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Mortality Bridge by Boyett, Steven R
Decades ago a young rock and blues guitarist and junkie named Niko signed in blood on the dotted line and in return became the stuff of music legend. But when the love of his damned life grows mortally and mysteriously ill he realizes he's lost more than he bargained for--and that wasn t part of the Deal.So Niko sets out on a harrowing journey from the streets of Los Angeles through the downtown subway tunnels and across the redlit plain of the most vividly realized Hell since Dante, to play the gig of his mortgaged life and win back the purloined soul of his lost love.Mortality Bridge remixes Orpheus, Dante, Faust, the Crossroads legend, and more in a beautiful, brutal--and surprisingly funny--quest across a Hieronymous Bosch landscape of myth, music, and mayhem; and across an inner terrain of addiction, damnation, and redemption.
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First published July 31, 2011
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About the author
Steven R. Boyett
21 books111 followersSteven R. Boyett is the author of Ariel, Elegy Beach, Mortality Bridge, Fata Morgana (with Ken Mitchroney) and numerous stories, articles, comic books, and screenplays.
As a DJ he has played clubs, conventions, parties, Burning Man, and sporting events, and produces two of the world’s most popular music podcasts: Podrunner and Groovelectric.
Steve has also been a martial arts instructor, professional paper marbler, advertising copywriter, proofreader, typesetter, writing teacher, and Website designer and editor. He also plays the didgeridoo and composes electronic music.
As a DJ he has played clubs, conventions, parties, Burning Man, and sporting events, and produces two of the world’s most popular music podcasts: Podrunner and Groovelectric.
Steve has also been a martial arts instructor, professional paper marbler, advertising copywriter, proofreader, typesetter, writing teacher, and Website designer and editor. He also plays the didgeridoo and composes electronic music.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
August 25, 2011
Depressing. Disgusting. Brilliant.
When trying to think of words to describe Mortality Bridge, I keep coming back to variations on those three. Steven R. Boyett has written an unforgettable tale of one man’s journey to Hell, and I wish I liked it better than I did. Ordinarily I enjoy descents to the underworld, but we all have our limits, and with Mortality Bridge, I think I’ve found some of mine.
The story centers on Niko, a rock musician. He was a strung-out, washed-up failure when an agent of the Devil approached him with a deal. Niko accepted — and got famous, got sober, and got his girlfriend Jemma back. But now Jemma is dying of a mysterious illness, which Niko didn’t bargain for. He bones up on mythology and the occult, learning everything he can about “hadeography” (the geography of Hell), and then follows Jemma into the underworld to bring her back. The publisher’s blurb mentions Dante, Faust, Orpheus, the blues legend of the Crossroads, and Hieronymus Bosch as influences, and indeed that’s all there, blended by Boyett into a cohesive whole.
The writing is filled with vivid sensory detail; the reader sees and hears and smells everything right along with Niko. Clipped sentence fragments, lengthy sentences strung together with “ands” or commas, and impromptu compound words help create a stream-of-consciousness effect in places. Here’s a passage that exemplifies the style and the subject matter:
"On the other side of the rock outcropping the lake of blood cannot be seen again. Only the evercrawling line, the names called from the bottomless list, the neverending plain. See them shuffling in their slaughterhouse line, crawling out there on the plain like mewling wounded babies, scraping under granite blocks like entombed cadavers falsely dead, gathered sheeplike at the Ledge. How many have lived and died since humanity began? One hundred billion? How many of that number tortured in this loathsome place? Sandgrains on a bloodwashed beach. Souls every one, all doomed, all damned, all lost. Judged and found wanting and consigned and then forgotten by what dread remorseless will. You cannot save them. Cannot even save yourself. For without even believing in a soul you bartered it away decades ago and cast its lot with every pathetic pilgrim you will see in this forsaken place. As always you have bartered. As your story says you always will.
But Jemma. Perhaps not doomed. Not damned. Not lost."
The hard part was finding a passage suitable for the PG-rated website I originally wrote this for. Mortality Bridge is extremely explicit in its descriptions of Hell’s torments. Boyett’s descriptive skill is both blessing and curse. If you follow Niko into Hell, you’re in for pages and pages of people being impaled, crushed, disemboweled, flayed, burned, and other nasty things, all in gory detail. This may be Hell, or it may be a construction of Niko’s mind — we’re never 100% sure — but either way, it’s not a pleasant place to be.
Of course, it’s Hell, so one can hardly expect a leisurely stroll in the park. But as I mentioned above, I generally enjoy underworld stories yet was pushed to my limits by this one. The depictions of tortures had me near nausea or tears, and sometimes both, for much of the time I was reading Mortality Bridge. Even some of the scenes I think were intended as comic relief, I found immeasurably sad instead.
It’s more painful to read than, say, Dante’s Inferno. I like Dante’s Inferno. But there, it’s possible to distance yourself a little, to retreat from the literal details of the torture and look at the poem through a philosophical lens. That’s harder here. Dante had an internally consistent logic regarding how each sin was punished and which sins were considered “worse” than others and so on. Boyett does assign “poetic justice” punishments to his sinners in places, but other people we never do learn what they’re in Hell for; and the idea that sins get worse as you go deeper into Hell has been discarded. We meet the Nazis well before we meet the gluttons. This shuffling is good for dramatic effect — since it means that even if you’ve read Dante, you don’t know what’s coming next — but it makes Boyett’s Hell a more chaotic, random one, and therefore sadder, at least to me.
There are some moments of transcendent joy and beauty and compassion, though few and far between. It was these that kept me going — that, and sympathy for Niko. I was tempted at times to give up and skip to the end, but decided that if Niko could persevere through Hell to find out whether he would win Jemma back, the least I could do was stick with him and read it. That, and I was intrigued by the intellectual puzzle of trying to guess what was going on in the “real” world that corresponded to certain events in Hell.
There’s a part of me that wants to reread Mortality Bridge and analyze it more closely, but I’m not sure I want to spend any more time with Boyett’s imagery. That said, I can’t deny that Mortality Bridge is a very well-written book that made me feel intense emotion. I recommend it, but only to the strong of stomach.
Fantasy Literature's Steven Boyett page
When trying to think of words to describe Mortality Bridge, I keep coming back to variations on those three. Steven R. Boyett has written an unforgettable tale of one man’s journey to Hell, and I wish I liked it better than I did. Ordinarily I enjoy descents to the underworld, but we all have our limits, and with Mortality Bridge, I think I’ve found some of mine.
The story centers on Niko, a rock musician. He was a strung-out, washed-up failure when an agent of the Devil approached him with a deal. Niko accepted — and got famous, got sober, and got his girlfriend Jemma back. But now Jemma is dying of a mysterious illness, which Niko didn’t bargain for. He bones up on mythology and the occult, learning everything he can about “hadeography” (the geography of Hell), and then follows Jemma into the underworld to bring her back. The publisher’s blurb mentions Dante, Faust, Orpheus, the blues legend of the Crossroads, and Hieronymus Bosch as influences, and indeed that’s all there, blended by Boyett into a cohesive whole.
The writing is filled with vivid sensory detail; the reader sees and hears and smells everything right along with Niko. Clipped sentence fragments, lengthy sentences strung together with “ands” or commas, and impromptu compound words help create a stream-of-consciousness effect in places. Here’s a passage that exemplifies the style and the subject matter:
"On the other side of the rock outcropping the lake of blood cannot be seen again. Only the evercrawling line, the names called from the bottomless list, the neverending plain. See them shuffling in their slaughterhouse line, crawling out there on the plain like mewling wounded babies, scraping under granite blocks like entombed cadavers falsely dead, gathered sheeplike at the Ledge. How many have lived and died since humanity began? One hundred billion? How many of that number tortured in this loathsome place? Sandgrains on a bloodwashed beach. Souls every one, all doomed, all damned, all lost. Judged and found wanting and consigned and then forgotten by what dread remorseless will. You cannot save them. Cannot even save yourself. For without even believing in a soul you bartered it away decades ago and cast its lot with every pathetic pilgrim you will see in this forsaken place. As always you have bartered. As your story says you always will.
But Jemma. Perhaps not doomed. Not damned. Not lost."
The hard part was finding a passage suitable for the PG-rated website I originally wrote this for. Mortality Bridge is extremely explicit in its descriptions of Hell’s torments. Boyett’s descriptive skill is both blessing and curse. If you follow Niko into Hell, you’re in for pages and pages of people being impaled, crushed, disemboweled, flayed, burned, and other nasty things, all in gory detail. This may be Hell, or it may be a construction of Niko’s mind — we’re never 100% sure — but either way, it’s not a pleasant place to be.
Of course, it’s Hell, so one can hardly expect a leisurely stroll in the park. But as I mentioned above, I generally enjoy underworld stories yet was pushed to my limits by this one. The depictions of tortures had me near nausea or tears, and sometimes both, for much of the time I was reading Mortality Bridge. Even some of the scenes I think were intended as comic relief, I found immeasurably sad instead.
It’s more painful to read than, say, Dante’s Inferno. I like Dante’s Inferno. But there, it’s possible to distance yourself a little, to retreat from the literal details of the torture and look at the poem through a philosophical lens. That’s harder here. Dante had an internally consistent logic regarding how each sin was punished and which sins were considered “worse” than others and so on. Boyett does assign “poetic justice” punishments to his sinners in places, but other people we never do learn what they’re in Hell for; and the idea that sins get worse as you go deeper into Hell has been discarded. We meet the Nazis well before we meet the gluttons. This shuffling is good for dramatic effect — since it means that even if you’ve read Dante, you don’t know what’s coming next — but it makes Boyett’s Hell a more chaotic, random one, and therefore sadder, at least to me.
There are some moments of transcendent joy and beauty and compassion, though few and far between. It was these that kept me going — that, and sympathy for Niko. I was tempted at times to give up and skip to the end, but decided that if Niko could persevere through Hell to find out whether he would win Jemma back, the least I could do was stick with him and read it. That, and I was intrigued by the intellectual puzzle of trying to guess what was going on in the “real” world that corresponded to certain events in Hell.
There’s a part of me that wants to reread Mortality Bridge and analyze it more closely, but I’m not sure I want to spend any more time with Boyett’s imagery. That said, I can’t deny that Mortality Bridge is a very well-written book that made me feel intense emotion. I recommend it, but only to the strong of stomach.
Fantasy Literature's Steven Boyett page
July 24, 2011
You don't go through Hell. You go in, as quickly as you can—that part's easy, deliberately so. Then, if you're lucky, you get a chance to try to get back out again, retracing your steps as much as possible... better the devils you know, after all. At least, that's the way Orpheus did it... and that's the way Niko is going to do it, too (Nikkoleides Popoudopolos, the greatest rocker you've never heard of, that is—kind of like the Nazgûl in George R.R. Martin's The Armageddon Rag), when Jemma, the love of Niko's life, gets caught up in the deal he made with the Devil way back when.
This modern-day mashup of Orpheus, Dante's Inferno and rock-and-roll follows Niko into the very bowels of Hell... which is not a very pleasant place to be. As with most fiction ostensibly about the afterlife, we spend a lot more time downstairs than in the penthouse. One of the biggest beefs I have with this novel, in fact, is how long, detailed and involved the descriptions of the tortures of Hades are—for at least the first half of the book, it reads more like a travelogue for a destination you really don't want to visit than like a novel. This is something I've noticed recently in other contexts as well (e.g., Iain M. Banks' novel Surface Detail; Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim books), but it goes back at least as far as Dante: human beings are far better at inventing ways to inflict misery than at describing (much less creating) joy.
Remixes of Heaven and Hell aside, the confluence of rock music with sf is also not exactly virgin territory—in addition to the aforementioned Martin novel, there's also Lewis Shiner's underrated Glimpses, Emma Bull's War for the Oaks and Norman Spinrad's Little Heroes... just to name a couple of good examples off the cuff. In such company, Boyett's novel doesn't really stand out; chapter headings pay homage to Dylan, Hendrix and other such icons, but Martin did that too, and apart from those the music, including Niko's own, seems mostly talked about, rather than evoked.
But the second half of Mortality Bridge picks up rather dramatically. I can even pinpoint the exact place where I started to believe that the book was going to redeem itself, and maybe even Niko: when we run into Dante Alighieri and find out just what his punishment in Hell must certainly be. I laughed out loud at that one (see, I'm just like the rest of us... I appreciate a good damnation, probably more than the happiest of unrealistic happy endings).
I won't tell you just what Dante's punishment was, nor whether Niko escapes from Hades with his version of Eurydice intact... but I will tell you that there are moments of grace in Mortality Bridge that eventually make up for the travail Boyett puts you through.
This modern-day mashup of Orpheus, Dante's Inferno and rock-and-roll follows Niko into the very bowels of Hell... which is not a very pleasant place to be. As with most fiction ostensibly about the afterlife, we spend a lot more time downstairs than in the penthouse. One of the biggest beefs I have with this novel, in fact, is how long, detailed and involved the descriptions of the tortures of Hades are—for at least the first half of the book, it reads more like a travelogue for a destination you really don't want to visit than like a novel. This is something I've noticed recently in other contexts as well (e.g., Iain M. Banks' novel Surface Detail; Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim books), but it goes back at least as far as Dante: human beings are far better at inventing ways to inflict misery than at describing (much less creating) joy.
Remixes of Heaven and Hell aside, the confluence of rock music with sf is also not exactly virgin territory—in addition to the aforementioned Martin novel, there's also Lewis Shiner's underrated Glimpses, Emma Bull's War for the Oaks and Norman Spinrad's Little Heroes... just to name a couple of good examples off the cuff. In such company, Boyett's novel doesn't really stand out; chapter headings pay homage to Dylan, Hendrix and other such icons, but Martin did that too, and apart from those the music, including Niko's own, seems mostly talked about, rather than evoked.
But the second half of Mortality Bridge picks up rather dramatically. I can even pinpoint the exact place where I started to believe that the book was going to redeem itself, and maybe even Niko: when we run into Dante Alighieri and find out just what his punishment in Hell must certainly be. I laughed out loud at that one (see, I'm just like the rest of us... I appreciate a good damnation, probably more than the happiest of unrealistic happy endings).
I won't tell you just what Dante's punishment was, nor whether Niko escapes from Hades with his version of Eurydice intact... but I will tell you that there are moments of grace in Mortality Bridge that eventually make up for the travail Boyett puts you through.
June 26, 2012
Entirely too much of the length is taking up by a sluggish travelogue through Hell. There are some good bits, but I think the whole affair would have been much better at half or less the length.
Here's the thing: it's a bit of common horror-movie wisdom that the scariest things are the ones you don't see, that are only suggested, that let the mind start filling in details more viscerally. When you show the monster and whatnot, it loses most of the impact. If you show it over and over, it can get either silly or tedious or both. In the book's case, there is so much verbiage dedicated to various damned tortures, which go on and on and on. It's exhausting and numbing. Which is part of the point, I suspect, but that point is a horse corpse beaten to a thin paste until all organic material has fully rejoined the carbon cycle and all the carbon that's been incorporated into new horses have likewise been beaten. At a certain point, the reaction to yet another damned soul being, I don't know, force fed feces as they're pulled apart with wooden spoons that are really splintery and coated in lemon juice becomes GET ON WITH IT.
Also, the theology behind it all is kind of a serious mess. Our hero is the reincarnation of Orpheus who has done this kind of doomed love-rescuing over and over again, but Hell is still eternal. Which could be an interesting bit of dissonance to explore, but it never really is; "you're Orpheus, dude!" is just sort of thrown out there and nothing interesting is done with. The whole thing's climax is breaking a mythic cycle, so the mythic cycle in question deserved the focus, not tedious torture exposition.
There are good bits, though, which is why overall I was mostly irritated by it. There's a great bit with our hero crossing a bridge of souls over Lethe consisting of the tangled bodies of everyone he's known in life, which is essentially the thematic climax of the novel and gets at what allowed him to break that mythic cycle. Also, it was a case of Hellish imagery that actually served a purpose other than numbing.
Overall, I think it's going to make me reread Surface Detail.
Here's the thing: it's a bit of common horror-movie wisdom that the scariest things are the ones you don't see, that are only suggested, that let the mind start filling in details more viscerally. When you show the monster and whatnot, it loses most of the impact. If you show it over and over, it can get either silly or tedious or both. In the book's case, there is so much verbiage dedicated to various damned tortures, which go on and on and on. It's exhausting and numbing. Which is part of the point, I suspect, but that point is a horse corpse beaten to a thin paste until all organic material has fully rejoined the carbon cycle and all the carbon that's been incorporated into new horses have likewise been beaten. At a certain point, the reaction to yet another damned soul being, I don't know, force fed feces as they're pulled apart with wooden spoons that are really splintery and coated in lemon juice becomes GET ON WITH IT.
Also, the theology behind it all is kind of a serious mess. Our hero is the reincarnation of Orpheus who has done this kind of doomed love-rescuing over and over again, but Hell is still eternal. Which could be an interesting bit of dissonance to explore, but it never really is; "you're Orpheus, dude!" is just sort of thrown out there and nothing interesting is done with. The whole thing's climax is breaking a mythic cycle, so the mythic cycle in question deserved the focus, not tedious torture exposition.
There are good bits, though, which is why overall I was mostly irritated by it. There's a great bit with our hero crossing a bridge of souls over Lethe consisting of the tangled bodies of everyone he's known in life, which is essentially the thematic climax of the novel and gets at what allowed him to break that mythic cycle. Also, it was a case of Hellish imagery that actually served a purpose other than numbing.
Overall, I think it's going to make me reread Surface Detail.
January 7, 2019
In every book I've read that channels Dante's Inferno (books like Chuck Palahniuk's Damned and Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Inferno), there comes a point where I'm tired of the endless detailed, heavy-handed, gross-out descriptions of the worst hell has to offer — the graphic torture, the endless sadism, the helpless misery, the fear and bafflement of people who don't know why they're being endlessly mutilated and don't have any idea how to make it stop. This retelling of the Orpheus myth in a new era dives deep into that well, and it becomes especially exhausting because there's just so much emphasis on the idea that there are innocents in hell — good people, kind people, young children — but it never offers any explanation of this cosmology, of what hell is, what it's for, and whether there's a way to escape.
The protagonist, Niko, is a junkie rock star who sold his soul to hell in exchange for stardom and an escape from his vices, but he paid when hell took the love of his life. So he bones up on his myths, grabs his trusty Dobro, and heads to hell to get her back. The book does an excellent job of conjuring up his mindset, his character, the selfishness and short-sightedness that drive him, and eventually the dogged determination that propels him through hell after her. There were just so many points where I was exhausted with the grueling trip, the constantly escalating cruelty, and the sense of helplessness Mortality Bridge lays on the entire world. I'm glad I stuck with it — the ending is an extended breathless process of wondering whether Niko, Orpheus' latest avatar, will make Orpheus' mistake, and if so, how. And the book ends in a fascinating place.
But I really felt the lack of reasons or reasoning throughout the book. In this worldview, the cosmos is cruel and random — and yet there are apparently options for a small handful of people who know the right cheat codes and have the right talents? I ended up pretty dissociated from Niko's quest by the end of the book, no matter how thrilling it is, just because saving one beloved soul from hell seemed so meaningless, in the wake of the suffering millions he had to ignore or even actively harm on his quest. In the end, I'm clear on what this book is saying about love and music, but not what it's saying about the world — which it spends a lot more time on laying out, in unremittingly gruesome detail.
The protagonist, Niko, is a junkie rock star who sold his soul to hell in exchange for stardom and an escape from his vices, but he paid when hell took the love of his life. So he bones up on his myths, grabs his trusty Dobro, and heads to hell to get her back. The book does an excellent job of conjuring up his mindset, his character, the selfishness and short-sightedness that drive him, and eventually the dogged determination that propels him through hell after her. There were just so many points where I was exhausted with the grueling trip, the constantly escalating cruelty, and the sense of helplessness Mortality Bridge lays on the entire world. I'm glad I stuck with it — the ending is an extended breathless process of wondering whether Niko, Orpheus' latest avatar, will make Orpheus' mistake, and if so, how. And the book ends in a fascinating place.
But I really felt the lack of reasons or reasoning throughout the book. In this worldview, the cosmos is cruel and random — and yet there are apparently options for a small handful of people who know the right cheat codes and have the right talents? I ended up pretty dissociated from Niko's quest by the end of the book, no matter how thrilling it is, just because saving one beloved soul from hell seemed so meaningless, in the wake of the suffering millions he had to ignore or even actively harm on his quest. In the end, I'm clear on what this book is saying about love and music, but not what it's saying about the world — which it spends a lot more time on laying out, in unremittingly gruesome detail.
October 1, 2012
This is a really good book. It's very well written, emotionally evocative, highly intelligent, vividly descriptive, generally well-rounded, and poetically beautiful in a lot of ways.
It's also scary and really, really gross. Seriously: Hell, as seen through the eyes of the protagonist, Niko, is disgusting.
I flew through this book in a couple of days. I was hooked. I was reaing it at home while reading another book at work and found myself over the weekend not missing the work-book at all, even though it's quite good as well.
It is, without going into any real detail (because you can get that from the cover-flap or the basic book description on the GoodReads page) this book is a combination of Dante's Inferno and the story of Orpheus. Of course, rather than a retelling of the later, it's part of the gist that this IS the story of Orpheus, just in another body. He’s been doing this over and over and over and over for thousands of years, just in different bodies and with slightly different circumstances.
The second half of the book is basically a car chase. You would think that 200-ish pages of a single car chase would get old, but it doesn't. It, like the rest of the book, is very good.
The ending is a sort of cliffhanger, though I can't tell you why there MUST be a second book without a sort of a spoiler, but I'll just say that Dante wrote two other books to go along with Inferno and leave it at that.
Recommended, if you are into this sort of thing and can handle really vivid and horrible descriptions of Hell.
It's also scary and really, really gross. Seriously: Hell, as seen through the eyes of the protagonist, Niko, is disgusting.
I flew through this book in a couple of days. I was hooked. I was reaing it at home while reading another book at work and found myself over the weekend not missing the work-book at all, even though it's quite good as well.
It is, without going into any real detail (because you can get that from the cover-flap or the basic book description on the GoodReads page) this book is a combination of Dante's Inferno and the story of Orpheus. Of course, rather than a retelling of the later, it's part of the gist that this IS the story of Orpheus, just in another body. He’s been doing this over and over and over and over for thousands of years, just in different bodies and with slightly different circumstances.
The second half of the book is basically a car chase. You would think that 200-ish pages of a single car chase would get old, but it doesn't. It, like the rest of the book, is very good.
The ending is a sort of cliffhanger, though I can't tell you why there MUST be a second book without a sort of a spoiler, but I'll just say that Dante wrote two other books to go along with Inferno and leave it at that.
Recommended, if you are into this sort of thing and can handle really vivid and horrible descriptions of Hell.
April 20, 2014
Hmm, can't really make up my mind on this one. It wasn't poorly written, and I've greatly enjoyed Boyett's books in the past. While Ariel had some strange subtext in it it was a pleasurable read and Elegy Beach was similarly compelling. This one is... more generic in some ways and off-putting in others. I almost didn't make it through the second act purely based on the content, not the writing. Something I've never done before. Boyett wears his influences in the open, telegraphing them in fact, but this depiction of Hell and its horrors was almost needlessly sadistic through most of the second act. Yes, yes, I get it. Hell isn't an Ikea Ball Pit, but almost the entire second act was nothing but increasingly heinous descriptions of debasement like the author set a goal to outdo himself with each chapter. There's something to be said for more physchological/implied horror vs viscerally slathering it on the page. While it shows creativity in descriptive writing it ironically shows a lack of imagination in writing, IMO.
Regardless, its a fairly rote story otherwise. Clearly (And admittedly) a melange of Orpheus meets the Crossroads there wasn't a lot of surprise here. Musician makes a deal for his soul, his wife's soul is damned by proxy, he wades into hell to retrieve it. You can pretty much imagine the entire story accurately just from that description and, if you have a weak stomach for horror/gore/suffering, I suggest you leave it at that.
Regardless, its a fairly rote story otherwise. Clearly (And admittedly) a melange of Orpheus meets the Crossroads there wasn't a lot of surprise here. Musician makes a deal for his soul, his wife's soul is damned by proxy, he wades into hell to retrieve it. You can pretty much imagine the entire story accurately just from that description and, if you have a weak stomach for horror/gore/suffering, I suggest you leave it at that.
January 28, 2014
I had a blast with Boyett's latest novel. A rockin' descent into Hades for love and redemption. The Hellish imagery is fantastic! The demonic creatures brought to life are truly memorable.
Overall the book is a fun ride into a not fun at all nightmare in Hell. There are some truly heart rendering moments along with some amazing action and some very memorable if not totally likeable demons.
A must have for fans of touring Hell, losing and fighting for Love, car chases, demonic sidekicks, mashed up mythology and Rock n' Roll.
Thanks Steve for another great story!
Overall the book is a fun ride into a not fun at all nightmare in Hell. There are some truly heart rendering moments along with some amazing action and some very memorable if not totally likeable demons.
A must have for fans of touring Hell, losing and fighting for Love, car chases, demonic sidekicks, mashed up mythology and Rock n' Roll.
Thanks Steve for another great story!
November 26, 2011
Unfortunately just not my style in terms of prose. I started skimming when the carrier picked Niko up around page 73, unfortunately. It's a pity, because this book came very highly recommended, but I just can't stick with it anymore.
July 31, 2017
Fairly pretty book about yet another descent into literal hell. Quite a bit more annoying than Niven and Pournelle's Inferno (and sequel). Well written but not enjoyable.
September 28, 2012
Loved this crazy, intense re-telling of Orpheus, with Dante and others thrown in. Almost fun enough to be escapist, but with a nice healthy dark, thoughtful edge.
March 29, 2019
I'm loath to say what I really think of this novel because I know how hard it is to write a novel, how hard to get an idea, to cultivate an idea, to plan, to read and re-read texts that have inspired your idea to adapt them into your own idiom, to outline, to write, re-write, and edit, to fucking sit still long enough to write 400+ pages. For the ambition of Mr. Boyett, the effort, the thoughtfulness, the blood, sweat, and tears, I have to applaud him. Nothing personal, man, I really know the struggle and my hat is sincerely off to you for attempting to combine so many mythologies here (Goethe's Faust, Dante's Inferno, Robert Johnson's legend, and primarily, of course, Virgil's version of the Orpheus story, along with a smattering of classical catabases great and small, and a nod to the Medieval visionary tradition as well), just wow.
And, before I get to the big BUT... Be warned, I'm a comp. lit. Ph.D., a teacher of ancient, Medieval, and modern literature. I'm the kind of guy who watches every pitch of a three-hour-long baseball game and longs for more when it's over. I find American football barbaric and utterly boring--a bunch of brutes smashing their heads together! I actually like Moby Dick and Ulysseys and have read them each more than once. I don't read that fantasy crap, young adult, most mysteries, avoid Harry Potter and Star Wars books, movies, and toys like the plague, and I wouldn't wipe my ass with a page from the so-called "Marvel Universe." (Bill Maher's recent editorial on Stan Lee's deification, which aroused the anger of many of my facebook acquaintances, was his finest hour in my opinion.) So this type of novel isn't written with me in mind, is it? So I probably hated it.
Mostly, yeah, I mostly hated it.
Firstly there was the cliche factor. There was an adjective for every noun pretty much through all 400 pages and not a single example of an adjective-noun combination that wasn't already combined in a million other texts. There were the cliche jokes, the cliche plot twists, the cliche characters, the cliche buddy character moments, the cliche jokes about how cliche the jokes were. The endless assessment of the many wounds--but never the death--of the hero in his many fights a la every fucking dime store macho novel ever from Ian Fleming to Mickey Spillane. This novel choked me to death with cliche. (As a friend said recently regarding the state of American cinema: "Ten minutes of plot and an endless fist fight.")
400 fucking pages of cliches telling a story already made up of five of six other authors' stories is pretty hard to take, despite the cleverness and sheer balls of trying to put those stories together. I'm scandalized to see how many reviews here say this book is well written. Frankly I recognized the tone and style right away as Harlan Ellison--even down to the L.A. backdrop. But, sadly, not the rare sass that Ellison somehow gets away with and often rides into a kind of streetwise sublimity, but rather the worst of jokey, I'm so much smarter than you, sarcastic, hackneyed Ellison. Still, if you'd told me Harlan had written this I would have believed you, so clear is the imitation, but I would have assumed they'd found it hidden in a drawer, for I think his "bullshit detector," that thing that Hemingway assigns to all good writers, wouldn't have let this one slip through to publication. (Also, it may be that Ellison gets away with his style by sticking to the short format, for snark, sarcasm, and pith wear thin rather quickly in such a long, long novel.)
Lastly, as much as I admire the idea and then the astounding effort to actually write such an ambitious amalgam of otherworldly mythologies, this novel acts as a singular exemplar proving exactly why and how Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell are full of shit with their collapsing of individual stories into archytypes. Heroes, mythologies, religions, and otherworlds apparently, are all different. Surprise! Orpheus is not Christian like Dante's pilgrim, Dante's Inferno is didactic, not a quest or task-based narrative, Faust doesn't go to the otherworld at all--it comes to him!--classical Hades does not judge us via Christian moral tenets, Orpheus doesn't play the blues, and Robert Johnson was poisoned by a woman, not the other way around. Splicing these narratives together, drained through controdiction, of most of their original substance, just doesn't work--it only dilutes and ruins the integrity of the meaning of each. As others here have said the gross-out factor of Dante's contropassi are here but drained of their moral significance (some of the characters--Nazis, pedophiles {easy targets} are indeed bad, while others seem guiltless, and no mention of Christian repentance in sight) this is just pointless eternal suffering, as if death were an amalgam of the tortures of a Christian hell and the malaise of a boring Greco-Roman Hades--it's just too bleak to imagine, nor does the text ever actually make the reasons for hell's existance or its punishments clear. (Also as a canineaphobe and felineaphile I was bound to be offended by the depiction of a horrifying Rottweiler as a symbol of love and the story's claim that all of the sadistic demons in hell are re-incarnated cats.)
Or, as David Spade would put it in his Hollywood Minute: "I liked this novel better the first time I read it, when it was called What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson."
Aaaaaaaaaand, the ending is lifted from Thelma and Louise.
Aaaaaaaand then one more fistfight for good measure.
And, before I get to the big BUT... Be warned, I'm a comp. lit. Ph.D., a teacher of ancient, Medieval, and modern literature. I'm the kind of guy who watches every pitch of a three-hour-long baseball game and longs for more when it's over. I find American football barbaric and utterly boring--a bunch of brutes smashing their heads together! I actually like Moby Dick and Ulysseys and have read them each more than once. I don't read that fantasy crap, young adult, most mysteries, avoid Harry Potter and Star Wars books, movies, and toys like the plague, and I wouldn't wipe my ass with a page from the so-called "Marvel Universe." (Bill Maher's recent editorial on Stan Lee's deification, which aroused the anger of many of my facebook acquaintances, was his finest hour in my opinion.) So this type of novel isn't written with me in mind, is it? So I probably hated it.
Mostly, yeah, I mostly hated it.
Firstly there was the cliche factor. There was an adjective for every noun pretty much through all 400 pages and not a single example of an adjective-noun combination that wasn't already combined in a million other texts. There were the cliche jokes, the cliche plot twists, the cliche characters, the cliche buddy character moments, the cliche jokes about how cliche the jokes were. The endless assessment of the many wounds--but never the death--of the hero in his many fights a la every fucking dime store macho novel ever from Ian Fleming to Mickey Spillane. This novel choked me to death with cliche. (As a friend said recently regarding the state of American cinema: "Ten minutes of plot and an endless fist fight.")
400 fucking pages of cliches telling a story already made up of five of six other authors' stories is pretty hard to take, despite the cleverness and sheer balls of trying to put those stories together. I'm scandalized to see how many reviews here say this book is well written. Frankly I recognized the tone and style right away as Harlan Ellison--even down to the L.A. backdrop. But, sadly, not the rare sass that Ellison somehow gets away with and often rides into a kind of streetwise sublimity, but rather the worst of jokey, I'm so much smarter than you, sarcastic, hackneyed Ellison. Still, if you'd told me Harlan had written this I would have believed you, so clear is the imitation, but I would have assumed they'd found it hidden in a drawer, for I think his "bullshit detector," that thing that Hemingway assigns to all good writers, wouldn't have let this one slip through to publication. (Also, it may be that Ellison gets away with his style by sticking to the short format, for snark, sarcasm, and pith wear thin rather quickly in such a long, long novel.)
Lastly, as much as I admire the idea and then the astounding effort to actually write such an ambitious amalgam of otherworldly mythologies, this novel acts as a singular exemplar proving exactly why and how Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell are full of shit with their collapsing of individual stories into archytypes. Heroes, mythologies, religions, and otherworlds apparently, are all different. Surprise! Orpheus is not Christian like Dante's pilgrim, Dante's Inferno is didactic, not a quest or task-based narrative, Faust doesn't go to the otherworld at all--it comes to him!--classical Hades does not judge us via Christian moral tenets, Orpheus doesn't play the blues, and Robert Johnson was poisoned by a woman, not the other way around. Splicing these narratives together, drained through controdiction, of most of their original substance, just doesn't work--it only dilutes and ruins the integrity of the meaning of each. As others here have said the gross-out factor of Dante's contropassi are here but drained of their moral significance (some of the characters--Nazis, pedophiles {easy targets} are indeed bad, while others seem guiltless, and no mention of Christian repentance in sight) this is just pointless eternal suffering, as if death were an amalgam of the tortures of a Christian hell and the malaise of a boring Greco-Roman Hades--it's just too bleak to imagine, nor does the text ever actually make the reasons for hell's existance or its punishments clear. (Also as a canineaphobe and felineaphile I was bound to be offended by the depiction of a horrifying Rottweiler as a symbol of love and the story's claim that all of the sadistic demons in hell are re-incarnated cats.)
Or, as David Spade would put it in his Hollywood Minute: "I liked this novel better the first time I read it, when it was called What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson."
Aaaaaaaaaand, the ending is lifted from Thelma and Louise.
Aaaaaaaand then one more fistfight for good measure.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 24, 2016
Superbly Written Quest through a Literary-based Hell
WARNING!
This story is not for the faint of heart, or the faint of spirit.
It is a book you will either love or you will hate...but I adore it.
It is an intense combination of gut-wrenching introspection, heroic determination and brutal carnage with a slice of hope on the side.
I only ask that you give it a chance and not DNF as a knee-jerk reaction to the violence.
It was worth every gory, emotional, desperate, hopeful and torturous moment. A love story set in Los Angeles and Hell? Bring it on. Steven Boyett is one twisted dude. All you have to do is look at his author photo. That double-pointed black goatee speaks volumes. Even with the visual nod to the ultimate evil, the man did considerable research through the world's collection of myth, epic poetry and legend, yet made the story his own. This book is incredible.
Basic plot synopsis: Niko, an American of Greek origin, an amazing blues guitarist, junkie, lost the love of his life, hits rock bottom after personal tragedy, makes deal with the Devil. Cleans himself up, gets famous, gets his girl back, girl dies, Niko goes to Hell to get her back. Will play in exchange for her soul.
From this barebones synopsis it may sound like Boyett warmed up the Orpheus myth with a bit of Crossroads in the microwave and retold it in a modern setting.
That would be INCORRECT. There are aspects of Orpheus and Crossroads in this story, but it is so much MORE. Boyett created his own mythology out of a plethora of the old ones and stamped Boyett all over them. New, fresh, edgy and dark, this is not your mama's mythology.
Niko is an emotionally charged character. Much like Robert Johnson, at one point, he literally loses everything in his life and the tragedy colors his music. Niko may now be rich and famous, but he is troubled, humble and damned. The only two things that he loves are his girlfriend Jemma and his music. He will literally go to Hell and back for her, and this Hell was designed by Robert Rodriguez on acid. What more could you ask for?
There are surprising moments of camaraderie, aid from unseen allies, short stark moments of beauty and humanity amidst the torment. There is even humor. The riff on Siamese cats is LYAO...
There is also driving-by-the-seat-of-your-pants adventure, heartbreak, car chases, a few classic characters, a few moderns, the best classic car, and I can't talk about anything else or spoilers will fly out.
There are three messages that ring loud and clear above it all:
Love is the strongest power in the universe.
Take responsibility, be humble and ask forgiveness
Free will is the most precious gift imaginable, and the most underrated.
In reviews, readers throw around references to Orpheus, Dante's Inferno, Virgil's Aenead, Bosch's Underworld paintings, Robert Johnson's Crossroads, but they should also include the cult of Hades, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey , the Egyptian myth of judgment, paintings of the underworld by Bruegel, the Sumerian epic poem Gilgamesh, the Twelve Labors of Heracles, Persephone, Auguste Rodin's Orpheus and Eurydyce, the epic poem The Harrowing of Christ and many others. Don't expect to find these classics in recognizable form. For example, you won't find Dante's perfectly demarcated circles of Hell with a single type of suffering for a single sin, but there will be different sections of an infinite Hell for a single sin torment, including some from the Inferno and a sighting of Virgil with his lamp. Boyett has taken, in his words, a knife, to the abundance of source material and made it his own in some uniquely extraordinary ways. His choice of torments for specific sins is ferally imaginative, downright ghastly and all his own.
Boyett takes imagery to a new level, and frankly there were two times where I wished he wasn't quite so spectacular, as I keep seeing these images as I write this review. Keep reading! The text is salted with bits of light. Just wait until you get to the aqua-eyed, stone demon that flies on filagreed wings. Now that is goodness squared.
Niko's trip through hell cannot be described without spoilers. Just buy the damned book. You'll be thanking me later ( unless you abhor violence, then stop immediately).
If you appreciate the classics, are a sucker for true love and can handle the violence without tuning it out or skipping it, you have a wonderful experience just ahead. It was deeply emotional and more uplifting than any of the descriptions or reviews hinted.
Highly Recommended!
WARNING!
This story is not for the faint of heart, or the faint of spirit.
It is a book you will either love or you will hate...but I adore it.
It is an intense combination of gut-wrenching introspection, heroic determination and brutal carnage with a slice of hope on the side.
I only ask that you give it a chance and not DNF as a knee-jerk reaction to the violence.
It was worth every gory, emotional, desperate, hopeful and torturous moment. A love story set in Los Angeles and Hell? Bring it on. Steven Boyett is one twisted dude. All you have to do is look at his author photo. That double-pointed black goatee speaks volumes. Even with the visual nod to the ultimate evil, the man did considerable research through the world's collection of myth, epic poetry and legend, yet made the story his own. This book is incredible.
Basic plot synopsis: Niko, an American of Greek origin, an amazing blues guitarist, junkie, lost the love of his life, hits rock bottom after personal tragedy, makes deal with the Devil. Cleans himself up, gets famous, gets his girl back, girl dies, Niko goes to Hell to get her back. Will play in exchange for her soul.
From this barebones synopsis it may sound like Boyett warmed up the Orpheus myth with a bit of Crossroads in the microwave and retold it in a modern setting.
That would be INCORRECT. There are aspects of Orpheus and Crossroads in this story, but it is so much MORE. Boyett created his own mythology out of a plethora of the old ones and stamped Boyett all over them. New, fresh, edgy and dark, this is not your mama's mythology.
Niko is an emotionally charged character. Much like Robert Johnson, at one point, he literally loses everything in his life and the tragedy colors his music. Niko may now be rich and famous, but he is troubled, humble and damned. The only two things that he loves are his girlfriend Jemma and his music. He will literally go to Hell and back for her, and this Hell was designed by Robert Rodriguez on acid. What more could you ask for?
There are surprising moments of camaraderie, aid from unseen allies, short stark moments of beauty and humanity amidst the torment. There is even humor. The riff on Siamese cats is LYAO...
There is also driving-by-the-seat-of-your-pants adventure, heartbreak, car chases, a few classic characters, a few moderns, the best classic car, and I can't talk about anything else or spoilers will fly out.
There are three messages that ring loud and clear above it all:
Love is the strongest power in the universe.
Take responsibility, be humble and ask forgiveness
Free will is the most precious gift imaginable, and the most underrated.
In reviews, readers throw around references to Orpheus, Dante's Inferno, Virgil's Aenead, Bosch's Underworld paintings, Robert Johnson's Crossroads, but they should also include the cult of Hades, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey , the Egyptian myth of judgment, paintings of the underworld by Bruegel, the Sumerian epic poem Gilgamesh, the Twelve Labors of Heracles, Persephone, Auguste Rodin's Orpheus and Eurydyce, the epic poem The Harrowing of Christ and many others. Don't expect to find these classics in recognizable form. For example, you won't find Dante's perfectly demarcated circles of Hell with a single type of suffering for a single sin, but there will be different sections of an infinite Hell for a single sin torment, including some from the Inferno and a sighting of Virgil with his lamp. Boyett has taken, in his words, a knife, to the abundance of source material and made it his own in some uniquely extraordinary ways. His choice of torments for specific sins is ferally imaginative, downright ghastly and all his own.
Boyett takes imagery to a new level, and frankly there were two times where I wished he wasn't quite so spectacular, as I keep seeing these images as I write this review. Keep reading! The text is salted with bits of light. Just wait until you get to the aqua-eyed, stone demon that flies on filagreed wings. Now that is goodness squared.
Niko's trip through hell cannot be described without spoilers. Just buy the damned book. You'll be thanking me later ( unless you abhor violence, then stop immediately).
If you appreciate the classics, are a sucker for true love and can handle the violence without tuning it out or skipping it, you have a wonderful experience just ahead. It was deeply emotional and more uplifting than any of the descriptions or reviews hinted.
Highly Recommended!
August 6, 2020
"You ask me what it feels like to have wings. I can only tell you the feeling with words. And words have neither feelings nor wings."
This is Mortality Bridge. It is visceral beyond anything I've ever seen before, far beyond any Divine Comedy or Silent Hill or Walking Dead. At least 50% of the entire novel is a ceaseless trudge through filth, a bunch of mud piss shit blood bones exposed nerves running on fumes terror resignation.
Get used to lines like that. Commas aren't used much in Mortality Bridge. Why? It's your fate get through the words anyway.
You'll probably either love it or hate it. There were times when it was just too much for me. But what I got out of this book was some of the most vivid writing I've read in ages, modern mythmaking calling back to ancient myth, a vast and mesmerizing collection of all manner of body horror, the highs and lows of slow suicide by chemical intoxication, and an ending that actually does the story justice, in its own absurd way.
And the taxicab driver was the best co-star, despite the short screentime. It didn't surprise me when I learned that the entire book came out of a fresh idea for them. They alone are worth the price of admission.
This is Mortality Bridge. It is visceral beyond anything I've ever seen before, far beyond any Divine Comedy or Silent Hill or Walking Dead. At least 50% of the entire novel is a ceaseless trudge through filth, a bunch of mud piss shit blood bones exposed nerves running on fumes terror resignation.
Get used to lines like that. Commas aren't used much in Mortality Bridge. Why? It's your fate get through the words anyway.
You'll probably either love it or hate it. There were times when it was just too much for me. But what I got out of this book was some of the most vivid writing I've read in ages, modern mythmaking calling back to ancient myth, a vast and mesmerizing collection of all manner of body horror, the highs and lows of slow suicide by chemical intoxication, and an ending that actually does the story justice, in its own absurd way.
And the taxicab driver was the best co-star, despite the short screentime. It didn't surprise me when I learned that the entire book came out of a fresh idea for them. They alone are worth the price of admission.
December 21, 2011
If you’re planning a trip to Hell to get back your lost love, the best way to get there is by Checker Cab, because if you live in Los Angeles, the entrance to Hell is probably not where you think it is. This particular cab driver, however, knows the way and will get you there, if not without incident, at least in one piece. Welcome to the singular mind of Steve Boyett, where the souls of the dead are feathers, the torments of Hell are worse than you thought, and it just might be possible to save someone with a song.
Mortality Bridge is the story of Niko, an ex-junkie musician whose fame has come from literally making a deal with the devil (actually, an agent of the devil named Phil). After achieving success and some amount of happiness, Niko’s girlfriend Jemma falls ill and dies, and like Orpheus before him, he sets out on a journey into Hell to try to get her back. That’s the short version. In reality, Niko’s odyssey is a long, painful trip through gleefully rendered torment. As Niko proceeds through the various plains and mountains, rivers and oceans of “The Park,” as its inhabitants fondly refer to Hell, Boyett’s unrelenting descriptions of torture boggle the mind, and like being compelled to look at a car crash on the side of the road, I found myself reading certain horrible passages over and over again. At one point it occurred to me that once Niko got to where he was going, he would have to go back through it all in order to get out. (Not to worry, readers, the return trip is fairly swift.) Niko is aided along the way by a variety of Hell’s denizens, including demons and acquaintances from his past. On a speeding train we meet Nikodemus, Niko’s own demon, a strangely loveable character who embodies all of Niko’s past mistakes and is now determined to help him get home.
The story moves at breakneck speed from start to finish, punctuated by flashbacks from Niko’s past as he reminisces about his fractured relationship with Jemma, life as a drug-addled musician, and the sudden and terrible death of his brother Van. But the horror of Hell is tempered by Steve’s mastery of prose. His lovely, uncommon sentence structure is especially poignant as Niko muses on his past with Jemma:
“…in his heart he’d felt a driven nail of terror because she already loved him more than ever he would her.”
It is sentences like this that enable the reader to understand how keenly Niko feels for those he has failed. And in the background, like an unsteady pulse, Niko’s music accompanies him on his journey, as references to the blues are scattered throughout the story. (The chapter names, in fact, are all blues song titles.)
I won’t tell you what happens to Niko. You’ll just have to read Mortality Bridge for yourself. I will tell you this, however: it was worth the painful trip to Hell and back just to get to the end. Niko’s story may end on page 417, but his journey has just begun.
Mortality Bridge is the story of Niko, an ex-junkie musician whose fame has come from literally making a deal with the devil (actually, an agent of the devil named Phil). After achieving success and some amount of happiness, Niko’s girlfriend Jemma falls ill and dies, and like Orpheus before him, he sets out on a journey into Hell to try to get her back. That’s the short version. In reality, Niko’s odyssey is a long, painful trip through gleefully rendered torment. As Niko proceeds through the various plains and mountains, rivers and oceans of “The Park,” as its inhabitants fondly refer to Hell, Boyett’s unrelenting descriptions of torture boggle the mind, and like being compelled to look at a car crash on the side of the road, I found myself reading certain horrible passages over and over again. At one point it occurred to me that once Niko got to where he was going, he would have to go back through it all in order to get out. (Not to worry, readers, the return trip is fairly swift.) Niko is aided along the way by a variety of Hell’s denizens, including demons and acquaintances from his past. On a speeding train we meet Nikodemus, Niko’s own demon, a strangely loveable character who embodies all of Niko’s past mistakes and is now determined to help him get home.
The story moves at breakneck speed from start to finish, punctuated by flashbacks from Niko’s past as he reminisces about his fractured relationship with Jemma, life as a drug-addled musician, and the sudden and terrible death of his brother Van. But the horror of Hell is tempered by Steve’s mastery of prose. His lovely, uncommon sentence structure is especially poignant as Niko muses on his past with Jemma:
“…in his heart he’d felt a driven nail of terror because she already loved him more than ever he would her.”
It is sentences like this that enable the reader to understand how keenly Niko feels for those he has failed. And in the background, like an unsteady pulse, Niko’s music accompanies him on his journey, as references to the blues are scattered throughout the story. (The chapter names, in fact, are all blues song titles.)
I won’t tell you what happens to Niko. You’ll just have to read Mortality Bridge for yourself. I will tell you this, however: it was worth the painful trip to Hell and back just to get to the end. Niko’s story may end on page 417, but his journey has just begun.
December 7, 2014
Powerful, gruesome, poetic, vile
I began reading Steven Boyett when I was a teenager and he wasn’t much older than me at the time. I took a liking to his first story Ariel and never forgot him- even as I got older, even after Boyett disappeared off the face of the earth. When I rediscovered this fantastic author, I was happy to see the sequel to Ariel, blind to anything else he wrote. Now that I have read Mortality Bridge, I’m having a difficult time remembering his other work.
The good stuff… The writing is brilliant. The words themselves are living, throbbing, moving creatures that crawl off the tablet and make your skin crawl. Difficult it is to find a page or passage that is devoid of poetic construction. The story is modern and pop culture and classic and ancient. There were prominent elements of Mortality Bridge that were spot light predictable, and yet it didn’t bother me in the least. It’s the journey, not the destination. The confluence of so many legends mixing together in Boyett’s “hadeography” created their own unpredictability where I would wonder if he would borrow from Faust or Milton or throw something downright weird into the mix. Red plastic beach shovels come to mind (shudder).
The bad stuff… The descriptions were awful to read, and I have a pretty strong stomach. I would never want my kids to read this book even when they reach their teens, and I have reservations over referring a friend or family member. Hermaphroditic demons who let it all hang out, the tortured methods of Hell’s denizens, the brutality of the finality of people’s existence for all eternity.
Which leads me to Mortality Bridge’s biggest problem: who is the audience? Horror enthusiasts won’t find the boogie man or vampires or zombies they crave. Christians will balk at some (but not all) of the theological choices Boyett makes with who he sends to Hell. Atheists will scoff at the mere concept of Heaven and Hell.
However a book’s rating should not suffer because of an unsure audience. The novel needs to stand or fall on its own merits, and there are many which lift Mortality Bridge high indeed. From the tragic meeting with Sam to the never-said-but-clearly-shown reason for the Drop, Niko’s painful journey is difficult to dislodge from memory.
P.S. While not a Christian story by any stretch, if Hell is half as bad as Steven Boyett depicts, this book will scare just about anyone into seeking salvation.
I began reading Steven Boyett when I was a teenager and he wasn’t much older than me at the time. I took a liking to his first story Ariel and never forgot him- even as I got older, even after Boyett disappeared off the face of the earth. When I rediscovered this fantastic author, I was happy to see the sequel to Ariel, blind to anything else he wrote. Now that I have read Mortality Bridge, I’m having a difficult time remembering his other work.
The good stuff… The writing is brilliant. The words themselves are living, throbbing, moving creatures that crawl off the tablet and make your skin crawl. Difficult it is to find a page or passage that is devoid of poetic construction. The story is modern and pop culture and classic and ancient. There were prominent elements of Mortality Bridge that were spot light predictable, and yet it didn’t bother me in the least. It’s the journey, not the destination. The confluence of so many legends mixing together in Boyett’s “hadeography” created their own unpredictability where I would wonder if he would borrow from Faust or Milton or throw something downright weird into the mix. Red plastic beach shovels come to mind (shudder).
The bad stuff… The descriptions were awful to read, and I have a pretty strong stomach. I would never want my kids to read this book even when they reach their teens, and I have reservations over referring a friend or family member. Hermaphroditic demons who let it all hang out, the tortured methods of Hell’s denizens, the brutality of the finality of people’s existence for all eternity.
Which leads me to Mortality Bridge’s biggest problem: who is the audience? Horror enthusiasts won’t find the boogie man or vampires or zombies they crave. Christians will balk at some (but not all) of the theological choices Boyett makes with who he sends to Hell. Atheists will scoff at the mere concept of Heaven and Hell.
However a book’s rating should not suffer because of an unsure audience. The novel needs to stand or fall on its own merits, and there are many which lift Mortality Bridge high indeed. From the tragic meeting with Sam to the never-said-but-clearly-shown reason for the Drop, Niko’s painful journey is difficult to dislodge from memory.
P.S. While not a Christian story by any stretch, if Hell is half as bad as Steven Boyett depicts, this book will scare just about anyone into seeking salvation.
May 20, 2015
I like Steven R. Boyett's writing in general (although I have *feelings* about the end of Ariel...) and this one doesn't disappoint.
A modern retelling of both Orpheus and Eurydice and Dante's Inferno with hints of Robert Johnson and other musicians with hell-given talents, Mortality Bridge is a young man making the Cthonic voyage to save the soul of his lover.
In this case, Niko - a rocker and bluesman with substance abuse issues - entered a deal with the Devil in order to kick his addictions. Unfortunately he discovers too late that his deal doesn't just include *his* soul, but the soul of his lover as well. When she suddenly develops a mysterious and incurable disease, he realizes that the agents are calling in their marker early... and there's nothing he can do about it.
Or is there?
Part of what makes Mortality Bridge work is the way it plays not just on expectations but on the rhythm and pacing of storytelling. There's a distinct lyrical quality to the writing - appropriate enough, considering the subject - and a number of hidden sly gems in the text. After all, how are you not going to grin a little when you catch snippets like "out in the cold distance, a wild cat began to growl" embedded in a chapter titled "All Along The Watchtower"? But like any song, you have the uptempo moments, the flats, the bridges etc.
Part of what makes the story work is that it acknowledges that this is the latest in a long series of "escape from hell" narratives; Niko is a new story for an old soul and it's pointed out that every hell-bound dealer tries to wiggle out of the deal in the same way and fuck it up in the end. And it resonates - Niko's a junkie after all, and a junkie's life is punctuated by times that he or she promises to get right but fails again and again and again. So why should it be any different when he's trying to pull an innocent soul out of hell?
It plays with genres, alternating between Corman-esque b-movie butt-rocking soundtracks of car chases through hell to quieter moments of introspection to visceral horror... but it all works. It's a strange, Bosch-ian Hell that still has it's own internal logic if you can see it. And even when you suspect you know how things are going to end, you *still* get caught up in the tension.
That's the mark of a great story. Loved this.
A modern retelling of both Orpheus and Eurydice and Dante's Inferno with hints of Robert Johnson and other musicians with hell-given talents, Mortality Bridge is a young man making the Cthonic voyage to save the soul of his lover.
In this case, Niko - a rocker and bluesman with substance abuse issues - entered a deal with the Devil in order to kick his addictions. Unfortunately he discovers too late that his deal doesn't just include *his* soul, but the soul of his lover as well. When she suddenly develops a mysterious and incurable disease, he realizes that the agents are calling in their marker early... and there's nothing he can do about it.
Or is there?
Part of what makes Mortality Bridge work is the way it plays not just on expectations but on the rhythm and pacing of storytelling. There's a distinct lyrical quality to the writing - appropriate enough, considering the subject - and a number of hidden sly gems in the text. After all, how are you not going to grin a little when you catch snippets like "out in the cold distance, a wild cat began to growl" embedded in a chapter titled "All Along The Watchtower"? But like any song, you have the uptempo moments, the flats, the bridges etc.
Part of what makes the story work is that it acknowledges that this is the latest in a long series of "escape from hell" narratives; Niko is a new story for an old soul and it's pointed out that every hell-bound dealer tries to wiggle out of the deal in the same way and fuck it up in the end. And it resonates - Niko's a junkie after all, and a junkie's life is punctuated by times that he or she promises to get right but fails again and again and again. So why should it be any different when he's trying to pull an innocent soul out of hell?
It plays with genres, alternating between Corman-esque b-movie butt-rocking soundtracks of car chases through hell to quieter moments of introspection to visceral horror... but it all works. It's a strange, Bosch-ian Hell that still has it's own internal logic if you can see it. And even when you suspect you know how things are going to end, you *still* get caught up in the tension.
That's the mark of a great story. Loved this.
April 5, 2014
Picture Orpheus, Faustus ,Dante, and Niven and Pournelle's "Inferno" as written by Stephen King's twisted younger brother and you'll be close to Mortality Bridge .The prose is strong enough that I keep highlighting paragraphs.....and yet it's filled with a sense of disgust that will make you cringe. And every once in awhile you'll laugh out loud at the absurdity....You should read this book! It will stay with you long after you read the final page
September 9, 2011
There is a lot of good prose here, but not really enough story or new ideas to make it worth my time. We're talking about basically the Orpheus story. And it isn't even a surprise. The author keeps reminding you that it is the Orpheus story. It is a new take and style, but I want new ideas, not new styles.
January 10, 2015
Unoriginal, and uninspired. This was a chore for me to read, the only reason I made myself finish it was because it was a bookclub selection, so I felt obligated to. This was a much more interesting book when it was Dante's Inferno.
May 28, 2013
I couldn't finish it. Too much description for my taste
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December 8, 2020I was so excited when I saw a new book out by Boyett. Years and years of silence, then two new novels within a year! I loved Ariel, and was happy to read the end of the saga in Elegy Beach, but this latest just wasn't my cup of tea, as they say.
The book blurb on the slipcover says "...remixes Orpheus, Dante, Faust, the Crossroads legend, and more..." It did, indeed. The story is about a rock guitarist named Niko, who makes a deal with the devil, selling his soul for stardom, and being cured of his substance addiction problems (not sure whether that was a side effect or actual clause in the contract). But the fine print allows the devil to take anyone in Niko's family's soul as well. Probably seemed like a good idea at the time, as he'd already lost his only brother in a car wreck, and his parents were long gone.
So, when the woman he loves, Jemma, dies of lingering cancer, her soul is whisked away and Niko attempts to bargain at first, but when that is unsuccessful, he journeys into the underworld to win her back from that land of pain and suffering.
There were some interesting touches, like crossing over into Hell in a black taxi cab, and witty dialog with demons, on occasion, but for the most part it's a horribly depressing and brutal tale of depravity and graphic torture of the souls in Hell. I got about halfway through before I stopped caring what happens to Niko. If you like dark, brooding, black humor, this might be a good read.
The book blurb on the slipcover says "...remixes Orpheus, Dante, Faust, the Crossroads legend, and more..." It did, indeed. The story is about a rock guitarist named Niko, who makes a deal with the devil, selling his soul for stardom, and being cured of his substance addiction problems (not sure whether that was a side effect or actual clause in the contract). But the fine print allows the devil to take anyone in Niko's family's soul as well. Probably seemed like a good idea at the time, as he'd already lost his only brother in a car wreck, and his parents were long gone.
So, when the woman he loves, Jemma, dies of lingering cancer, her soul is whisked away and Niko attempts to bargain at first, but when that is unsuccessful, he journeys into the underworld to win her back from that land of pain and suffering.
There were some interesting touches, like crossing over into Hell in a black taxi cab, and witty dialog with demons, on occasion, but for the most part it's a horribly depressing and brutal tale of depravity and graphic torture of the souls in Hell. I got about halfway through before I stopped caring what happens to Niko. If you like dark, brooding, black humor, this might be a good read.
October 27, 2020
Not all that great a retelling of Dante's Inferno.
April 8, 2021
Hard to put down
A bit depressing but well written I am not sure if I would read the author again description of hell a bit gross
A bit depressing but well written I am not sure if I would read the author again description of hell a bit gross
November 5, 2025
My first six-star read of the year. I’m walking away from Mortality Bridge feeling wrecked, changed, and a little empty without it 😭🫠
This book doesn’t just tell a story, it drags you through it. Beneath all the horror and decay, there’s this raw, heartbreaking truth about love and what we’d sacrifice to hold onto it.
It’s not an easy read, but it’s unforgettable. I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking about it. And I’m so thankful my Dad held onto his signed copy from many years ago and thought I’d enjoy it. Otherwise, I doubt I’d ever have heard about this masterpiece.
This book doesn’t just tell a story, it drags you through it. Beneath all the horror and decay, there’s this raw, heartbreaking truth about love and what we’d sacrifice to hold onto it.
It’s not an easy read, but it’s unforgettable. I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking about it. And I’m so thankful my Dad held onto his signed copy from many years ago and thought I’d enjoy it. Otherwise, I doubt I’d ever have heard about this masterpiece.
June 17, 2013
Never have I experienced such a journey like this one. Without giving any spoilers, this story is about a rocker who sells his soul to become a superstar. His girl dies, goes to hell and he feels like that wasn’t part of the deal so he goes into hell to get her back.
What happens is a gory, vivid, detailed roller-coaster ride of an adventure in a world that combines tons of different stories and genres. You have biblical stuff, Greek mythology, Dante and lots of other stuff combined to get something that really tugs at your emotions. As you learn about the main character, Niko, you see him develop and his motives change as he goes deeper into what awaits. And man, when he gets there, you won’t see it coming. At all.
The characters are interesting and some can be weirdly empathized with. As you first pick up the book, you probably think you’ve heard the story line before, but the author is careful to create an original story based on an old classic storyline. If you are a squeamish reader, this will probably go beyond your limits as the detail can be pretty grotesque and perverse. Nothing is left out in the horrors that go on in the underworld on a massive scale. The author does a great job at describing the vastness of pure agony. The various forms of suffering is strangely creative and imaginative.
The whole time i read it and the more I learned about the character through flashbacks, I really wanted him to succeed. As the end of the story closes, the desperation of wanting that success gets more intense. The end is something I would’ve never guessed, but I am really impressed and I’m left wanting more. A very good read if you like horror and/or adventure. Steven R. Boyett has created a masterpiece here.
What happens is a gory, vivid, detailed roller-coaster ride of an adventure in a world that combines tons of different stories and genres. You have biblical stuff, Greek mythology, Dante and lots of other stuff combined to get something that really tugs at your emotions. As you learn about the main character, Niko, you see him develop and his motives change as he goes deeper into what awaits. And man, when he gets there, you won’t see it coming. At all.
The characters are interesting and some can be weirdly empathized with. As you first pick up the book, you probably think you’ve heard the story line before, but the author is careful to create an original story based on an old classic storyline. If you are a squeamish reader, this will probably go beyond your limits as the detail can be pretty grotesque and perverse. Nothing is left out in the horrors that go on in the underworld on a massive scale. The author does a great job at describing the vastness of pure agony. The various forms of suffering is strangely creative and imaginative.
The whole time i read it and the more I learned about the character through flashbacks, I really wanted him to succeed. As the end of the story closes, the desperation of wanting that success gets more intense. The end is something I would’ve never guessed, but I am really impressed and I’m left wanting more. A very good read if you like horror and/or adventure. Steven R. Boyett has created a masterpiece here.
July 27, 2014
What motivates a demon? One problem with modern retellings of the classics is that they have to face the fact that Hell is a silly concept. An embarrassing, pathetic, shameful human idea that we really should just get over. Mortality Bridge doesn't address this. In fact it savors Hell, spending hundreds of pages describing agonies and senseless suffering. Boyett seems to relish the idea of billions of souls condemned to eternal pain merely for having had their brains wired a certain way during their mortal lives. He seems to enjoy inventing gruesome punishments and describing them in extreme detail. No reasons are given for being condemned: Niko encounters many generally-considered-as-good, none of whom know why. This Hell contains even young children. What mind other than a human one could conceive of that?
I kept reading because there were glimmers of hope: occasional signs of compassion and kindness. I hoped those were hints of a rewarding resolution of the this-has-always-just-been-in-you variety or just anything unexpected. No such luck. The finale is just yet more superstition dressed in modern clothing.
Boyett'sOrpheus Niko is tiresome. A superhero Mary Sue: guitar hero, kung-fu fighter, noble gentleman, able to walk for miles on shredded feet and no caloric intake, to outrun and outwit all challenges. Dabbed with faint tempera-paint flaws that are only shown in past tense as contrast to how friggin' awesome he is now. Convenient Deus(Diabolo?) ex Machina every chapter or two with (eventually) the shallowest of explanations.
The writing is often lovely: well tuned, vivid, meticulously crafted. It's just, well, the content. It's not worth it. At least not if you share my sensibilities.
I kept reading because there were glimmers of hope: occasional signs of compassion and kindness. I hoped those were hints of a rewarding resolution of the this-has-always-just-been-in-you variety or just anything unexpected. No such luck. The finale is just yet more superstition dressed in modern clothing.
Boyett's
The writing is often lovely: well tuned, vivid, meticulously crafted. It's just, well, the content. It's not worth it. At least not if you share my sensibilities.
September 6, 2013
It's an interesting mashup: Orpheus, Dante, Milton, a few others, all thrown into a blender and poured out raw, bloody and mangled.
The central premise is a modern retelling of the Orpheus myth using an anti-hero version of Orpheus (a modern rock idol who literally sold his soul for fame and glory, yada yada...).
I spent most of the book trying to decide whether I could get behind Niko or not.
It drags through Hell. Literally. This part of the book goes on foreeeeeeever, massively over-descriptive the whole way. That part reminds me of the interminable emo-camping segment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: I felt like I had to put up with it to get to the (better) rest of the book which followed.
I'll say that it starts well, drags badly in the middle, and ends better than I feared it would while in the middle of the hell-slogging.
I don't think I'd read this one more than once, but I don't consider reading it to have been a waste of time.
The central premise is a modern retelling of the Orpheus myth using an anti-hero version of Orpheus (a modern rock idol who literally sold his soul for fame and glory, yada yada...).
I spent most of the book trying to decide whether I could get behind Niko or not.
It drags through Hell. Literally. This part of the book goes on foreeeeeeever, massively over-descriptive the whole way. That part reminds me of the interminable emo-camping segment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: I felt like I had to put up with it to get to the (better) rest of the book which followed.
I'll say that it starts well, drags badly in the middle, and ends better than I feared it would while in the middle of the hell-slogging.
I don't think I'd read this one more than once, but I don't consider reading it to have been a waste of time.
September 18, 2014
Adaptation, of sorts, of Orpheus in the Underworld. Guitarist Niko makes a deal with the devil and becomes a world famous musician. But the price is more than he wants to pay. The devil (through his negotiator Phil), takes Niko's girlfriend, Jemma's soul because she is considered chattel under the contract. Niko goes to hell to reclaim it. That's the nutshell. The book itself is mostly a portrayal of what Niko finds in hell; I can just imagine Boyett and his friends sitting around a campfire trying to fit punishments to crimes, then putting them all down in the book. Based on this story, not sure who actually gets to go to heaven...
December 27, 2011
I struggle to find words that aptly describe this work that Boyett has crafted. His way with words is superb throughout, a perfect poetry of prose that drew me in to feel the narrator's many raw emotions on his roller coaster ride through his own personal hell. And while at many times the sadistic scenes described were overly revolting, the language used drew me ever on. If you can stomach such, it is a ride worth taking.
January 3, 2015
Interesting take on a combination of myths. The author has clearly thought a lot about what hell might be like. Maybe too much. A minor weakness of the book is there is no clear understanding of what causes a soul to end up in hell vs. heaven, just that a lot more people end up in hell.
Fairly enjoyable.
Fairly enjoyable.
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