Book Review: Beautiful Hell – Author Jeffrey Thomas

Beautiful Hell

by Jeffrey Thomas
(Dark Regions Press)

Hades is in upheaval. The Damned are rebelling, and worse, the more human-like breeds of Demons are beginning to sympathize with their plight. The Creator Himself decides to venture into Hades to address this conflict, a conflict which may test His very sanity…and make him a target of assassination. Against this tense background, a Damned man named Frank Lyre and a beautiful winged Demon named Oni act out a passionate love affair, but they too will be swept into a battle that may decide the future of all Creation.

Beautiful Hell is set in the world of Jeffrey Thomas’s short story collection “Voices From Hades”, and the novels “The Fall of Hades” and “Letters From Hades.”

I have to say, I had no idea what to expect when I received “Beautiful Hell” from  my good friends over at Dark Region Press. I  was not familiar with Mr. Thomas’s previous books based in Hades…boy were my eyes opened.

“Beautiful Hell” shows a staggering scope of imagination on Mr. Thomas’s part. It is a vivid, unrelenting world where demons rule and “The Damned” are routinely tortured, maimed, killed etc. in every way imaginable. One thing about “The Damned” though, they do not die and return to life to suffer inconceivably at the hands of their demon masters for all of eternity.

The characters were wonderful, the pace of the story merciless, with seemingly every page turn revealing a new depravity.

“Beautiful Hell” is not for the timid, it takes what we believed heaven and hell, demons and angels, and even the creator to be, and twists it decadently into something completely new.

I for one will be looking to pick up the other stories set in Mr. Thomas’s “Hades”.

If you are looking for something wickedly different, that has the power to shock and entertain you “Beautiful Hell” just might be the book you are looking for and I highly recommend it.

Beautiful Hell – Author Jeffrey Thomas