Hilarious! ( )

Dayne Kuttner has seen enough so she makes a prayer to the Lord. And she prays with a pure heart. God answers her prayer but there are always unintended consequences.... the Devil did not intend love to be one of them. ( )

I think I just got tricked into reading a romance book. When I was about 75% through the book I suddenly realized that, despite the oddly amusing premise, most of the story centered around the relationship between… well, I guess that would be a spoiler.

This book was nearly as bizarre as the last book I read, in a different sort of way. Unlike that last book, however, this story had internal consistency so I was able to focus on the story without constantly arguing with the book in my mind. I guess this could be considered an urban fantasy book, and it’s set in modern day North Carolina. In this story, Heaven and Hell and God and Lucifer are portrayed as being real, although they’re not exactly portrayed in the manner you might have read about in religious texts. Hell is run sort of like a corporate business, and both sides employ the use of computers and technology to keep track of what’s going on.

A woman named Dayne offers up a sincere prayer to God to give all of the denizens of Hell a second chance to repent. God chooses to grant her prayer by allowing a large number of demons to go to North Carolina, with some stipulations to keep things from getting too out-of-hand. Lucifer puts his second in command in charge of the operation, charging him with two tasks: 1) to use this opening to increase the number of souls sent to Hell and 2) to win the soul of Dayne for Hell.

The story had likeable and sometimes funny characters, and it was written well. I had read another very, very different series by this same author earlier this year (the Arhel series) which was more of a traditional epic fantasy with much less romance. This book wasn’t at all what I was expecting based on that previous experience, and I didn’t like this one nearly as well, but I did still enjoy the author’s writing style. It was just an extremely short story and too romance-y for my tastes. I had a Kindle version of the book without page numbers but supposedly this book is only about 240 pages long. It felt shorter than that, actually.

There are two more books in this series, and I’ve decided to go ahead and give the next one a try because I’m curious where the author will go next with this premise. It’s equally as short as the book I just read so it’s not much of a time commitment. ( )

The amount of details in this book is amazing. Is it a coincident that Lucifer is Libra just like me? ( )

Found this book on the Baen Free Book website and read it a little while back. Marvelled at it's uniqueness and humour. Understand it is the first of a trilogy, and will probably read the rest in the series. Good writing, funny and thought-provoking, with a bit of romance for good measure. Recommended. ( )