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|title=Strange Weather

|author=Joe Hill

|isbn= 978-1473221178

|website= https://www.joehillfiction.com/

}}

Strange Weather is a collection of four short novels all linked by, unsurprisingly, strange and cataclysmic weather. Each novel is distinct and showcases Hill's restrained yet vivid style which takes everyday events and makes them bitingly, acerbically macabre or blindingly beautiful, often switching from one sentence to the next. As Hill himself says ''the beauty of the world and the horror of the world were twined together'', never is this truer than in Strange Weather where moments of abject horror are coupled with raw beauty.

''Loaded'' contrasts the incendiary destruction of a forest fire with the violence of a man determined to watch the world burn. Following a violent, abusive mall cop in denial about his barely restrained rage, this is a steely, whetted indictment against American gun culture. Lives are irreparably damaged, and communities destroyed all in protection of the second amendment. In today's concerning times, where mass shootings are becoming frighteningly commonplace, Loaded feels pertinent, it's true horror belied by its startling realism.

Finally, ''Rain'' follows Honeysuckle, a girl in love faced with certain annihilation in the face of storm clouds filled with needles. Raining down death and mayhem in an apocalyptic downpour, Hill expertly shapes a narrative of chaos and destruction. The reader follows Honeysuckle on her quest to understand the significance of apparently trivial events which accumulate, much like the deadly rain clouds, to bring forth a reckoning. Rain is a claustrophobic study of love and revenge, in which Hill highlights the barely restrained desire for global outrage and plays on the well worn riff of foreign born terror to underscore the true banality of evil.

Strange Weather is first and foremost an easy entertaining read, the length of the novels allows the reader to race along at breakneck speed before moving onto another thrilling yarn. This frenetic pace never sacrifices style or substance, the characters are living, breathing embodiments of evil and grace, fully realised by Hill in stories which burn brightly and vanish, giving credence to the notion that it's better to burn out than to fade away. Hill's writing is electrifyingly vivid and voluptuous; he weaves a fever dream around the reader, cradled helplessly in his macabre embrace, and whispers promises of terror and delight.

{{amazontext|amazon=147322117X}}