James Nicoll Reviews

Steven Brust’s 1984 To Reign in Hell is a stand-alone fantasy novel set in the Christian shared universe.

Existence is a sea of chaos, in which anything might appear… briefly, before dissolving. When the firstborn angels — Yaweh, Satan, Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Leviathan and Belial — manifested, they possessed a will to live and the power to fend off the chaos.

Heaven was their refuge, an artificial realm of stable laws safe from corrosive chaos. However, Heaven was flawed.

Despite their best efforts, chaos can break into Heaven. These destructive incursions are called Waves. The Firstborn managed to fend off the Waves. They even managed to use the Waves to create beings much like the Firstborn: archangels and angels. Nevertheless, Waves are rightly feared.

Yaweh proposes a solution. The hosts of Heaven will create a new realm, one whose walls are utterly impervious to chaos. Once this brave new world is in place, Waves will be relegated to the past.

There is just one small catch. Statistical analysis suggests about a thousand angels will die creating Earth. Should the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Yaweh is convinced the answer is yes, but Satan, charged with securing universal support for the plan, has his doubts.

Satan’s qualms are Abdiel’s opportunity. All Abdiel needs to do is convince Yaweh that Satan is fomenting dissent or even rebellion, and Satan’s rank could be Abdiel’s. this task proves astonishingly easy. Yaweh may be extraordinarily powerful, but Yaweh is also increasingly paranoid.

At first, lies are sufficient. Keeping Satan and Yaweh from comparing notes proves increasingly difficult, demanding increasingly heinous crimes from Abdiel. Having gone as far as he has, Abdiel sees no choice but to go farther. The alternative would be to have his crimes exposed and to face punishment.

Heaven divides into two hostile camps, each convinced the other guilty of terrible transgressions. War is inevitable.

~oOo~

To Reign in Hell falls into a special set of Brust novels, the ones I have not reread¹. To Reign in Hell (1984), The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars (1987), Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille (1990), and Freedom & Necessity, coauthored with Emma Bull (1997). Hilariously, someone commissioned reviews of three of those and I am seriously considering tossing in the fourth as a freebie.

Reign isn’t a bad novel, it’s just not my thing².

I have not read Milton³, which I suspect means I am missing a lot of subtext here. I mean, there’s lots of material that draws on Milton that I’ve encountered but were, for example, the Lucifer TV show or Harvey Comics’ Hot Stuff faithful renditions?

Brust tells much of the story as a series of conversations. This is a perfectly valid choice, certainly superior to Marvel’s narrative by face-punching, but for some reason I found it hard to stay focused on the text. I wonder if this wouldn’t be something I would appreciate more as a full-cast radio play?

Another issue I had was that the characters are idiots, which in retrospect may have been unfair. All that was needed to avoid a civil war was for Satan and Yaweh to speak face to face, and for Yaweh to be able to admit error. Well, and for someone to see a viable third alternative to ​“force the entire host to undertake dangerous work” versus ​“all die, O the embarrassment.” Abdiel worked very hard to make sure the first didn’t happen, lots of people double-down rather than admit mistakes, and it can be surprising difficult when choosing between disappointing alternatives to realize they may not be the only choices.

So, I didn’t enjoy this much in May 1985 (having bought it fresh off the press, or at least as soon as it got to Kitchener), and I didn’t enjoy it much a couple of days ago when I read the arc Tor was kind enough to send me. However, the reasons I didn’t like it aren’t because of flaws in the book; it’s just that what Brust wanted to do isn’t my jam. It might be yours.

To Reign in Hell is available here (Tor Books), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Bookshop UK), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here.

1: It might be hard to tell from the impending reviews of Brust books but I do (or at least did) like his books, generally speaking. I stopped reading the Jhereg books, but I have no idea why. There’s nothing I can point to as the reason.

2: Best to tuck my stupidest issue down in the footnotes: 

[Satan] put the emerald around his neck and found his pants. 

Why do the Firstborn have trousers? Legs, ok, legs are just a random feature that humans have in common with the first Firstborn because in this fictional universe, they used their own template for ours. Trousers are clothes invented by people who ride horses. Horses don’t show up in this narrative until the very end of the book.

3: For that matter, I haven’t read or heard the full Christian Bible. I am old enough that there was daily (Protestant) Bible reading in (functionally Protestant) public school, but there was never enough time to get through the whole thing, and they always started over at the beginning of the school year. To this day, I don’t know if Jesus gets away from the Romans. No spoilers, please. I might want to see the movie.