To Reign In Hell by Steven Brust

[james_davis_nicoll]

Yaweh's ambitious construction project raises serious labour relations issues.

To Reign In Hell by Steven Brust

Comments

[neowolf2]

Obviously in this universe trousers caused horses, not vice versa.

[patrick_morris_miller]

Form follows function.

[bolindbergh]

I'm confident that south of the border, you could find any number of people willing to argue that the ineluctable masculinity of gods and angels demands that they wear ineluctably masculine clothes, i.e. trousers.

[rpresser]

Why isn't the verb "to eluct" used more?

[neowolf2]

The word I miss is "unexampled".

[roseembolism]

Hmm. Existence being a bubble of stability inside a sea of chaos is basically the origin of Existence in the ttrpg Exalted. Except the fae creatures that exist outside reality really hate how there gods stabilized and extended the realm's existence.

[patrick_morris_miller]

It's also not terribly far from the setup in Jack L. Chalker's Soul Rider pentalogy (is that the word?).

[dagibbs]

_To Reign in Hell_ is, I think, the first ever book that I started and didn't finish. So, defnitely not my thing, either.

[jbwoodford]

I think he was consciously trying to emulate Roger Zelazny, particularly as in Lord of Light. Even though I enjoyed bits of it, the book was too much of a slow-motion train wreck for me to want to reread.

[jsburbidge]

I thought it interesting and ambitious, and having the particular virtue that it makes both Satan (plus Lucifer) and Yahweh more sympathetic than Milton does (and I say that as a firm admirer of Milton: a good example of how you can be a great genius and nevertheless entirely wrong about the world). But 8 can't say I've been regularly inclined to reread it.

And yes, it reads like a homage to Zelazny - perhaps more Jack of Shadows than Lord of Light.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe Brust meant 'pants' in the British sense. Satan is wearing lacy undies! 😂

-Awesome Aud