PicoBlog

Because I am a giant nerd, one of my favourite things in life to do is watch a movie or show immediately after reading the story it was adapted from. In the past, I was often left disappointed when a movie wasn’t exactly what I expected based on the book. And I felt, like many do, that the book is always better. But the book will always be better, and we will always be left disappointed if we go into an adaptation with that attitude. So, in recent years, I have changed the way I approach an adaptation. I’m no longer concerned about it following the book exactly as it was laid out. My concern, and the focus of this Book vs Adaptation series, is to see which medium – written word, film, or television – put forth a better, more entertaining, and more engrossing experience given the same basic premise.

Genre: Horror Fiction, Dark Fantasy, Thriller
Page Count: 720
Originally Published: April 30, 2013
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Awards and Achievements: Nominated for the 2013 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel; nominated for the 2013 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Horror; named one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by Time Magazine

NOS4A2 is a spine-tingling novel of supernatural suspense from master of horror Joe Hill, the New York Times bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box and Horns.

Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across Massachusetts or across the country.

Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing – and terrifying – playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.”

Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble—and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son.

At the risk of being completely ostracized from the horror community, I have to say right off the bat that I didn’t love N0S4A2 as much as most readers did, but I still enjoyed it. The thing that prevented me from loving this book was mainly the cast of characters. I couldn’t bring myself to truly care about any of them. Victoria’s parents are unequivocally vile, and she grows up to be pretty much the same. Other than Lou Carmody, a love interest Vic relies on heavily throughout half of the book, and Bruce Wayne McQueen, Vic’s son, they are all pretty unlikable. While the antagonists – particularly Charlie Manx’s zany sidekick, ‘The Gasmask Man,’ Bing Partridge – are almost too cartoonish to take seriously.

Fortunately, offsetting my distaste for the characters is my wholehearted appreciation of the immensity of Joe Hill’s imagination. A young girl, her bike, and a bridge built from her mind to tear through the fabric of reality; a drug addicted librarian with a bag of magic Scrabble tiles that allow her to know things no one else does; a supernatural creature and a supernatural car that work in concordance to steal the souls of children; all of it is wonderfully imagined and described. The writing is transportive and made a book that didn’t need to be 700 pages long feel shorter than it was.

Something I both like and dislike about the book is that Joe Hill does a great job emulating his father, Stephen King. On one hand, it is nice knowing that King’s legacy and style (as well as references to his works), will be passed along and remain in good keeping. But on the other hand, I am so used to reading authors who try to write like King that it puts me off, even when it’s his own son. And the story suffers from some of the same flaws many of King’s books suffer from (depending on your opinion, of course), namely the meandering and bloated nature of the overall tale. Still, it is a fun, inspired read, and I can see why so many people regard it as a favourite.

Genre: Supernatural Horror Drama
Aired: 2019-2020
Network: AMC
Awards and Achievements: 2020 Women’s Image Network Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series (Ashleigh Cummings as Vic McQueen)

Charlie Manx, a seductive immortal who feeds off the souls of children, has his whole world threatened when a young woman in New England discovers she has a dangerous gift.

Full disclosure, it took me two tries to get through this series. I started it during the holidays of 2022 immediately after reading the book. The first season was solid, but by the first couple of episodes into the second season, I tapped out. This past holiday season, after seeing a number of N0S4A2 posts, I decided to give the show another chance. I found that I enjoyed the first season more this time around. And I managed to make it through the entire second season.

The show is a more grounded, gritty version of this story (at least for the first season). We meet Victoria McQueen at eighteen years of age instead of eight, a struggling high school senior who hopes to use her art as a way to escape the cycle of poverty she is currently in. The show focuses on her broken home in a rough area of New England (get ready for a wild variety of whacky Massachusetts accents), and makes characters that seemed two dimensional in the book have more depth and relatability. The Gasmask Man is less of a cartoon and more of an integral figure, making you feel sorry for him at times before making you feel sick to your stomach at others. The same can be said of Maggie Leigh, the drugged-up librarian with the Scrabble tiles I mentioned above. Each of the ancillary characters feel more substantial, more consequential, than they do in the book. The characters and the drama unfolding between them is what holds the show together, as the supernatural parts are a bit clunky (old man Charlie Manx inspired a few cringeworthy moments, great as Zachary Quinto generally is), and either confusing or uninteresting. This is more of a slow burning drama with supernatural elements than a horror show. In season two, the horror is ramped up. Unfortunately, the quality of the show goes in the opposite direction.

I know I mentioned that an adaptation doesn’t have to follow the book’s script exactly, but some adaptions (I’m looking at you Game of Thrones), when they stray too far from the source material, fall apart at the seams. And this is what happens the further into season two we get. The plot is all over the place, the acting seems to worsen as the series progresses, the characters have almost no chemistry (particularly Vic and Lou), Charles Manx is given an origin story that doesn’t make much sense, and his powers are inconsistent throughout the series. The last episode is probably one of the worst season finales I’ve ever watched. They were building toward a third season, but the show was cancelled. Fortunately, for those who enjoyed it, the show ends in a way that doesn’t necessarily feel incomplete. And it covers the entirety of the material in the book.

3.5 out of 5 stars

2.75 out of 5 stars

Meaning that the winner is the book! The show could have been a contender. But with that second season, it didn’t stand a chance. Is it worth watching? Sure; if you go in with low expectations and are the sort of person who laughs at things that aren’t meant to be funny, you might have a good time with the show. But don’t expect the same magic you’ll find inside the book.

My next Book vs Adaptation review will be a TRIPLE THREAT MATCH: The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick vs Minority Report starring Tom Cruise vs Minority Report, the short-lived television series starring Meagan Good! Make sure to subscribe to be alerted for this and future Book vs Adaptation reviews. Thanks for reading!

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