King Sorrow

King Sorrow is a 2025 horror novel by American author Joe Hill, published by William Morrow and Company. Hill's first novel in nine years, it received positive reviews.

Synopsis

Arthur Oakes, an American college student in Maine, faces an evil dragon who coerces him and his friends into offering a sacrifice every Easter.

Release and reception

The fifth novel by Joe Hill, King Sorrow was also his first since 2016's The Fireman. Hill revealed the book's cover on social media in January 2025.
Reception to the title was positive. In their pre-release starred review, Kirkus found the novel "At turns spooky and funny, with bits of inside baseball and a swimming pool's worth of blood." Booklist called it a "remarkably well-paced, character-centered epic the computer age against folktales", while James Gardner of Library Journal said, "Though nearly 900 pages, the book never feels long or overstuffed, since Hill deftly moves between characters' viewpoints while rendering them vividly." The staff of Publishers Weekly wrote, "Pitch-perfect characterizations and doses of black humor.... Hill's reputation as a titan of the genre."