'To Reign In Hell' by Steven Brust

After enjoying The Revolt of the Angels (1914) by Anatole France, I thought I would read some more books that play around with myth of the War in Heaven from Paradise Lost (1667) and Judeo-Christian mythology. The Internet recommended To Reign In Hell (1984) by Steven Brust.

Brust's book is a fantasy novel set in Heaven, before the creation of Earth. Brust's Yaweh is not omniscient or omnipotent; he is the first of the Firstborn Angels, not a god. Heaven is a fragile island in a sea of chaos; Heaven's inhabitants are constantly worried about the chaos beyond the walls, which threatens to destroy them all. Yaweh comes up with a plan - the creation of Earth - to save the angels from chaos, but it transpires that many angels will have to die to carry out the plan. Doubts spread. 

The ideas in the novel have a lot of promise, but the execution is so irritating and disappointing. It feels like an early draft, an unripe fruit, a story born too premature from Brust's mind-womb.

TRIH is a fantasy novel with a map

The plot is carried along by Big Misunderstandings and Communication Failures. The war could have been avoided if the important characters actually spoke to each other a little bit more. Without speaking to Satan, Yaweh decides that his best friend is definitely out to get him. Without speaking to Yaweh, Lucifer & Co decide that their good friend is definitely out to get them (Lucifer and Satan are separate characters). As the misunderstandings build up, the plot becomes irritatingly farcical.

The characters are not developed. This review compares TRIH to a high school drama:

'Yaweh, Satan, Lucifer and Lilith are the cool student council kids of the book. The archangel Michael is the big, dumb jock who just does what the cool kids tell him to. Raphael is the nice, pretty chick who goes along with Yaweh because she doesn't know what else to do. Mephistopheles is that creepy, nerdy kid who listens in on everyone's conversations and knows way too much. And so on...

Yaweh declares himself student council president ("Lord of Lords"), which ticks off the other cool kids. Raphael and Michael go along with it, even though Michael really wants to punch Yaweh in the face. And Lucifer, Lilith and Satan decide Yaweh is a big jerk and they're going to fight him.'

Add to this underdevelopment the fact that some of the characters have irritating gimmicks. Beelzebub is a golden retriever who speaks in Elizabethan English for no reason ("Methinks all is not well, milord."). Ariel is an owl who speaks in rhymes ("O mighty one of the salty sea, word has come you've need of me."). Harut speaks like an American waitress ("Sure, honey."). It often feels like Brust is trying very hard to be hilarious.

The dialogue is irritating: it is too simple and casual for the subject matter and setting. Like the poor character development and plot progression, it makes the story feel like a high school drama:

"What kind of get-together, Harut?"

"Dunno. But everybody is supposed to show up."

"Hmmmm. What about you?"

"I'll be with Leviathan."

"I see."

"Afternoon, Mephistopheles."

"So long, Harut."

The scenes are irritatingly short. When reading, our mind converts the words we read into a movie in our heads, sort of. TRIH switches between POV characters too frequently. For sake of argument, assume that a page of the book would be 1 minute of screen time in an adaptation. Chapter 12 of TRIH is 12.5 pages long. Imagine how irritating all these transitions would be; imagine if Game of Thrones switched between characters this frequently:

Scene 1: Lucifer, Lilith, Asmodia, Michael & Harut; 3 pages, 3 minutes

Scene 2: Beelzebub & Mephistopheles chat; 1 page, 1 minute.

Scene 3: Abdiel & Gabriel; ⅓ page, 20 seconds

Scene 4: Gabriel & Mephistopheles; 1 page, 1 minute

Scene 4: Beelzebub, Satan, Lucifer, Lilith, Asmodai & Michael; 3⅓ pages, 3 minutes 20 seconds

Scene 5: Kyriel & Sith; 1⅓ pages, 1 minute 20 seconds

Scene 6: Yaweh; 1/2 page, 30 seconds

Scene 7: Satan & Beelzebub; ½ page, 30 seconds

Scene 8: Abdiel & Gabriel; 1½ pages, 1 minute 30 seconds

Eight scene transitions in 12 minutes 30 seconds. This novel is so irritating.

Despite all this, I did manage to finish the novel. All the way to the end, I was tempted to give up. But I was curious where Brust would go with it; there are moments in the novel which suggest that if it had been redrafted a few more times, been left to ripen, been kept in Brust's mind-womb for a bit longer, it could have been spectacular. I would love a novel which retells the War in Heaven myth as the story of Heaven's transition from a quasi-egalitarian society to a military dictatorship, but where both sides are treated sympathetically: Yaweh the well-meaning tyrant, and Satan/Lucifer the well-meaning rebel.

"We are tyrants. That was what was so hard to come to terms with. We don't wish to be, but to do what we have to do, we must tell, not ask. And to tell the angels to do something, we must be ready to back up our words with force... I had to either abandon the Plan or become a tyrant." - Yaweh, page 203

"What I mean is this: I have decided to oppose Yaweh's plan. I think he's wrong, and dangerous, and the events of today have proven it. I mean to oppose him. I wish to see him cast down from his Palace, and I wish to see him no longer able to force his will on me, or the hosts of angels who are now under his dominion." - Lucifer, page 186

TRIH could have been great, but there is too much wrong with it. At best, it is worth reading as an interesting failure. For enjoyment, Anatole France's The Revolt of the Angels is more successful and enjoyable, and Milton's Paradise Lost is one of the best things ever written.

'The Knight of the Swords' by Michael Moorcock

Last night I read The Knight of the Swords (1971), the first book in the Corum series, and the first winner of the British Fantasy Award. I read it in one sitting (my edition is only 143 pages): it entertained me enough that I wanted to keep going, but it was trashy enough that I thought I wouldn't return to it if I didn't finish it that night.

They don't make 'em like they used to.

Corum is a prince of the Vadhagh (basically Tolkienesque elves), who lives with his immediate family in the isolated Castle Erorn. His father asks him to visit the other Vadhagh castles because they haven't heard from them for a long time. Corum finds the castles destroyed, and learns that a new species, humans, are exterminating the Vadhagh. He rushes home to warn his family, but is too late: Corum is the last of the Vadhagh, and he vows revenge against the evil human race.

Cue revenge-driven odyssey featuring magic, sword fights, flying mounts, a sinister sorcerer, demons, ancient artifacts, a castle siege, a damsel in distress, etc, and a confrontation with Duke Arioch, Lord of Hell, Noble of the Realm of Chaos, the Knight of the Swords.

This is Moorcock playing around with fantasy tropes: humans are the genocidal orcish baddies destroying the peaceful elven world; the hero learns that Not All Humans Are Bad, unlike the heroes of older fantasy novels, who never even consider that maybe Not All Goblins/Orcs/Trolls/Uruk-Hai/etc Are Bad. It's fun. It's silly. It's trashy. It's entertaining. It's a quick read. It's a bit different. It's not Moorcock's best, and it's not Moorcock's worst. I might read the sequels.

'The Revolt of the Angels' by Anatole France

In 1921, Anatole France was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1922, the Roman Catholic Church added all of his books to its Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Prohibited Books Index), which was only abolished in 1966. Nowadays, Anatole France is quite unknown in the English-speaking world: of his many books, only two are in print in English: The Gods Will Have Blood (1912), published by Penguin Classics, and The Revolt of the Angels (1914), published by Dover Thrift in 2015. Reading the latter, it becomes obvious why the church banned France's work.

"I am about to reveal to you a secret on which hangs the fate of the Universe. In rebellion against him who you hold to be creator of all things visible and invisible, I am preparing the Revolt of the Angels."

TROTA has a slow opening: we are given the history of a French family and their library, and a mystery of missing books. It is not until chapter 10, page 36 of 165, that the story actually gets going. Maurice d'Esparvieu's guardian angel has been stealing books and educating himself. The angel has studied the Bible and the Talmud, and the scholarship surrounding them; has "devoured the works of theologians, philosophers, physicists, geologists, and naturalists"; has read and re-read Lucretius; and has concluded that God is a lying tyrant. Reaching this conclusion, and grasping the scale of the deception, turns Arcade into a revolutionist.

"I believe in the God of the Jews and the Christians. But I deny that he created the world; at the most he organised but an inferior part of it, and all that he touched bears the mark of his rough and unforeseeing touch. I do not think he is either eternal or infinite, for it is absurd to conceive of a being who is not bounded by space or time. I believe him limited, even very limited. I no longer believe him to be the only God. For a long time he did not believe it himself; in the beginning he was a polytheist; later, his pride and the flattery of his worshipers made him a monotheist. His ideas have little connection; He is less powerful than he is thought to be. And, to speak candidly, he is not so much a God as a vain and ignorant demiurge. Those who, like myself, know his true nature, call him Ialdabaoth."

The angel abandons his post as Maurice's guardian to begin his new life as a rebel. He meets other fallen angels to organize a second revolt against God. They plan to smuggle propaganda into Heaven, to spread knowledge of evolution and cosmology among the loyal angels ("It is certainly no light task, because the Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and there is no public opinion in it."). They purchase weapons, make bombs, and ready themselves for all-out war with Heaven ("we shall carry war into the heavens, where we shall establish a peaceful democracy"). Four middle chapters tell the history of Heaven and Earth from a fallen angel perspective, with the rise of Christianity being a very negative event ("The Christians burnt books, overthrew temples, set fire to the towns, and carried out their ravages as far as the deserts.").

One can see why the Catholic Church banned France's work.

I enjoyed this book a lot, but then I can sympathize with Arcade. Reading the Bible made me respect it as literature - at its best, very beautiful literature - but the gaping plot chasms and inconsistencies were too infuriating to take it seriously as history or cosmology. I have also read and re-read Lucretius. I have read and written a bit about the polytheistic origins of the Bible. It probably also helps that I am quite a fan of Milton's Paradise Lost, which is a big influence on TROTA, and of Christopher Hitchens, who compared monotheistic beliefs to totalitarianism.

Studying the Bible also drew me towards Gnosticism, although I have not read as much about it as I would like. In the early centuries of the Common Era, Christianity spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire, mainly amongst illiterate non-Jews who had little to no knowledge of the Jewish scriptures that their new faith was supposed to be concluding. When more Christians got access to these scriptures, they were a tad surprised at they found. Why was the loving God of love, as represented by Jesus, being such a prick? Why was he advocating and committing genocide? Why had he not fixed the world, if he was supposedly all-powerful? Why was there so much evil in the world?

Gnosticism resolved these plot holes. The Jewish God was insane, had limited power over the material world, and wrongly believed himself to be the One True God (and was rather insecure about this). The true God, represented by Jesus, was immaterial and had no power over the material world, ruled by the Jewish God and his angels. The Gnostics gave the insane god the name Ialdabaoth. It's a fun mythology; I should read its scriptures sometime. Orthodox Christians persecuted the shit out of the Gnostics after the Council of Nicaea; in 1208, Pope Innocent III declared a crusade against a surviving group of Gnostic Christians - the Cathars - found living in France, who were then annihilated.

Gnostic digression over: back to TROTA. Overall, the novel is very good. There is a sometimes bleak, sometimes cheeky humor throughout. After the slow beginning, the story advances at a decent pace. I thought the final chapter was superb. My only gripe is that the stories of the human characters (Maurice's family and associates) are not as interesting as the growing angel rebellion: I found myself wanting to skip the human sections, even though these provided most of the cheeky humor. I recommend this novel, and would read more of Anatole France's work.