City Infernal
By Edward Lee
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
When Cassie's twin sister, Lissa, commits suicide, Cassie discovers she can travel to Hell to retrieve her sister's soul. Cassie thought she knew all about the Hell of legend, but finds Hell has evolved over the millennia into a bustling city full of the damned with looming skyscrapers, crowded streets, systemized evil, and atrocity as the status quo.
Welcome to the Mephistopolis
Hell is a city.
It stretches, literally, without end–a labyrinth of smoke and waking nightmare. Just as endlessly, sewer grates belch flame from the sulphur fires that have raged beneath the streets for millennia. Clock towers spire in every district, by public law, but their faces have no hands; time is not measured here in seconds or hours but in atrocity and despair. In the center of this morass of stone and smoke and butchery and horror stands the 666-floor Mephisto Building, where Gargoyles prowl the wind-blown ledges and from whose highest garrets the innocent are hung from gibbets and left to rot for eons. The lone occupant of the very top floor looks down upon his dominion and smiles a smile that is brighter than a thousand suns. Here, yes, everyone is dead yet everyone lives forever.
Welcome to the Mephistopolis.
Welcome to the city of Hell.
Welcome.
Edward Lee
Edward Lee is the author of Smoke & Pickles; chef/owner of 610 Magnolia, MilkWood, and Whiskey Dry in Louisville, Kentucky; and culinary director of Succotash in National Harbor, Maryland, and Penn Quarter, Washington, DC. He appears frequently in print and on television, including earning an Emmy nomination for his role in the Emmy Award–winning series The Mind of a Chef. Most recently, he wrote and hosted the feature documentary Fermented. He lives in Louisville and Washington, DC, and you can find him on Instagram and Twitter @chefedwardlee.
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Reviews for City Infernal
100 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5With the great scenes and small details of Hell's streets, this has become my favorite of this series. As mush as I love the Infernal series, Edward Lee's redneck horror and his few sci-fi books are my favorite works of his above this particular work. That isn't to talk this book down, I only state this because I've read a lot of Edward Lee!This book knocked my socks off the way any good fantastical tale should. While exploring the fallen Morning Star's efforts at generating power and control in the Mephistopheles the reader is introduced into a dimension where physics are changed and not even the screams of a single damned soul is gone to waste.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A trip into Hell. Lee imagines Hell as a sprawling city that has been growing for 5000 years. It is a very easy read; however, this being a book written by Lee and a horror, there are quite a few disturbing scenes.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As the first novel by Lee that I read, I will have to say that he does just as good as all of his short stories. It's something to very much enjoy and seek out. I know that I will be seeking out some of this other books.This one involves Cassie, a goth teenager from DC with a twin sister who committed suicide. In their escape from DC and the tragedy there, Cassie and her father unknowingly move to a house on a Deadpass, a place where the dead can pass between the real world and Hell. Cassie discovers this out at the same time that she realizes that she has unknown powers that allow her to travel to Hell. Wanting forgiveness and understanding from her sister, Cassie joins up with three souls trapped in Hell and visits the city of Hell, an city that evolved at the same speed as humans in the real world.Now that might sound like a lot of co-incidence and maybe too much to take but it really doesn't come across quite that bad in the novel. It all flows and makes sense. But if you are afraid of being overwhelmed, then there is another reason to not read this book: it supplies horror on top of horror, enough to be quite graphic. Considering that they are visiting Hell and all of its methods of tortures, it only makes sense. The only thing that I didn't really like about this book is all the deus ex machina. There were too many incidents of a power or ability being presented just as it was needed. I understand that Lee was setting up many of the rules as to how Hell operates but it came across as too convenient. The real story though is Cassie's growth from an ignored teen through depression and then into acceptance of who she can be. And that is done brilliantly.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I know what I am supposed to write in criticism of this book, which I rated one star to: Ooooooh, I was soooooo shocked! It was so horrifying!! Golly gee, what a bizarre and brutal place Hell is!!!
The truth is, I wasn't shocked, I wasn't horrified, I wasn't offended: I was just bored. To paraphrase Iggy Pop......I was the Chairman of the Bored when I read this book.
One good thing learned from this experiment: do not assume that you will like any horror genre book; read all the reviews, even the ones with spoilers before reading. I'm getting pretty good now at cutting out the deadwood while searching for a book and I won't make this mistake again. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This isn't Dante's Inferno! Edward Lee hits hard with explicit descriptions of the monsters and sights and scenes in Hell. The story is about twin sisters--Cassie enters Hell to find Lissa, who committed suicide. Cassie is befriended by 3 other punky suicide victims, who become her tour guides through the gross and gory city. I really enjoyed Lee's imaginative monsters and his writing is a quick, easy read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lee's new vision of hell as a huge metropolis is very creative--and believable. Though I would've liked a bit more character development on Cassie and her new friends, the City itself is the central and main figure of this story. It makes you hungry for the sequel. Highly recommended!