Glen Duncan

I, Lucifer

Cams Campbell

Well, I got as far as p208, just after all the waffle about the two Germans, and decided enough was enough. 

Nobody can say I didn't try. It was simply not an enjoyable novel.

I agree with what others have said about the short story and the padding. The story itself could have been told in a dozen pages if the padding were removed. That said, the padding is clearly included to give an insight into the character of Lucifer but to my mind it goes way over the top. 

I may read the last couple of pages to see how it ends.

Marks out of 10? 

Overall I'd give it 1.

Finally, the Other Side of the Story

Hannah Derzanovich

2 1/2 stars.

I'm going to say right here that this rating is a bit skewed because it wasn't until halfway through the book that I realized I'd begun it with the wrong expectations. Unfortunately, I hadn't enjoyed what I'd read up to that point to start over again. (I was recommended this book on the basis that I'd liked Good Omens and I kept expecting a more light-hearted tone for 100+ pages.)

Now, I'm certain this book is for some people out there, it just wasn't for ME. My main problem was the sheer volume of prose. I can appreciate prose! I love a good metaphor... but when every single sentence inspires three pages of plotless comparisons, I get a little exhausted. 
You know what Eden was? I'll tell you. Edenic. Susurrating trees reached out fingers of frothy foliage to catch the languid landings of turquoise birds. Opalescent streams exhaled the sweet scene of sewage-free water. Red and silver fish jeweled obsidian meres. Succulent grass appeared and let green really show itself. (That grass and that green, they were made for each other.)
And that's not even the full paragraph. It keeps going! Granted, Lucifer chalks it all up to the mind of the man he's possessing, Declan Gunn, who's a failed author with a suspiciously similar flaw. But... eventually overplayed trope turns into the real thing and it's tiring to struggle through. This 272 page book took me days to finish when a book of equal length should only take 2 sittings.

I enjoyed the characters and premise, but overall the execution let me down immensely.

Emmett

Veronica Shuttleworth

Aphrodite bartels

The Prince of Darkness has been given one last chance: he will be readmitted to the company of his fellow angels if he agrees to live out a human life. Highly sceptical (naturally), the Old Deal-maker negotiates a trial period - a summer holiday in a human body, with all the delights of the flesh. The body, though, turns out to be that of Declan Gunn, a depressed writer living in Clerkenwell, interrupted mid-suicide. Making the best of a bad situation, Luce himself takes to writing - to explain, to strip back the Biblical spin, to help us see the whole thing from his point of view. And to knock that Jesus off his perch. Beset by distractions, miscalculations and all the natural shocks that flesh is heir to, Lucifer slowly begins to learn what it's like to be us. Glen Duncan's brilliantly written new novel is an investigation of the world of the senses - the seductiveness of evil, and the affection which keeps us human.

I, Lucifer

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