerbread-flavored sevoflurane that the factory produces.
Believing that Manx is taking the children to a place called "Christmasland" where nothing bad happens, Bing willingly goes along with Manx's plans and uses the sevoflurane to capture children."
 |
| Shorter Way Bridge? |
She tries call her demolitionist father to stay with him, but is rebuffed.
In retaliation Vic uses the bridge to travel to Manx's house, thinking that her abduction would hurt her mother.
Once there she begins to experience inexplicable events such as seeing a child with rows of sharp brown teeth and cold air coming from his nose despite it not being cold enough.
Vic barely manages to get away from Manx, especially after his house catches on fire.
In her hurry to escape she runs into Louis "Lou" Carmody, who takes her to a gas station to call the police.
While the police are being called Manx drives up to fill the gas tank and is captured, but only after he sets fire to a man trying to capture him.
Years pass and Vic begins a relationship with Lou and becomes pregnant with a son, Wayne. Unhappy and still scarred over her experiences with Manx, she begins painting motorcycles and later develops a successful series of children's books as a way of dealing with the memories.
During this time she's also tormented by phone calls from unknown children who verbally torment her for getting Manx arrested.
Her relationship with Lou suffers and ends as a result, with the two remaining relatively amicable.
She eventually goes clean, but is confronted with the reality that Manx is still out there when Maggie appears on her doorstep.
Unwilling to believe that he still exists, she sends Maggie away and accuses her of lying.
Meanwhile Manx has escaped, reunited with Bing, and has killed Vic's neighbors, taking residence in their house.
The two bide their time as Vic and Wayne fix up an old motorcycle they discovered.
It's only when Vic takes the bike out for a test drive
(during which time she once again encounters the Shorter Way)
that the two move in and kidnap Wayne, beating Vic fairly severely in the process.
Wayne manages to call Lou, telling him that Manx has captured him.
Vic calls the police to report Wayne's abduction, giving them an altered version of events that doesn't include her seeing the bridge.
Her story isn't believed because Manx died within the hospital and was autopsied.
FBI psychologist Tabitha Hutter is brought on to the case but still doesn't quite believe Vic, not even after a traced iPhone call from Wayne shows that he is traveling inbetween the worlds."
She first
goes to the "House of Sleep" in the hopes of getting her son back, only
to find that it is Bing's house.
He attacks Vic but she manages to kill
him in self-defense.
After reporting back to Lou
(who then has chest
pains due to undetected carotid stenosis)
about her intent to further pursue Manx, Vic takes the Shorter Way to
Maggie's library where the two women search for answers using Maggie's
Scrabble tiles.
Vic discovers that the way to destroy Manx is to destroy
his Wraith, but Maggie is killed when Manx arrives at the library while
Vic is sleeping.
Narrowly missing capture by local police, Vic leaves
to go to her father's house in search of some ANFO
to destroy the Wraith.
She successfully gains the explosives, meets
back up with Lou, and emotionally reconnects with her father.
Vic and
Lou are forced to flee after Tabitha and the police show up, believing
that Vic was responsible for the deaths of both Bing and Maggie.
They
end up outside of Manx's home, where she leaves Lou behind before
setting out to Christmasland.
There she's threatened by Manx's children
after she reveals that she brought explosive with her.
Vic fails to
destroy the Wraith using the explosives, only to then see the car and
Manx die in the Shorter Way bridge as it collapses in on itself."
 |
| Tommy, can you hear me? |
Lou has lost a lot of weight and has begun seeing Tabitha.
However Wayne still has nightmares where he sees the remnants of Christmasland and its inhabitants, where he is one of them and participates in gruesome games.
During his waking hours he finds that he's still losing his humanity and that his transformation into one of Manx's creatures is still ongoing.
Realizing that the now-dead Manx is still influencing his child, Lou takes Tabitha and Wayne out to the remains of Manx's home and smashes various ornaments that are hanging around the property.
As the ornaments are destroyed various children that Manx had kidnapped and transformed appear, completely human.
Lou smashes the ornament that stood for Wayne, reversing the transformation.
In the epilogue, Manx's "True Children"
(including his biological daughter Millie)
manage to keep their ornaments and escape from Christmasland in their demonic state."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOS4A2
but try to avoid those bad trips to Christmasland;-)
OK, Hill's book goes onto my list. How can you be the son or daughter of stephen king and not be a writer? Do you get under the dome in brisbane, dsz? If not, try to find it. I think you would love it.
ReplyDeleteMy wife and sons watch it,but I've heard the plot is like "The Simpson's Movie" and I've seen that.-)
ReplyDeleteStephen King's sequel to the Shining (Doctor Sleep) comes out today
(I think),so that's one I want to read,but I have to read "The Shining" first,as I have never read it.Although I have seen the movie that King hates,a number of times.