Hell Is...

I just finished reading a book which, throughout, references Dante's Inferno.

In fact, at one point, The Gargoyle (by Andrew Davidson) not only references the various circles of hell which Dante describes, but the main character is forced to cross some of them.

I would not be lying if I said that it was a very detailed book. Lots of information which obviously came from lots and lots of research. And I liked that. Mostly.

The amount of detail in recovery after a serious burn was incredible (if a bit gross). The detail that went into describing 13th-century book making was kind of cool. The fact that the book was 500+ pages long... well... that was good, I guess, since he needed to fit all of the information in.

But at times it just got too freakin' dense. It got to the point where the story kind of got lost in the details - for me, at least.

And some of those details were, in fact, in hell. I found myself feeling like I should stop reading this book and pick up Dante, instead. Which, on the one hand is kind of cool (I don't know that I've ever really thought about reading any Dante, before), but it was kind of hard to get excited about the book I was reading when I was feeling like I needed to go do research, first.

I'm looking forward to going to my book club on Monday night to see what everyone else thought of the book. But I'm also looking forward to the fact that tonight I'm watching bad TV where no real thought is required.

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p.s. - In response to the comment on the last post - I do also believe that Hell would be having to wear blue spandex - especially with the beak and claw-foot boots of the Blue Falcon. The cape, though... that might be cool.