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W/CHARACTER LIST!!

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A baby is conceived, too. And Harper spends the rest of the book determined to survive for that baby's sake. But because the gold-and-black markings make it hard for the infected to hide, there are colonies of secret camps. And the book soon loses its global scale as it zeros in on one refugee zone.

Mr. Hill stays so busy examining the ways different people react to mortal danger that Satan himself gets only a walk-on. ("The devil's tail - a slender 12-foot whip braided from fire - lashed behind him.") A cameo!

And the community's residents aren't as interesting as the wild array of heroes and villains stalking "NOS4A2," a book whose heroine and villain were indelible. Harper is a perfectly nice mother-to-be, the Fireman has done an amazing job of harnessing the power of flame, and each subplot has enough baggage to fill a 16-wheeler. But there's a rambling quality to "The Fireman" that was absent in Mr. Hill's other, leaner books and really resembles that of ... O.K., go look up his old man.

The refuge into which Harper and the Fireman stumble seems to want to be all things to all people. At least it wants to be a microcosmic survey of human behavior. There are touchy-feely times, like when the group seems to want to buy the world a Coke: It turns out that singing and harmony can turn Dragonscale into a radiant, empowering thing. And there are times when the place feels more like the setting for a Salem witch trial. It is also problematically populated with characters who might as well have walked out of the children's stories that Harper likes so much. The chief female villain has all the complexity of a Disney witch, although latter-day Disney witches have had better dialogue.

But if Mr. Hill's overarching plot has its problems, he remains a terrifically ingratiating writer when it comes to ambience and spirit. The book's adults are somehow stuck in the 1980s, since panic has yanked them right back to childhood. The one place they are convinced is a safe haven is the Maine island refuge of Martha Quinn, the early, perky V.J. from MTV. For them, she lives on as an eternal beacon of youthful optimism.

"The Fireman" is shot through with time-warp references like that, and they are the perfect comedic element to offset any sense of global doom. Mr. Hill takes his shots at hate-filled talk radio, at false piety, at lemming-like obedience to anyone who claims to be a leader. He also makes the Fireman a credible guy, not a superhero. When the Fireman first figures out that he can smolder and ignite at will, he doesn't feel like a comic-book character. He feels like a rock star. Writing graphic novels or comics runs in Mr. Hill's family, too, but he's a chip off the old block in realizing that being a rock star is much better.

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Review: In Joe Hill's 'The Fireman,' a Plague That Sends People Up in Flames

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A baby is conceived, too. And Harper spends the rest of the book determined to survive for that baby's sake. But because the gold-and-black markings make it hard for the infected to hide, there are colonies of secret camps. And the book soon loses its global scale as it zeros in on one refugee zone.

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The Fireman has 34,763 ratings and 5,499 reviews. Kemper said: Well, that was a spoonful of nonsense.It had a promising start with the outbreak of a di...

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