King Sorrow

A group of mostly 20 year old adults at a New England college decide to help their less privileged friend who is being blackmailed by a couple of drug dealing thugs. And of course their “help” turns out to be an occult summoning (and ritual binding) of a dragon. They agree that in return for killing the blackmailers on their behalf they will provide a new target for the dragon (who the kids named “King Sorrow”) to kill every easter. The rest of the book concerns how the group ages from easter to easter and the ramifications of the dragon killings.

The narrative starts in 1989 and does not complete until 2022. The characters are mostly believable and take some interesting character journeys (including dying.) Likewise the narrative takes you through brief sketches of pop culture. So overall you have long term soap opera with likeable characters, something for everybody and you just want to understand how the kids will somehow get free of the curse they unleashed.

Fun read. I enjoyed especially the explanation of origins of “internet trolls”.