Virgil didn’t lead a good life – not totally awful or he
would have been banished to a lower circle of Hell than the first circle – but not
a good one. Facing a dull eternity in limbo stretches ahead of him – until something
unprecedented happened: a soul escaped Hell.
And not just any soul – but a serial killer hunting
teeangers.
Equally unprecedented the demons of Hell and the Angels
of Heaven decide only humans can bring this escaped soul back – 2 from the
first circle of Hell, 2 from the first circle of Heaven. None of them saintly
but none of them totally evil – the four of them have the diverse skills and
powers to return the killer where he belongs.
I love the entire concept of this series – Heaven, Hell,
demons and angels the different layers of both. The whole concept of the
judgement and the different sides arguing and throwing law and precedent and
treaty back and forth was hilarious
The whole concept of the treaty between the two sides – and all the loop holes and amendments they’ve had to produce to try and cover everything. I can see it so well and it’s such a lot of fun. On top of that all the demons and angels are such creatures of the contract that they have little imagination or skill or intelligence beyond their designated roles. And I love that they have budgets for divine or infernal interventions.
And so we have our protagonists – people in the first
level of Hell who are bad – but not quite that bad. And the people in the first
level of Heaven who are good… but not quite that good. Virgil and Lisa from Hell and Sara and Arthur
from heaven. As a team they work well for having a lot of excellent
complimentary skills which makes all of them very valuable contributors
I say that but I do think the story focused mainly on
Virgil and Arthur, leaving Lisa, a Black woman and Sara a White woman in lesser
role. Part of this is the nature of their powers – Lisa’s power is to be able
to hurt with a touch while Sara has the power to heal. Despite all of the
combat in the series and Lisa definitely been the most dangerous of them, the
true powers that are used are the social powers – Virgil’s power causes shame
and Arthur’s causes trust
And I love Arthur – his endless sincerity and trust is not only endlessly amusing (yes they will stop attacks by talking about sad and tragic childhoods) but really used well. While so many books and show resort to torture when they need answers, this book uses Arthur. And not just his woo-woo, but his expertise as a psychologist and his genuine caring for other people. Pan doesn’t move some people, but Arthur’s ability to connect with people in pain and with psychological and emotional issues. He connects with people and that works far more than torture
In fact that’s another thing this book does repeatedly –
there are no mindless goons. When mercenaries are ordered to shoot unarmed
people they say no. When people are given the chance to surrender, they do. When
guards are killed it means something because they are people. And yes, it may
be comically silly to have Arthur reduce a whole room full of guards to tears
talking about their sad childhoods, it happens BECAUSE they are people not just
nameless people with guns.
The world building is also fun in that it shows both
Heaven and Hell as flawed – and it criticises it in many small ways and
instances. Heaven is pleasant, Hell is not… but they’re both so very pointless
for the people in it. Sara and Arthur are happy to come to Earth because Heaven
is dull, it’s boring – and even if pleasant it’s pointless. They have no
purpose, no matter how pleasant – which makes existence pointless for driven
people like Sara and Arthur. And since there’s no concept for redemption then
what is the purpose of Hell? What does it achieve? Even when people are truly
repentant, truly want to change and feel the full gravity of their actions,
there is no chance for them ascend or redeem themselves.
No-one has a big grand speech about it but there is
clearly some inherent flaws in the system. The sheer fact that Sara and Arthur
don’t want to be in Heaven and would rather be in Earth is a rather glaring
flaw right there. I think this is definitely going to be addressed later in the
series, it’s one of the things I look forward to.
There are other flaws that are more dubious…. The big bad
serial killer is a gay man with a hyper religious father who tortured him with
guilt and shame due to the “sin” of how he was born. Yes this is more an
indictment of the religious father than him, but the fact is that all that pain
and shame turns him into a serial killer. A closeted gay serial killer driven
insane and murderous by his repressed sexuality is not a good trope or inclusion.
Some of the sins listed which get you into Hell are also
worrisome – first of all it is overtly judeo-Christian so even if you are
wonderfully good being, for example, pagan (the example used in the book) goes
to Hell. Abortion is also mentioned as sin. I want to see how this develops
into the fact that
There’s Mei – she’s the technical expert they recruit who
is extremely well skilled and does some wonderful work to bring the team up to
date. There’s no doubt about her skills – but Virgil flirts (clumsily) with her
because she’s beautiful – because he likes Asian women. It could easily have
been simple attraction to a beautiful woman without making a fetish of her
race.
And Lisa does come off a lot like an Angry Black Woman on
more than a few occasions, especially since (like Sara) she has a reduced role
and hers is mainly hitting things. She also has her race over-referenced at times (like at one point she runs like a "black gazelle"... not just like a gazelle? Are black gazelles faster? Would we refer to a white gazelle if it were a white woman) Also when they disguise themselves, Lisa
always wears make up to hide her skin colour. None of the others really feel
the need to constantly change their race when disguising themselves – is Lisa
the only Black woman in this world or something?
This was an excellent, fun story with a really excellent
world and some really intriguing characters. But more than that it has an
amazing potential to grow and become a really unique and really fascinating
series.
