However, while there was plenty of action and Bobby Dollar snark in this novel, there was just not a lot of progress. When I really sat down and thought about it, this book did not have a whole lot of overall plot progression for the series, just a lot of Bobby getting into situations and getting This book was really 3.
When I really sat down and thought about it, this book did not have a whole lot of overall plot progression for the series, just a lot of Bobby getting into situations and getting out of them which was sometimes a bit unbelievable. Now, I still really enjoyed this book and I feel like a lot of the little nuggets in this book that were laid down will play off big to make the third one in the series the best one, but overall this book just didn't completely satisfy me.
But, what really dropped this book from 4 stars to 3. Nov 04, Kathy Sebesta rated it did not like it. OK, I made it a third of the way thru and I'm just fed up reading descriptions after descriptions of the indescribable torments of hell. The premise of the first book and hence series in general is intriguing: why would anyone want an eternity of mindless bliss in heaven? Alternatively, who truly deserves an eternity of damnation and uber-suffering in hell?
Shouldn't there be a third place where you can grow and become better and really exist? However, in this the second book of the series, ou OK, I made it a third of the way thru and I'm just fed up reading descriptions after descriptions of the indescribable torments of hell. However, in this the second book of the series, our hero angel has fallen in love with one of the top demons of hell, and has gone to hell to rescue her - and there he witnesses all this horrific stuff.
There's way way way too much of it, and to be honest it's more than boring. I'm done. View 2 comments. That is the short version of my review. Just meh. But yeah, I'm gonna elaborate, don't you worry! This is the second installment of a trilogy I think dealing with all the wonderful misunderstandings of Heaven and Hell, the two H's humanity has always loved to discuss. More than ever, movies, shows, books and comics have been twisting the tales of angels and demons and taken what we know from the Bible to another dimension.
Angels aren't always as good as they seem, demons understandabl Meh. Angels aren't always as good as they seem, demons understandable and nearly human in their evildoing. The book doesn't really come up with all that much new stuff, than rehashing what we know from some place or another granted, there are some scenes and things you might never have heard of, but that doesn't really help the book too much.
Patrick Rothfuss, another author I thoroughly admire, has his praise added on the back of this edition of the book.
It reads "Snarky, fast-paced, and above all, original". It really, really pains me to say that I have to disagree. Quite strongly even. But that annoyed me more than ever. Bobby's voice is a frigging pain to read after so many pages.
I already mentioned in my first and rather favorable review of the first book, that sometimes it just gets to be too much. At some point he just becomes a whiny douchebag whom I could care less about. He pretty much gets into this mess because of his own stupidity, so no, I don't really feel too badly for him. I read about a third of the book when I was well and ready to drop it. And I have only done that with one book so far, and that was because of a personal experience I did not want to read about on a character.
So you see, I don't drop books easily. It is actually that fact that got me reading it again. I read, I think, about ten books in between that third, where I just couldn't care about the story and the end. I know it seems harsh, but this book just starts so slowly and annoyingly, that I'm surprised I made it to the end.
It does pick up after the second half, but yeah, that's it. Fast-paced to me is a book that gets you reading a book in a day, even when you have no time. Having read all those books in between, I sure as heck had the time. Not really. I mean, most of the intriguing questions were already posed in the first book. He mostly just chews on stuff he already knew and then some more towards the end of the book after experiencing lotsa pain and lotsa feels in hell.
As for the world building, I just don't know. Maybe I've seen so many versions of Urban Fantasy Heaven and Hell, maybe the tropes have been used one time too often, but for the most part it was just like playing a game where you had to get character A from hell city B to city C. Then again, writing about heaven and hell might be a tad bit hard to come off original when there's already so much out there. The underlying story that drove the main character though, was nothing else than a fucking "Damsel in Distress" story.
Of course, there is this whole conspiracy going on in the background, but you barely notice that because the only thing Bobby Dollar thinks about is his D that should go into the V of a certain Demon Lady. For that, he needs to be the hero and rescue the princess from the big bad dragon in hell. Really, it doesn't get any more simple than that. So: Original? So many things were obsolete. Looking at Williams's former books, it would have payed off to just make two volumes he certainly has never been afraid to pack a lot of pages into one tome.
The first third was really a repetition of the first book, explaining stuff we already know and preparing us for Bobby's new genius idea: Let's go to hell and free the love of my heart, Caz the demon.
Caz, the possession of one of the most powerful demon lords in the history of ever. Easy, eh? The middle and last part could've done with less chapters that got repetitive really soon and thus assimilated within book one and two respectively. But that is often the curse of the second book, so I'll let that slide for now.
But let's have a look at the actual story: We have Bobby, who's up to some frying in hell - quite literally. He gets into hell through a very secret door and meets many creatures, low and high, that will either want to eat him alive, do him some other harm or, believe it or not, help him.
The concept of hell seems to be much more tangible than heaven. Whereas heaven was this murky bubble of happiness that no one quite remembers, hell is hands-on and feisty. Bobby notices that about two seconds in, as pretty much everything and anything tries to make his life as miserable as possible. He arrives in one of the lower layers of hell, not at all where he wants to be, but there's the only place he can enter. You'll hear a lot of familiar names and places like Abbadon, Erebos and Pandaemonium.
Some references to literature, too. Some imaginative place names in the middle spice things up a bit. The ecosystem of hell is very diverse, so each level is not necessarily connected other than through the rivers of hell.
And even though Bobby says time and again that the physics are different in hell, just as they are in heaven, I think most of what he describes is not that far off in terms of imagination. Sure, some things are weird and out of this world, but come on, we're in hell. You'd expect it to be magical in gruesome ways and to not quite play along our rules. As such, the place itself seems pretty straightforward: The lower you get, the closer you get to the devil and his very unpleasant fiery bits.
The higher you get, the more civilized, while still crazy, things seem to get. So yeah, that's not all that complicated. I think where Williams does show his talents in world building, is the respective levels themselves. Also a few choice characters are quite imaginative. But the hell-system as a whole does not really bring any surprises. He also seems to not quite understand that hell himself. At one point it is just this unchanging thing that has a few changes in the middle to get everyone in despair but at the end it is the ever-changing that makes hell so hellish.
So, which is it? It's probably safe to say that it depends on which level you are and how high you are on the demon-status-level. Something which is also never quite clearly explained, but yeah, no details. Something Bobby does often, too: " And you wonder, when that day will be - not that I necessarily want to hear all those stories he omits As for Bobby himself, his story doesn't really get all that interesting, either.
He just tries to get his boss's Tamuel or what's his face job done and then go fetch his girl and get outta hell. Needless to say, things get a bit hard very soon. Adaption to hell takes his toll on our snarky feather-boy and he feels losing himself more and more. He also rescues a kid demon-thingy which stays with aforementioned unlikely friend.
He also makes a lot of enemies on the way, a memorable one being Niloch, some kind of self-proclaimed police dude in that level of hell. He gets to the point where he could go up to Pandaemonium, the highest strata of hell where Caz resides, but not before he makes an unwanted detour to the pit below and nearly gets killed - instead he manages to get away with "just" the loss of his hand. He gets up again to be run over by another demon, who takes a shine on him, as he soon discovers that his looks are not all that different from what he looks like in his human body - something he had not notice before.
Apparently through the lack of mirrors in hell. I just wonder, couldn't he have looked into the many body of waters he had crossed before? Sure, they may be pitch black, but even black reflects occasionally But yeah, that's just me. Either way, he was now in a really not so awesome position, even though he did finally make it to where Caz is hide spoiler ] You'll see lots of bits of hell along the way but the really interesting part is probably towards the end where he finally gets to where he needs to be, in his opinion view spoiler [ So he does get run over by this other demon lady, who gets to rape him.
Kudos to Williams for having a female raping a male. While rape is a by now generic thing to appear in books, especially fantasy not something that I really condone if, especially if it doesn't aid the story and is just there to have some edge in the story thus mocking the gruesome reality of rape , having a woman raping a man is pretty much unheard of. I did see that as something that was really well thought out in this case, as if there's anything a woman would rape for, it's revenge.
I think more than anything else, and Bobby says this quite clearly, it's this experience that made him understand why Caz is so trapped and tarnished by hell. He of course gets caught by Eligor and tortured in numerous inventive ways until he gets to flee after making a deal: the feather for Caz.
Yes, it's not just you, it IS a stupid idea. It gets even worse later on. I kinda grew to like that weird misunderstood dude. By the time you get to like him you're not sure whether he got killed or not, so don't start closing him into your heart too soon. He did not see it coming. I mean, he thought Eligor would cheat him once, but not twice.
Everyone bloody knows you have to double check deals with demons. As such, I was soooooo disappointed. You just read a very long agonizing story of Bobby going to hell trying to get the damsel only to not get the damsel and lose the feather, who said damsel had risked her life for in the first place. What the everliving fuck. He does however make this wonderful connection that if an angel is missing a feather, maybe Eligor misses something too: like a horn. By this point I'm surprised that he even thought that far.
But yeah, so that's where you're left. Bobby with no feather, no caz but a demon horn to hunt down and expose one of the highest angels there are. And I'm not saying I don't enjoy someone risking their life for love, or their very soul, but this is just ugh.
Every now and then you have these intermezzos where he remembers his wonderful sexy times with her view spoiler [ actually, they get it on in hell, too. And Bobby in the whole of this thing just gets nothing done, other than get himself beaten and defiled. So yeah, that's the reason for my two stars. I just couldn't enjoy it. For the most part, I think this one person POV of one person and one person only goes against Williams's strength in writing.
I just genuinely don't like Bobby. In his other stories you often have someone you can relate to, but this time around I just don't feel any connection with Bobby. If anything, I feel a bit for Caz, since Bobby just won't bloody listen to her. I even feel more for Eligor, since he at least shows some cunning and interesting aspects of hell power. Even Riprash, Bobby's unlikely friend in hell, is more intriguing than Bobby.
Another thing that annoyed me to no end were the references he made. Maybe it's because I'm not American, maybe it's because I just don't seem to be on the same wavelength as Bobby, but I only about understood half of his references. First of all, just like in the first book, Bobby HAS to make some kind of metaphor.
He talks about thing A in a very roundabout complex way - which is usually just fine - and then has to make some kind of metaphor or find some other kind of association to explain things. About the best thing I found is that he used the word decollete and then saying it means cleavage just to use another French word somewhere later and not explaining it I don't care since I understand French.
Yet, there are a gazillion references to places and things in the States which I don't understand at all, but well, usually you got the picture by the first description anyway, so it wasn't too bad.
Let us know if everything with the new limit works as intended. To upload a file just follow these simple steps:. Benefits of using Zippyshare:.
You can then select photos, audio, video, documents or anything else you want to send. The maximum file size is MB. You will see the progress of the file transfer. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Angel Bobby Dollar sets out to rescue his girlfriend Casimira, who is being held hostage in the netherworld by the demon Eligor, while also trying to elude an undead psychopath named Smyler.
There are no reviews yet. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Read Online Download. Great book, Happy Hour in Hell pdf is enough to raise the goose bumps alone. Add a review Your Rating: Your Comment:.
0コメント