Book Review: To Reign In Hell
Title: To Reign In Hell
Author: Steven Brust
Genre: Fantasy
Summary: (from the back cover) The time is the beginning. The place is Heaven. The story is the Revolt of the Angels - a war of magic, corruption and intrigue that could destroy the universe.”
How I Found It: A friend of mine recommended it to me upon hearing the premise of my latest novel.
Review in Five Words Or Less: Oh my god it's magnificent!
Rating: Loved It
(For a reminder about my rating scale for book reviews, you can go HERE)
Review:
First of all, let me point out that I read this entire thing in approximately eight hours. I could not put it down. It got to the point where I toyed with using my “OH MY GOD BEST BOOK EVER!” rating, despite the fact that I had just said that it was a rare thing indeed when I handed that one out. I finally decided that pulling that out for my first review was probably not a good idea, but still. It was close.
Novel-wise, the entire concept was a lot of fun - a new and interesting version of the War in Heaven. He's got Yaweh as a character - fallible, flawed, and very much an individual rather than a deity, which was awesome - and Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, and Mephistopheles were all separate characters rather than being different names for essentially the same being. And they all had very distinct personalities and relationships and despite the very large numbers of characters who make an appearance in the novel, it's easy to keep them all straight. Which is probably a good thing when you've got a cast of characters with names like “Abdiel,” “Ariel,” and “Asmodai” all showing up within a few pages of one another...
The novel took the idea of “sympathy for the Devil” to a whole new level - I'd actually be hard pressed to decide which one of the four I mentioned was my favorite character. There was a lot of “ends justify the means” philosophy being used, not by Satan and his gang, but by Yaweh, which I thought was a nice touch. But then, I'm very big on “sympathy for the Devil” and morally grey characters, so that was perfect for me. There really were no clear- cut “good guys” and “bad guys” (well, maybe one...) and there were definite reasons to side with both Yaweh and Satan's group. Though I spent pretty much the entire second half of the novel wanting to do nothing more than give Satan a hug, so I think we can tell which side I chose...
The ending itself, without giving away anything spoiler-y, was interesting, though it felt a bit sudden. Parts of it were awesome - there's a scene between Yaweh and Satan that was absolutely brilliant, completely in character, and made me ridiculously proud of the fact that I had been on Satan's side from pretty much the beginning - but the last fifteen pages or so had a lot of "stuff" packed into very little space. I'd have liked to see a bit more of the aftermath.
Something I noticed/got a giggle out of as I was reading it was the sheer number of “trite” phrases Brust uses completely literally - Beelzebub's admonishment to Satan to “get thee behind me!” in battle comes to mind, as do several others, all of which made me start chuckling randomly. It was astounding how many of them he managed to fit in. And they all *worked*, too. I loved it.
An interesting note: while all the scenes set in the “present” - the actual plot of the novel and whatnot - were written in the past tense and very reliant on dialogue, any and all flashbacks are present tense and contain no dialogue whatsoever. I kind of noticed it as a bit of a differentiation between the immediate, act first and think later atmosphere of the flashbacks - they're all showing scenes from previous Waves, which are basically epic battles against the essence of chaos itself and therefore not really all that suited for navel- gazing - and the very intentional, thought out actions of the Plan and the events surrounding it.
Stylistically, as I said, the novel is very dialogue heavy. At first I found it a bit odd but as I got into the story it really began to fit. It reads almost like a play rather than a novel, which could be seen as either poor writing (with which, in this instance, I vehemently disagree) or a clever throwback to the more traditional medium for this kind of tale (and here I'm thinking of Faust and Milton's Paradise Lost, among others). Obviously, I lean toward the second.
Speaking of Milton - his influences in this novel were everywhere. As a bit of a fangirl of his, I thought it added a nice touch. But all the characters' names seemed to have been taken straight out of Paradise Lost, there were some definite personality traits shared by both versions of Satan, things like that. Nothing overwhelming, just a nice tip of the hat.
Overall, yeah. An excellent read. I recommend it to anyone with any interest in theology or fantasy. Or, actually, anyone at all. Ever.
And I leave you with the reason Mephistopheles might just make my favorite character:
“Mephistopheles sighed. 'I am so smart I almost can't stand it,' he remarked to no one in particular.”
Author: Steven Brust
Genre: Fantasy
Summary: (from the back cover) The time is the beginning. The place is Heaven. The story is the Revolt of the Angels - a war of magic, corruption and intrigue that could destroy the universe.”
How I Found It: A friend of mine recommended it to me upon hearing the premise of my latest novel.
Review in Five Words Or Less: Oh my god it's magnificent!
Rating: Loved It
(For a reminder about my rating scale for book reviews, you can go HERE)
Review:
First of all, let me point out that I read this entire thing in approximately eight hours. I could not put it down. It got to the point where I toyed with using my “OH MY GOD BEST BOOK EVER!” rating, despite the fact that I had just said that it was a rare thing indeed when I handed that one out. I finally decided that pulling that out for my first review was probably not a good idea, but still. It was close.
Novel-wise, the entire concept was a lot of fun - a new and interesting version of the War in Heaven. He's got Yaweh as a character - fallible, flawed, and very much an individual rather than a deity, which was awesome - and Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, and Mephistopheles were all separate characters rather than being different names for essentially the same being. And they all had very distinct personalities and relationships and despite the very large numbers of characters who make an appearance in the novel, it's easy to keep them all straight. Which is probably a good thing when you've got a cast of characters with names like “Abdiel,” “Ariel,” and “Asmodai” all showing up within a few pages of one another...
The novel took the idea of “sympathy for the Devil” to a whole new level - I'd actually be hard pressed to decide which one of the four I mentioned was my favorite character. There was a lot of “ends justify the means” philosophy being used, not by Satan and his gang, but by Yaweh, which I thought was a nice touch. But then, I'm very big on “sympathy for the Devil” and morally grey characters, so that was perfect for me. There really were no clear- cut “good guys” and “bad guys” (well, maybe one...) and there were definite reasons to side with both Yaweh and Satan's group. Though I spent pretty much the entire second half of the novel wanting to do nothing more than give Satan a hug, so I think we can tell which side I chose...
The ending itself, without giving away anything spoiler-y, was interesting, though it felt a bit sudden. Parts of it were awesome - there's a scene between Yaweh and Satan that was absolutely brilliant, completely in character, and made me ridiculously proud of the fact that I had been on Satan's side from pretty much the beginning - but the last fifteen pages or so had a lot of "stuff" packed into very little space. I'd have liked to see a bit more of the aftermath.
Something I noticed/got a giggle out of as I was reading it was the sheer number of “trite” phrases Brust uses completely literally - Beelzebub's admonishment to Satan to “get thee behind me!” in battle comes to mind, as do several others, all of which made me start chuckling randomly. It was astounding how many of them he managed to fit in. And they all *worked*, too. I loved it.
An interesting note: while all the scenes set in the “present” - the actual plot of the novel and whatnot - were written in the past tense and very reliant on dialogue, any and all flashbacks are present tense and contain no dialogue whatsoever. I kind of noticed it as a bit of a differentiation between the immediate, act first and think later atmosphere of the flashbacks - they're all showing scenes from previous Waves, which are basically epic battles against the essence of chaos itself and therefore not really all that suited for navel- gazing - and the very intentional, thought out actions of the Plan and the events surrounding it.
Stylistically, as I said, the novel is very dialogue heavy. At first I found it a bit odd but as I got into the story it really began to fit. It reads almost like a play rather than a novel, which could be seen as either poor writing (with which, in this instance, I vehemently disagree) or a clever throwback to the more traditional medium for this kind of tale (and here I'm thinking of Faust and Milton's Paradise Lost, among others). Obviously, I lean toward the second.
Speaking of Milton - his influences in this novel were everywhere. As a bit of a fangirl of his, I thought it added a nice touch. But all the characters' names seemed to have been taken straight out of Paradise Lost, there were some definite personality traits shared by both versions of Satan, things like that. Nothing overwhelming, just a nice tip of the hat.
Overall, yeah. An excellent read. I recommend it to anyone with any interest in theology or fantasy. Or, actually, anyone at all. Ever.
And I leave you with the reason Mephistopheles might just make my favorite character:
“Mephistopheles sighed. 'I am so smart I almost can't stand it,' he remarked to no one in particular.”