God's Demon

Heaven and Hell books are a semi-popular fantasy genre. My pick for one of the more exciting books is God's Demon by Wayne Barlowe. Lucifer, rather than being that despicable guy everyone loves to knock as being the evil force is good. He loses the battle for heaven and gets kicked out of heaven and into hell, then dies. Well, all the fallen angels kind of go psychotic except for fallen angel Sargatanas who doesn't want to play at being a demon anymore. After being separated from God and heaven for countless eons, he decides to mount a revolt against Lucifer's regent, Beelzebub, in a desperate attempt to get back to Heaven.God's Demon is an interesting thing and it does something completely new with the classic heaven and hell conventions. It poses the question: can evil find redemption? Those who like military fiction, action, heroes, and just thrilling reads will find it hard to put this book down.

Similar Recommendations

There are a few other interesting books that fictionalize the whole Heaven and Hell, Angels and Demons, God and Satan dichotomies. Probably the best written one I can recommend is Mark J. Ferrari's The Book of Joby. A marvelous (and long!) book about a contest between God and Lucifer with some poor schmuck (Joby) who's used as the experiment. Yes, anyone who has studied the bible will see the connections between Joby and Job. I'm just glad I'm not that poor schmuck.

For one of those afterlife gone completely to hell stories, where (one) of the main characters dies and finds out the afterlife is really shitty place to go, a place where new souls are basically hunted down and fed to some dark monstrous god, read The Crooked Letter by Sean Williams. It's a dark and twisted tale that sucks you in and scares you at the same time.

For a new 2014 release about a subverted afterlife, read The Waking Engine.

Of course, you can't forget the classic Riverworld by Philip Jose Farmer.

If you want a sort of twisted, erotic, dark fantasy version of hell where Satan is good and God is the bad guy where torture and rape are common, read Anne Bishop's The Black Jewels. It sounds pretty twisted, but it's actually pretty entertaining.

If you want one of those sappy romance novels with good plotting and characterization about Archangels falling for pretty human girls, read Sharon Shinn's Samaria trilogy.

My final recommendation for a good "Heaven gone wrong" page turner is The Shivered Sky by Matt Dinnaman.

Booklists having this book

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Most of the books listed on this website's top fantasy lists have been part of a series, either because of the financial incentive behind publishing multiple books in the same... Read more