Another Lunacon purchase -- recommended by Michael Walsh -- was Hal Duncan's Escape From Hell!
"A hitman, a hooker, a homosexual kid, and a hobo suicide make the ultimate prison break..."
That prison is Hell, a horrific version of Manhattan surrounded by the rivers Lethe and Styx, with reception points manned by Hell's own TSA. It's a city where the dead fight and die in the streets, the taxis are traveling death chambers, tabloid television gleefully covers the chaos, and our four sinners get their respective (just?) deserts: torture, rape, A Clockwork Orange-style avoidance therapy, and simply being forgotten. There's a little problem here, of course: arguably, the hitman deserves some of what he's getting, but punishing people for fornication, sodomy, and suicide seem a little bit...medieval by modern standards. I was having some resistance to the premise because of this, but by the end of the book I was glad I'd kept reading.
Our four sinners are surprisingly resistant to the despair around them, and as they slowly escape their assigned torments and join forces, the big question comes up: can they escape completely from Hell itself? Their attempt is action-packed: commandeered ambulance and copter, hordes of the nightmarish damned, and two warring Archangels ("That's the Mark I Archangel Special. The original sword of fire. It's not for close combat.") And what happens if you die in Hell?
Given the body count, it's certainly not for the squeamish reader, but it's all beautifully pulled together into a Brust-like challenge to Christianity and traditional Christian morality.
If I have a quibble with this book it's in the use of a real person -- easily identifiable from his first appearance -- in one of the sinner roles. I see what the author is doing here, and it certainly packs an emotional punch, but it seems somewhat callous when the other sinners are, as far as I can tell, entirely made up. I should also warn that the book may be emotionally triggering early on for victims of rape or gay-bashing. It's worth soldiering on past those points, if possible.
I highly, highly recommend Escape from Hell! for anyone not overly sensitive about the religious angle. But don't read the full back cover blurb: it has substantial story spoilers.
Read for yourself:
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