An insightful book for the more mature with deep and helpful messages that hit home.
Plot
Our narrator from The Devil's Hunting Grounds returns, and so does his Guardian, Lamiel. Sent to Earth to inconspicuously observe the day-to-day lives of humans, Lamiel is to be the narrator's house-guest. However, it's not altogether pleasant for our narrator when he finds himself a new arrival in The Place Down Under (and it's not Australia, either) with not a hope of a Celestial visa, no Guardian, and a Beginner's Guide to Hell as company.
Morality
The narrator is led to believe by trickery and flattery that he ought to do something, when in fact that "something" is betraying a close friend, which is what lands him in Hell. Of course, the Powers who run Hell are anti-God, anti-Christian, and, more specifically, anti-Church. Unlike its predecessor, this book deals with people who do not even want to get to Heaven, but would rather choose Hell.
Spiritual Content
This book, like the rest of the trilogy, are all spiritually oriented and all have to do with the Christian faith. Hell instead of Purgatory is the destination here, and the self-obsessed Powers speak very highly of the one they delicately call "His Eminence", who is violently opposed to the Church, and hardly dare to speak the name of The Enemy.
Throughout the first part of the book, Lamiel gives advice and reproofs which are extremely helpful to consider and think about. Even the remarks of the demonic Powers are worth mulling over.
Violence
None.
Drug and Alcohol Content
A mention or two of beer being consumed, but nothing more.
Sexual Content
While in Hell, our narrator attends a performance at his hotel, where scantily-clad women prance around and sing songs with suggestive lyrics. Very suggestive. Toward the end of the program, the narrator is almost seduced by a woman, but he flees before anything happens. Earlier in the book that same woman seems to take delight in showing off her worldly charms.
Crude or Profane Language or Content
None.
Conclusion
Though seasoned with a little less satirical humor than is found in the previous book of this trilogy, "Cold War in Hell" is a very interesting and insightful book that is well worth the reading. Though some have said that Blamires misleads readers by telling them that those in Hell who try to get out could, indeed, do just that, he replies in his Foreward to the 1984 Edition that this was a bit of irony on his part, because no inhabitant of Hell is capable of trying or sincerely wanting to leave Hell.
I would suggest that this book is probably not best suited for the young in Christ. However, for the more mature reader this book will be a fun, challenging thought experiment.
This review is brought to you by Jeanne.
