Full Throttle, Short Stories Review

Full Throttle by authors Joe Hill and Stephen King

Full Throttle is a collection of short stories written by Joe Hill. Two of the stories feature his father, Stephen King as co-writer.

Collections of short stories can be very hit or miss. You get one really good story in the bunch, a bunch of mediocre one, and maybe even one awful one to pad the page length. Well, this is not the case for Full Throttle.

This is the only collection of short stories I can think of in recent history that is worth reading cover to cover. Every story has its merits. Every story stood out.

I kept waiting to get to a bad one. Even the ones that started off a little outside of my typical taste ended up with such a surprise or such emotion that I was converted by the end. This book is truly impressive!

Hill opens with an introduction explaining his love of writing and horror. But he also explains how the road wasn’t as easy as people think. Joe Hill wanted to do things the right way. He didn’t just want to be published because of the name King. And it took decades.

Some of the stories in Full Throttle are ones that had been previously published in smaller collections. The only things of Hill’s that had been worth publishing up until his first novel that finally hit.

It’s a testament to how good a short story collection can be when it takes decades to write it. These stories are the best of his stories. Finally collected after a lifetime of improving. These stories are not just churned out to fill pages in between novels. And it really shows.

Many of the stories had a strong emotional bent or a triggering reality to them. Hill maintains a good balance between the horrors of real life and supernatural horror.

He’s highly imaginative and each story is completely different than the others. Most of the individual stories take about an hour to read so they’re not just a few pages with zero character development. Within an hour he had me feeling for these small tales.

One of the stories, the second one with King, entitled In the Tall Grass is downright terrifying. I never say that about books. Books are rarely scary to me but this one had me gripping my kindle. It masterfully combines the real life horror of feeling lost and feeling like you’re slipping into madness with the supernatural horror of this patch of grass that will not let you leave.

I can highly recommend this collection to any fans of horror, Hill, or King, or anyone who just wants to be taken through fantastic storytelling.

5/5 trucks about to run you off the road 🚚🚚🚚🚚🚚

Also check out my extensive list of Joe Hill books ranked.

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Buy it here: Full Throttle: Stories