I would have understood a switch between characters but I’m not sure why the person switch as well. It’s two short stories and an epilogue-the first short story is 1st person from Belimai, a ‘Prodigal’ (basically a demon-person), and then the second is suddenly switched into 3rd person from Harper (the Inquisition officer), and the epilogue is back to 1st person Belimai. Maybe she’s got one written and I can’t find it, but it would be super interesting. Even something taking place at the time that demons left Hell, just something like that, because the backstory is actually more interesting than the mystery plots that the character deal with. It’s immersive in the best way.īecause so many cool things are mentioned as a brief or almost nonchalant aside (like the whole hell-is-empty-demons-are-now-people thing) this almost feels like a set of side stories to a much larger world/story, and I would frankly love to see something more from the same universe. Hale’s world-building in general is very strong and folded in really easily to the narrative (it’s like that in Lord of the White Hell, too, nothing ever feels like just exposition) so you learn things or can infer them easily without being talked down to or having to digest huge awkward lumps of explanation. Probably the strongest thing about the book is the world-building.

Nevertheless, it’s still interesting and done well, and the characters are very interesting too. It’s a fantasy/sci-fi/steampunk where the two characters happen to be gay and get with each other during the course of events, and it really affects very little of anything. I wouldn’t really call it a gay romance, or even a romance at all. Also the law enforcement is the church, called the Inquisition, so the ‘cop’ character is actually more like a priest who does investigations, law and punishments are very church-jargon related, things like that. So now hell is empty, as almost a very minor aside to the story, and there are all these people around who are descended from demons, who look different and have abilities, called Prodigals. fantasy mild-steampunk religion story, but not religion as in that it’s about religion, but that some of the basis for it is that all demons left hell a couple centuries back in exchange for the promise of redemption for their future generations, and sort of.mixed with people. Heard about this book forever ago and then just.never read it? I think I didn’t know how to find it. Starting with three reviews here! Wicked Gentlemen, and the Lord of the White Hell, which came in two books and I am going to review as two books because they are kind of different from each other and I gave them different ratings. A bunch of people said they enjoy my book reviews/recs, so I’ll try to do them more often.

Wicked gentlemen by ginn hale