The plot thickens. And while I'm enjoying the plot, Carey's strengths are in the little asides: "The Writing on the Wall" and "Breaking and Entering" are the best stories in this volume.

Having said that, Mike Carey's definitely found his voice in the fourth volume of Lucifer. The characters he has created are beginning to take on a life of their own and become as fleshed out and interesting as the one he has inherited from Sandman. The plot threads are coming together nicely. ( )

I was predisposed to like this from the title alone, since my Dante geekiness is pure and true. I really wasn't disappointed. The breadth and inventiveness and scope of this title just awes me. Reading it evokes the same sensation I get when I'm deep in the Commedia - of glimpsing a huge framework that is partly comprehensible and partly divine and partly ineffable and partly just really bloody confusing. There is the same slow sense of discovery about the whole thing as well, of peeling back layers to see more and more of what is going on. There are some things that Lucifer knows, and some things that he is only finding out for himself, and some things that can only come as revelation to him. In many ways, the progression of this pings many of the same things that hit me when I read about Dante climbing down through the Inferno and up the mount of Purgatory. More than that, there are a number of aspects of this work that chime in so absolutely with a number of the ways I think about religion, and a number of the ways in which it intrigues me/irks me/has made really, really sure that I haven't classed myself as a Catholic in a long, long time. Those are issues that are probably going to find themselves expressed in a long, wanktastic post on Lucifer, theology, and possibly the Comedy itself once of these days. Feel afraid. *g*

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See Lucifer Vol 1 ( )

The Divine Comedy concentrates on the living deck of cards, Basanos, and Lucifer's newly-created universe. The Basanos try to take it over. Much battle and evilness ensues.

The Divine Comedy seems almost like an interlude in the Lucifer series. The most enjoyable part of the book is the short story in the middle about a centaur girl living in Lucifer's world, who sets out to warn him.

The most important thing in this book is that it introduces Gaudium, a fallen Cherub, who is set to watch over Elaine Belloc. He is a funny addition to the cadre. ( )

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Lucifer_Devil_i... ( )