I guess this is more aptly described as a novella than a book, as I finished it in less than an hour. The premise is that a devout Mormon dies and goes to hell, where he is informed that Zoroastrianism is the one true religion, and that he is trapped in a labyrinth of randomly generated books (based on the Library of Babel by Borges) until he finds one that contains the story of his life. It’s an interesting premise, but I found the book itself very dull. The writing style is overly simplistic. There’s a lot of time spent establishing exact details of how Hell functions, like that if you die you come back to life the next day, you can order any food but nothing inedible, etc. I’m not against worldbuilding, but these details were boring and didn’t serve thematic purpose. They also didn’t tie into the book’s stated inspirations for its setting- Zoroastrianism and the Library of Babel. It all had a modern, bureaucratic feel that clashed with it. Also, why even invoke Zoroastrianism if you’re not going to engage with the actual religion? The book isn’t actually set in “Zoroastrian hell”, it really has nothing to do with Zoroastrianism except for the mention of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman (the central mythological figures) at the beginning. As someone who is a nerd about religious history and has a genuine interest in Zoroastrianism, I was very disappointed by this. However, I did think it genuinely engaged with the Library of Babel story, which I appreciated. Borges’ stories are great but they lack plot and emotional depth, which opens up a lot of possibilities for writers to combine his interesting concepts with those elements. I just wish it was executed better.
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The story explored themes of eternity, love and loss; but it was hard to connect with these because the characters and relationships were flatter than cardboard. And the simplistic writing style didn’t help either. It also wasn’t saying anything that original or interesting. I found out about this book because it was recommended in a reddit thread for novels exploring religion. And it did a pretty poor job of genuinely engaging with religion and belief, except for creating an ironic scenario.
by moss42069