Authors: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Rating: 3.5/5

Inside Jacket Snippet: ‘… Partnering up with legendary poet and suicide Sylvia Plath, Carpenter is a modern-day Christ, who intends to harrow hell and free the damned.’

Comments: The book is a decent follow up to the first Infernoland, but at times it reads more like a revised edition and not really a part 2. The same levels of hell are visited and the same demon characters return for a continued conversation with Carpenter. So it’s a fine and entertaining read, but not great. The book seemed over rationalised and maybe over-thought. It might have been more fun to have the virtuous Pagans living beside virtuous Aliens. (Just because you’re from another star system doesn’t excuse you.)  

Or since time is more fluid include distant future sinners; robots, dna hackers, time-line junkies, Nintendo Wii cheaters, black hole builders, etc…

Since the book deals with the stereotyped version of hell, maybe Carpenter could next go to a stereotyped out-dated version of heaven and find out some of the angels are a bit annoying. They really sit around all day taunting the demons and cheering when someone leaves? That could be boring after a few thousand years.

Overall a short/fast book that is fun to read.

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