Official Review: Go to Hell by John Mark Curtis

[H0LD0Nthere]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Go to Hell" by John Mark Curtis.]

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This is a book about the fall of Satan. In case you are unfamiliar with the literature, the version in the Bible (and many derivations) is that Satan was once the most powerful and beautiful of God’s angels, called the Shining One or “Lucifer.” He decided to rebel against God, and recruited one-third of the angels to his side. Of course the rebellion failed. Lucifer and his angels were cast out of heaven and became Satan and his demons.

That story is not found in its complete form in any one place in the Bible. It is cobbled together from the many hints and bits of background that appear in various places in the Bible. In the book of Revelation, chapter 12, where we have the most straightforward passage portraying Satan’s rebellion and “war in heaven,” Satan is portrayed as a magnificent dragon who, when he falls, sweeps one-third of the “stars” from Heaven with his tail. It is also in this passage that we learn that “Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.”

You may wonder how these events, taking place in the heavenly places (outer space? or a spiritual plane?), among spiritual beings (invisible?), could be translated into an intelligible novel, let alone a readable action novel. But that is what John Mark Curtis has done. In his world, the angels are not winged beings floating in a void occupied only by clouds. They are very much like people. They can’t fly (except between planets). They sleep, they eat, they can feel pain, they can get drunk (!). They even bleed when cut, which was a surprise to me. All in all, they are more human than Tolkien’s elves.

There are a few differences, however. Curtis’s angels are deathless (they can be beaten or confined but not killed), sexless (all of them are male, and they don’t reproduce sexually), and they have the ability to travel in other dimensions, which allows them to explore and colonize the universe.

This may seem like cheating, but it doesn’t actually contradict any of the Bible’s data about angels. And, you may have noticed, it has all the makings of a good sci-fi/fantasy adventure.

My favorite part of the novel was the early chapters, where we are introduced to the protagonist, a gold-refining angel named Patiel, and to his world. Patiel lives on a gold-mining planet. He and the other miners are surrounded by pine forests, bonfires, glittering stars, and beautiful sunsets. Their existence seems idyllic. Patiel has a pet cat. He likes to work hard refining gold all day, then relax, pet his cat, and enjoy a good meal with his friends. This part of the book has a lot of wonderful sensory descriptions: the smell of fresh bread, the gold so pure it is “almost transparent.”

Then Lucifer makes a visit and starts stirring up trouble. Those who decide to throw in their lot with him soon find that they have traded their idyllic existence for a stressful life of camping out on the scorpion-infested desert planet on which Lucifer has established his military outpost. That is already a bit hellish. But it will get worse before the end.

This is primarily an action novel, with a lot of chases and escapes, a lot of jumping between dimensions through portals, and a certain amount of wizard-like fighting with blasts of electricity. Having said that, there is also some great dialogue. Curtis does not cut short the characters’ speeches when they are important to the plot. Lucifer’s twisted but strangely appealing reasoning could not be better done, whether he is inciting a large crowd, patronizing his underlings, or tempting Michael (one of the better scenes in the book). Particularly in the crowd scenes, Lucifer’s rhetoric sounds uncomfortably like revolutionary rhetoric that has been heard many times since.

Not all of it works equally well. There is a scene with God which is very ambitious, but I’m not sure it succeeds. I have seen authors try to do this before, and it almost never works. After all, who could hope to write “for” God and make Him even one-hundredth as wise, savvy, eloquent, and – well – holy as He is in real life? Curtis does use some imagery that is drawn straight from the parables in the Bible, and that helps, but in the end I couldn’t help feeling that he was trying to give answers to things that can’t be explained in human words. However, that is a relatively short passage compared to a lot of other great dialogue that, while not poetic, portrays the issues at stake very accurately.

I do have a few quibbles with some of the characterizations in the book. One delightful character, when we first meet him, has a very distinctive personal style of speech that expresses his sweet personality. Later, when the action in the book picks up, his distinctive style of speech disappears. It’s as if the interpersonal/dialogue aspects of the story have been sacrificed to the action.

I also felt that the characters’ struggles with Lucifer’s temptations could have used more development. Similar to the un-man in C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra, Lucifer uses the argument that God actually wants the angels to rebel against Him and take over the universe, that it is for this purpose He has given them free will. But yet, later in the same conversation, Lucifer will assert that God is trying to hold them back, keep them down, keep them from their rights, or even do something actively evil to them. None of the characters in the book appear to notice or comment on this contradiction. Granted, logic can be both contradictory and emotionally compelling, but I would have liked to see this developed more, even if the rebels ended up following Lucifer despite the contradiction.

Perhaps for this reason, some of the traitors’ conversion to Lucifer’s cause feels forced, as if it had to happen quickly for the sake of the plot. I would like to have seen them convinced more convincingly, or at least confused more gradually. That would have given the story more emotional impact. Go To Hell would have been a better book if it had been about twice as long, with a lot more room for exploration of the setting and of the characters’ inner worlds. In fact, I would say that if this book were much longer, and written at a higher literary level, it could have been a truly Great Novel, like the Lord of the Rings cycle. The themes are so elevated and rich that there is a lot of untapped potential there.

Go to Hell was a good read, Biblically accurate, and often insightful, but for me at least, not quite emotionally satisfying. That’s why I’ve given it three stars instead of four. However, I do recommend it to anyone who likes their sci-fi or fantasy mixed with philosophy, and to anyone who is interested in Creation/End Times themes. I would also be happy to read other Biblically-themed novels from John Mark Curtis.

I rate the book 3 out of 4 stars.

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[npandit]

This book sounds interesting!

[H0LD0Nthere]

Yep, not bad at.