Hell hath No Fury, like a Book Lover Scorned

So, I am slowly and steadily reading my way through my gigantic list and trying to complete my Read Harder Challenge tasks. Along this literary journey, I came across the Horns by Joe Hill and I gotta be honest, I did not like it. I didn’t like it so much that I finished it at work and my co worker asked me what was wrong because I was physically deflated by reading this book.
What’s wrong with it? You may ask. How can it be so bad? You may wonder. Well, I’ll tell you.

First, a brief synopsis. So, the main character Iggy, wakes up to find he has horns growing from his head that have a power to make people and say things. This comes on the 1 year anniversary of the death of his girlfriend who everyone thinks he killed. The book goes back I time to remember his girlfriend, Mirren, and a parallel time of today.
Here’s why I didn’t like it. There wasn’t enough depth of character development. I didn’t feel like I new these characters or what they would do next. The actions they performed were no way inductive of some prior knowledge or personality trait that was well established. Iggy’s character had no justification of him becoming satan like with the horns. Nothing in his past or present would lead he reader to believe he deserved it or hat the horns were just a piece de resistance of a shitty life led. There are parts that get quite blasphemous, whether you are religious or not, you know what he’s saying is wrong. He gets not preachy, but gains some pseudo philosophical gumption that goes on way too long and leads the story no where. It’s like the Giant Chicken fights in “Family Guy”, they go on and on for no reason not conclusion, same thing here, just he has “satan had it right and God had it wrong” type sermons.
The HUGEST problem I had with this book is that they never said why or how he got he horns. I’m not opposed to magic or a moral lesson to be learned, but he gave me nothing, nada, zilch, zero to go on. How can you call the book Horns and not explain said horns?! Seriously ?! WTF?!
I did not Google the author prior, so I had no idea that Joe Hill was a Stephen King offspring beforehand, but that makes me angrier. Did you not ask for advice ? I had 0 expectations and they were still not met! There was an epic gory fight scene in the end that I will give him credit for. There was definitely some cringe worthy moments, but the rest was incoherent and thoughtless. It was a cool concept, but poor execution. I have not seen the movie and I am hoping that it just takes the concept and my the actual plot to make it. All in all, I would not recommend this to anyone. 2 thumbs down and all that jazz. Did not like it one bit.