The Incarnations and The Fireman

Which book would you guess is more uplifting: a story about the eternal bond between soul mates through 1,000 years of reincarnation or a story about a pregnant woman trying to survive a plague where pretty much everyone around her dies?

Guess what? It's not the soul mates.

Joe Hill's The Fireman leaves the reader with a much stronger sense of hope for humanity than Susan Barker's The Incarnations, but both books take readers on a wild and engaging ride.

The Fireman

Joe Hill published horror novels for 10 years before coming out as the son of Stephen King. The Fireman stands on its own merit — but is also a loving tribute to his father.

A spore known as dragonscale wreaks havoc around the world. The first sign in the infected is a tattoo-like pattern that forms on the skin. As the spore takes over the brain, people start to smoke and eventually burst in flames. As panic erupts and the world burns, Harper Grayson, a pregnant nurse, comes across a group of infected who have learned to control the spores.

Hill has created a sunny and optimistic heroine who can also kick butt when she needs to. She sees the world through Disney-coloured glasses, known as the nurse who sings, "A Spoonful of Sugar" as she doles out medicine to dying patients. But Harper is not a caricature, nor a pushover.    

The Fireman is a fast-paced, 747-page epic. Hill sets his story in the real world where George Clooney bursts into flames while on a humanitarian aid mission in Manhattan; Glenn Beck burns to death in front of his chalkboard, "his glasses fused to his face"; and a firing squad executes the "godless" and infected J.K. Rowling for "deluding children, hiding the contaminated."

Referencing King

But more interestingly, Hill also sets his story in the many worlds of his father's best-selling, cult-classic novels. Fans of King will get a huge kick out of spotting the references to Firestarter, Maximum Overdrive, Shawshank Redemption, The Shining and of course, the plague-book-to-end-all-plague-books, The Stand.

That ultimate post-apocalyptic classic has its fingerprints all over The Fireman. Harper's middle name is Frannie; she finds and learns much from the diary of a dead commune member — the bitter outcast Harold Cross (a reference to Harold Lauder and Nadine Cross); the leader of the commune is Father Storey — a nod to Mother Abigail. 

Both The Stand and The Fireman are about the societal and individual battles between good and evil, especially when the two are tightly intertwined and hard to tell apart. Both examine the complexities of doing what's right — or at least what seems right — in a world gone mad.

Incarnations

In her novel Incarnations, Susan Barker also looks at the consequences of the choices we make, but instead of a possible future, Barker turns to the possible pasts.

Incarnations is told in a series of letters to Wang Jun, a taxi driver barely making a living in Beijing. A mysterious person insists they and Wang have been soul mates through the eras and leaves long, intricate stories in his cab detailing their lives together.

Barker has done her research and brings to life legendary periods in Chinese history. Each journey to the past reads like its own self-contained and riveting story.  

But this is no story of star-crossed lovers. The mysterious narrator and Wang have lived desperate, horrific and brutal lives. They've lived through incest, castration, Mongolian invasions, and the Cultural Revolution. They've raped, tormented and betrayed each other over and over.

Wang Jun's current incarnation (if you, as a reader, believe the unreliable narrator that this is one of his many lives) is also dark, dismal and bleak. He is in a loveless marriage, deals with dark depression and a harsh and demanding father. 

There is not a lot of light in this novel, but it is a captivating read that will keep you guessing until the end.