First Published: 1996

Rating: Great

"Lucifer -- Puissant Lord of Evil, Utmost Originator of All Things Foul, Master of the Netherworlds, Purveyor of Anguish -- glanced up from his newspaper to stare thoughtfully over the miles of open office space that made up the central nervous system of Hell."

My tastes in fantasy generally run toward the more typical sword-and-sorcery settings--after all, I can get a taste of the strange in today's world just by turning on the news. In spite of that, I still greatly enjoyed Holly Lisle's Sympathy for the Devil, a contemporary fantasy novel that gracefully juggles humor, religion, and purpose at the same time.

Frustrated with tormenting patients at her job as an RN in an ICU and plagued by thoughts of her dead husband suffering in Hell for eternity, Dayne Kuttner throws up a challenge to God. She asks Him to give all the damned souls of Hell a second chance to repent, so they won't have to suffer forever.

What Dayne doesn't know is that the damned may repent at any time. Nor does she know that God is a bit of a practical joker, who decides to answer her prayer by giving Lucifer permission to loose several thousand of Hell's citizens on the state of North Carolina. Lucifer sees this as an opportunity to increase Hell's revenues and sends Agnostis, his second-in-command, to run Hell's Earth-side office--with orders to tempt Dayne's soul into Hell.

Sympathy for the Devil is the first book of Lisle's that I read, and though it's different from her more mainstream fantasy, it's still one of my favorites. It's both intelligent and funny, which is hard to pull off--and best of all, Lisle pulls it off without forcing it. After all, it seems perfectly natural that Hell should be a bureaucracy and that Lucifer should track his profits with a program called Quick'N'Dead.

More importantly, though, the book grapples with some tough questions, like how a merciful God can allow the existence of Hell and what it means to be human. Rarely does Sympathy for the Devil get preachy, and its non-traditional views on God and religion are fascinating and provide interesting answers to the questions that are posed.

One thing I love about Lisle's books are the characters--they act like real people, which is, sadly, something you don't see as often as you should in literature today. I do think the depth of Lisle's characters improve in her later novels, but there's really nothing to complain about in Sympathy for the Devil--Dayne's frustrations with her job and her faith are completely believable, as are most of her reactions to the Hellish infestation that results from her prayer. And Agnostis's character is just cool, even if his progression seems rushed at times to fit within the 256 pages of the novel.

The stories of main characters Dayne and Agnostis are wound up nicely, but there's an open-ending left for the bigger plot of Hell's visit to North Carolina. Fortunately, this book is the first of three stand-alones in a series called the Devil's Point novels, the other two being The Devil and Dan Cooley and Hell on High. Those looking for a true stand-alone might not appreciate the lack of resolution on that front, but Sympathy for the Devil is a fun read that'll make you think while it's making you laugh.

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