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4.0 out of 5 stars
Letters from Hades, by Jeffrey Thomas, April 29 2004
If you have a decent pain-threshold, Hell might not be such a bad place. According to Jeffrey Thomas's new book, "Letters from Hades", it's kinda like life. You get a job you hate, you pay rent, you watch out for demons who might for whatever reason imprison you in the torture plants until they're done with you. Just like the real world. There are countless author interpretations of what Hell might be but I think Jeffrey Thomas's is one of the most interesting and definitely the only one I've ever seen that I might not mind being sent to. Letters From Hades reminded me a lot of Gene Wolf's Shadow of the Torturer with a bit of Herman Hesse's Siddhartha thrown in. What starts as a story about life in Hell becomes a travelogue as the narrator must leave school and set out to make his place in his new world. We follow him on his journey which leads him to the immense city of Oblivion where he begins his new life. Jeffrey Thomas does a wonderful job of bringing us into this guy's life, making us see him as a person, not a character (however, throwing bits of "writer" info like his desire to be published, his hopes and plans once he finds Oblivion is home to a small press publisher in hell, and talk of his pile of rejection letters, other writers will see him as a writer first, then a person, and lastly a character), and Hell is no longer the backdrop for a story, its a complete world. We see the lava skies, the ash covered ground. We can almost feel the air closing in around us with Hell's heat. I'd read reviews of his book Punktown where his skill in bringing a setting to life was praised up one side and down the other. Now I see it was praise well-deserved. Despite its pace and how long it takes to get to what we eventually see is the "real" story, Letters from Hades is an adventure story, one you won't soon forget as the story stays with you long after you put down the book. Inspired by his short story "Coffee Break", Thomas has taken that story to a whole new level, creating a story that I can only imagine encompassed his entire life during the writing. This is one a writer becomes obsessed with, one they think about all day and night and can't wait to get the world out of their way so they can sit down and work. This is a horror novel any writer would be more than happy to put their name to. Great job, and now I'm definitely going to see what else from him I can get my hands on.
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