Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
Ah, yet another anthology that might have been a much better book had its contributors only stuck a little closer to the theme. I guess I didn’t need slavish adherence to the landscapes and verse structure of The Divine Comedy, but at the very least the authors might have agreed to write stories about Hell. Many of the writers did indeed conform to this simple standard, and there are a couple of pieces in here that were genuinely noteworthy (as well as a mediocre entry from Harlan Ellison, who a...
There are several great stories in this anthology. I'm particularly fond of the Gene Wolfe and Jody Lynn Nye stories.
some hits and misses here, more hits than misses
An obscure read, if you can find it, but a really neat collection of horror and comedy, Having bought and read it around the time of its publication, many of the tales an images conjured in these stories still stick with me today, from taking a permanent vacation in hell, to having a dead lover continue coming to visit you after their murder. Great anthology.
This is definitely one of the best themed anthologies I've read in a long time. Some writer take the premise (entrances to Hell in various places around the world) very literally. Others stray a bit from it. Others give us something entirely unexpected. I've recently moved to Chicago, and I find it amusing that more than a few of the stories take place here.
As with most short story collections, this is a mixed bag. For me, though, this one was like unexciting trail mix that I had to pick through to get to the good bits. It's going to take a while to get through comments on all the stories, but I'll update it in pieces."Bed & Breakfast" Gene Wolfe I kept getting bored with this story. The language was stilted, the main female character was bland, and the story didn't offer anything interesting enough to pull me into it."Chatting with Anubis" Harlan
Book, had some great stories, but fell far from the Dante basis.