Mark Cain

I got an early release for an honest review. I still love this series and I am glad the whole gang is back together. The story moves along. The author once again takes you to mythological characters and places you may not be familiar with. This is an aspect that I love of this series. It always expands my knowledge of other religious beliefs in a fun and interesting way. This book definitely went a different direction than I thought it would. That is a good thing.

Steve Minion is in Hell and his job is the super, the guy who fixes all the broken stuff. He’s not good at and it gives him no satisfaction. This is Hell after all. Satan tasks him with fixing the escalator from the pearly gates down to Hell and later tasks him with unmasking the masterminds behind a hellish rebel rousing group that plot revolt. Steve certainly has his hands full.

This story is first and foremost humor. I often chuckled at the characters (Thelonious Monk, Orson Welles, show more Pinkerton, Thomas Eddington, etc.) that wandered in and the reasons they are stuck in Hell. However, many of the jokes were average, could be seen coming, and some were played over and over again. So, I enjoyed this book in small snatches instead of devouring in big gulps.

The imagery was put to good use, as I could just picture Beezelbub and his flies, Boo the giant bat, even Satan himself in his business executive suite. Every little thing in Hell is personally tailored per individual to be annoying, frightening, depressing, etc. Steve has a little home, but it gives him no satisfaction. Sleep doesn’t really exist, as that would be an escape from the humdrummery of Hell. The author put a lot of thought into how Hell could torture a soul for eternity.

Florence Nightingale was an unexpected twist! She chose to come to Hell to work in the hospital to ease their suffering. Apparently, she’s the only one who has made this choice and she seems to get some satisfaction out of her work. A romance is in bloom for Flo and Steve and this leads to a few more twists I didn’t see coming. With that said, there seems to be very few females in Hell – Flo and the lady who’s in charge of handing out parts to the maintenance guys…. and there might have been one other. Maybe Hell would be too much fun if there were more ladies around?

Boo the giant bat stole the show for me. He’s a terrifying creature and only takes orders from Satan himself. But Satan can lend him out to Steve to assist in his swift transport around the different levels of Hell. Haha! Boo and his antics gave me the most laughs. Now I want a giant pet bat.

I received a copy of this book at no cost from the author (via the GoodReads Audiobooks Group) in exchange for an honest review.

The Narration: Michael Gilboe was very entertaining! He had a great spread of voices for the various characters. I liked his mishmash accent for Pinkerton and his Serbian accent for Nikolai Tesla. His sounds for Boo the bat were great! Also, he did a great job with the few female voices, keeping them distinct from each other. show less

I absolutely love this series. The series starts off great and just keeps getting better. The thing I like the most is the unpredictability of the plot. Just when you think you know what to expect, you get thrown one hell of a curve ball. All of the characters are well written, no two dimensional characters here! It is amazing that the author can make you care as much about ancillary characters and their story as the main protagonist. I found myself wanting to know as much about every new show more character encountered as I did the main characters. show less

This book may has well been called “The Gospel of Beelzebub” or “The World according to Beelzebub”. It is a fun ride through history mixed with mythology. The author really did his homework. The number of mythological characters/event and historical events were too many to count. Several events were new to me. I paused a couple of times to go look them up. So this book is not just funny but educational. Keeping the same sense of humor as the rest of the Circles in Hell, this book show more delivers a fresh story through the Circles in Hell universe. It provides a great backstory to the rest of the series. show less