What do you think?
Rate this book
Hades #1
Letters from Hades
A man awakens in Hell where he is schooled in the ways of the damned. And once educated, he is released to wander Hell on his own. He journeys from one city to the next, dodging demon patrols and avenging angels hunting the damned for sport. Along the way to the city of Oblivion, he discovers a band of rebellious damned have left a tortured and beautiful demon to rot. He rescues her and sets in motion a series of events that could lead to the final battle between Heaven and Hell, angel and demon, demon and damned. LETTERS FROM HADES is a travelogue of Hell - a world not that far from the very world we live in now. It is a story of rebellion, a story of love and a story of hope and rebirth set in a beautifully dark and textured world brought to brilliant life by Jeffrey Thomas, the acclaimed author of PUNKTOWN.LETTERS FROM HADES is packed with over 30 scratchboard illustrations by Erik Wilson.
Paperback
First published March 1, 2003
5 people are currently reading
322 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey Thomas
245 books278 followersJeffrey Thomas is an American author of weird fiction, the creator of the acclaimed setting Punktown. Books in the Punktown universe include the short story collections Punktown, Voices from Punktown, Punktown: Shades of Grey (with his brother, Scott Thomas), and Ghosts of Punktown. Novels in that setting include Deadstock, Blue War, Monstrocity, Health Agent, Everybody Scream!, Red Cells, and The New God. Thomas’s other short story collections include The Unnamed Country, Gods of a Nameless Country, The Endless Fall, Haunted Worlds, Worship the Night, Thirteen Specimens, Nocturnal Emissions, Doomsdays, Terror Incognita, Unholy Dimensions, AAAIIIEEE!!!, Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood, Carrion Men, Voices from Hades, The Return of Enoch Coffin, and Entering Gosston. His other novels include The American, Boneland, Subject 11, Letters From Hades, The Fall of Hades, The Exploded Soul, The Nought, Thought Forms, Beyond the Door, Lost in Darkness, and A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers.
His work has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII (editor Karl Edward Wagner), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14 (editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction #1 (editors Laird Barron and Michael Kelly). At NecronomiCon 2024 Thomas received the Robert Bloch Award for his contributions to weird fiction.
Though he considers Viet Nam his second home, Thomas lives in Massachusetts.
His work has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII (editor Karl Edward Wagner), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14 (editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction #1 (editors Laird Barron and Michael Kelly). At NecronomiCon 2024 Thomas received the Robert Bloch Award for his contributions to weird fiction.
Though he considers Viet Nam his second home, Thomas lives in Massachusetts.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
May 2, 2024
"Don’t I get anything more to do or say?" she grumbled.
"You just did," I told her.
There. She’s finished.
And for now, so am I.
"You just did," I told her.
There. She’s finished.
And for now, so am I.
February 12, 2008
I absolutely loved this book. Let me tell you, though, I don't think it is going to make its Christian readers really happy.
The first line in this book is "On my fifth day in Hell, I found a praying mantis." From that moment on I was hooked & pretty much didn't leave the book until I'd finished it.
plot summary:
Written in journal format, the narator of the story is a recent newcomer to Hell via suicide and because he was an agnostic. But this is not the hell you learned about in Sunday School, folks. As the book opens, our young narrator is just finishing up Avernus University, the starting point for souls newly arrived in Hell. (As a sidebar, Avernus is another name for either the entrance to the underworld or for Hell itself.)
After his education, the narrator is released and must roam Hell. He is told about a city named Oblivion, and it is there that he heads. In Hell, the souls all have jobs; they have to pay rent, pay for food, and can even buy prostitutes. There are prisons, jails & cafes there too. On his journey, and during his time in Oblivion, where he rents a flat & has a steady job, he comes to the realization that good and evil aren't so far apart -- that there are compassionate demons & there are sadistic angels. Furthermore, the narrator also realizes that there really is no Satan. Demons yes, devils no. I won't say any more because it would wreck the rest of book.
I thought this book was great. I'll probably read it again, since I'm sure that I missed something this time around.
I highly recommend it to anyone who likes dark fantasy.
The first line in this book is "On my fifth day in Hell, I found a praying mantis." From that moment on I was hooked & pretty much didn't leave the book until I'd finished it.
plot summary:
Written in journal format, the narator of the story is a recent newcomer to Hell via suicide and because he was an agnostic. But this is not the hell you learned about in Sunday School, folks. As the book opens, our young narrator is just finishing up Avernus University, the starting point for souls newly arrived in Hell. (As a sidebar, Avernus is another name for either the entrance to the underworld or for Hell itself.)
After his education, the narrator is released and must roam Hell. He is told about a city named Oblivion, and it is there that he heads. In Hell, the souls all have jobs; they have to pay rent, pay for food, and can even buy prostitutes. There are prisons, jails & cafes there too. On his journey, and during his time in Oblivion, where he rents a flat & has a steady job, he comes to the realization that good and evil aren't so far apart -- that there are compassionate demons & there are sadistic angels. Furthermore, the narrator also realizes that there really is no Satan. Demons yes, devils no. I won't say any more because it would wreck the rest of book.
I thought this book was great. I'll probably read it again, since I'm sure that I missed something this time around.
I highly recommend it to anyone who likes dark fantasy.
April 24, 2010
This has now become my favorite book! Ever!
While reading this book it made me want to go to church because if hell is anything like Jeffrey Thomas describes it, I don't want to be there!
I love it!
While reading this book it made me want to go to church because if hell is anything like Jeffrey Thomas describes it, I don't want to be there!
I love it!
June 29, 2019
It's not often a book begins with its protagonist having killed himself with a shotgun blast...especially where the rest of the narrative is not a flashback of his death foretold. But then Jeffrey Thomas is not your everyday author. Into his several short story collections and novellas, Thomas has infused a unique fevered imagination. Tinged, yes, by classic and popular dystopian fiction and movie culture, but not derivative. If Worship the Night was a wonderful contemporary homage to the spirit of H.P. Lovecraft and Boneland a terrific piece of futu-noir à la Philip K Dick, Letters from Hades is a mucho fine attempt at epic action fantasy without the bloat associated with most works of that ilk.
Of course, it is not immediately apparent. For a good while, our protagonist is a lonely newcomer in Thomas' rendition of Hell, a world that draws on Dante's Inferno, with heaped helpings of smoke-and-engine-oil steampunk and a healthy spoonful of Guillermo Del Toro style baroque horror. Our hero (never named) starts at Avernus - the portal to Hell - as one of the Damned. Subjected to soul crushing labor and squirm-inducing tortures by their demon warders, the damned are cursed to never die - even if grossly mutilated, their body parts grow back with all the associated pain for them to once more go through the cycle of unimaginable agonies. The biggest struggle the hero faces is to retain his humanity in the face of all he must undergo. He keeps a diary of his experiences (which serves as our chronicle) in a book that houses as punishment the eye of another damned with whom he develops a sympathetic understanding.
Sympathy is what distinguishes our hero and drives his actions. At one point when making his way through a hostile alien jungle, he rescues a demoness from death by a group of the damned, a deed that will trigger further consequences. He eventually reaches the city of Oblivion (some whiff of influence from China Mieville's Bas-Lag?) and discovers that Hell is not much different from a seedy version of Earth. Thomas covers in some loving detail the industrial yet almost sentient architecture of Oblivion, and you can almost smell the rust and toxic fumes. There he once again meets with the demoness he rescued and the aforementioned 'further consequences' are set into motion. Without going into spoiler territory, I can say Thomas sets off a powder keg of incendiary action with a literal war between demons, angels and the damned, our hero and his demoness in the midst of it.
Letters from Hades does not aspire to be high art. The interracial (or inter-species) romance is more mainstream than how Mieville would have dealt with it, and the depiction of angels in Hell as bike-ridin' shotgun-totin' toughies is a little on the nose. But what it is, is a thrilling ride with some terrific horror and action set-pieces, brisk to the point of breathless with an ending that simply begs for more. The book would make for a kickass blockbuster film if Hollywood were visionary enough to fund Jeffrey Thomas' imagination for, say, the price of your average Marvel Studios product. Perhaps Mr. Del Toro can be convinced to helm?
Of course, it is not immediately apparent. For a good while, our protagonist is a lonely newcomer in Thomas' rendition of Hell, a world that draws on Dante's Inferno, with heaped helpings of smoke-and-engine-oil steampunk and a healthy spoonful of Guillermo Del Toro style baroque horror. Our hero (never named) starts at Avernus - the portal to Hell - as one of the Damned. Subjected to soul crushing labor and squirm-inducing tortures by their demon warders, the damned are cursed to never die - even if grossly mutilated, their body parts grow back with all the associated pain for them to once more go through the cycle of unimaginable agonies. The biggest struggle the hero faces is to retain his humanity in the face of all he must undergo. He keeps a diary of his experiences (which serves as our chronicle) in a book that houses as punishment the eye of another damned with whom he develops a sympathetic understanding.
Sympathy is what distinguishes our hero and drives his actions. At one point when making his way through a hostile alien jungle, he rescues a demoness from death by a group of the damned, a deed that will trigger further consequences. He eventually reaches the city of Oblivion (some whiff of influence from China Mieville's Bas-Lag?) and discovers that Hell is not much different from a seedy version of Earth. Thomas covers in some loving detail the industrial yet almost sentient architecture of Oblivion, and you can almost smell the rust and toxic fumes. There he once again meets with the demoness he rescued and the aforementioned 'further consequences' are set into motion. Without going into spoiler territory, I can say Thomas sets off a powder keg of incendiary action with a literal war between demons, angels and the damned, our hero and his demoness in the midst of it.
Letters from Hades does not aspire to be high art. The interracial (or inter-species) romance is more mainstream than how Mieville would have dealt with it, and the depiction of angels in Hell as bike-ridin' shotgun-totin' toughies is a little on the nose. But what it is, is a thrilling ride with some terrific horror and action set-pieces, brisk to the point of breathless with an ending that simply begs for more. The book would make for a kickass blockbuster film if Hollywood were visionary enough to fund Jeffrey Thomas' imagination for, say, the price of your average Marvel Studios product. Perhaps Mr. Del Toro can be convinced to helm?
November 16, 2008
This is one of the bitterest and most brilliant explorations of Hell going. The Hell in question is a fundamentalist Hell, not Dante's, and the Heaven that the Saved inhabit is the sort of neon-and-plastic Las Vegas clone that too many of the fundamentalist rank-and-file aspire to. The narrator of the story is a man who died fairly young. He finds himself in a place that is not only merciless, but designed by a sadistic madman with maximum torment in mind, not justice. Struggling to avoid the worst of it, he meets and falls in love with a demoness who, like the other nonhuman residents of this crazy Hell, has a freedom that none of the human inhabitants does. By a miracle, she reciprocates his love, and they run off together, to a part of Hell that is utterly remote from Hell's centers of government and torment. Just before doing so, he wraps up the journal he has been keeping throughout, revealing that he has deliberately mis-identified everyone and everything in the journal so that whoever finds and reads it can't betray him or his love to the authorities. This story is full of intriguing details and unexpected twists and turns, e.g., at one point the narrator is temporarily jailed because he can't produce an ID card, and while incarcerated discovers that he is sharing a wing of the jail with a badly brain-damaged, crazy old man who just might be God Himself, somehow fallen to this low estate. Not a reassuring read, but a marvelous one.
January 18, 2009
Yet another satisfying trip down that particular rabbit hole that leads to hell. A great story and well written in an easily digestible and delightful manner. This author really has the ability to pull you in and paints a very dark and bleak picture of hell, but really entertains with the bits of light that is cast as well.
April 13, 2017
The Hades setting is my favorite of Thomas's, and this is my favorite book in the setting. Like lot of the author's stories, the inclination is to categorize this as horror, but at it's core it's probably best described as a love story in a really, really fucked up setting.
December 8, 2017
Entirely Twisted
Gives new meaning to that old bumper sticker, "We're Saved. You're Damned." Extrapolated to the nth degree ... Thomas delivers supreme, wonderful surrealism of the very best kind.
Gives new meaning to that old bumper sticker, "We're Saved. You're Damned." Extrapolated to the nth degree ... Thomas delivers supreme, wonderful surrealism of the very best kind.
June 11, 2007
Chilling and fun tour of hell.
June 2, 2010
Great book! Very interesting premise, probably not for the fundamentalist crowd, tho'
November 1, 2013
Ich muss zugeben, ich habe mir dieses Buch aus zwei Gründen gekauft: 1. Der Verlag und 2. das Cover.
Ich war nach dem Lesen dieses Buches so begeistert! In der Tradition von Schriftstellern wie Jules Verne geschrieben...
Ich war nach dem Lesen dieses Buches so begeistert! In der Tradition von Schriftstellern wie Jules Verne geschrieben...
April 12, 2016
Sacrilegi-delicious!
I made the mistake of picking this book as bedtime reading. I barely slept; not for the horror, but rather because I was unable to STOP READING.
I made the mistake of picking this book as bedtime reading. I barely slept; not for the horror, but rather because I was unable to STOP READING.
January 30, 2025
The author is an underrated genius. The book is subversive, horrific, and comical - all at the same. It's a journey through hell, peppered with critique of religion, social norms, racism, etc. It's so multi layered that it's hard to know where to start talking about this book.
It's perhaps not as off the charts crazy as Punktown is, but that's what makes this more digestible - bringing the author's talent to bear. I highly recommend to anyone who likes steampunk - fans of Paul Di Filippo, China Miéville, and Jeff VanderMeer will love this book.
It's perhaps not as off the charts crazy as Punktown is, but that's what makes this more digestible - bringing the author's talent to bear. I highly recommend to anyone who likes steampunk - fans of Paul Di Filippo, China Miéville, and Jeff VanderMeer will love this book.
December 27, 2025
The world building is intricate and vivid but I was hoping for more of an exploration of hell… when it pivoted into romance with a demon it lost me. Almost a DNF but I was too far in to stop. I may read more from this author but I’ll definitely look deep into the content prior.
dnf
March 24, 2025Never got truly started. Culled b/c I wanna spend my time on bigger stuff. Could return one day.
December 4, 2012
Ever since I read Larry Niven's Inferno in my early teens, I've been fascinated by books which depict Hell and Demons. Some books that stand out are Larry Niven's aforementioned book, Wayne Barlowe's God's Demon, Anne Rice's Memnoch The Devil,and Piers Anthony's On A Pale Horse.
Thus it was with some excitement that I approached Letters From Hades, and the early chapters lived up to my hopes. One enjoyable aspect of descriptions of Hell tends to be the minutiae of environmental detail - Hell tends to be both familiar and horrifically warped and is an opportunity for an author's imagination to run wild.
However, the story quickly manages to turn from the fantastical journey of the main character across the landscape of Hell, into the rather mundane surroundings of "normal" city living and employment. I found this really bogged the middle of the story down and killed off the magic; I started dwelling on the inconsistencies and plot holes of how normal life could exist in suc ha place.
The relationship between the narrator and the demon Chara develops along an interesting idea but I don't feel it is ever realised to it's potential and lacks depth and detail.
The fallout from the rebellion in Oblivion again raises many interesting ideas, but the book ends abruptly without exploring these.
I feel Jeffrey Thomas had some cool ideas, but missed so many opportunities to really develop this into a great story with lots of substance. In the end, it was a quick read that felt somewhat glossed over and lacking depth.
I would recommend Wayne Barlowe's novel for someone wanting a similar flavour story, but with more depth.
Thus it was with some excitement that I approached Letters From Hades, and the early chapters lived up to my hopes. One enjoyable aspect of descriptions of Hell tends to be the minutiae of environmental detail - Hell tends to be both familiar and horrifically warped and is an opportunity for an author's imagination to run wild.
However, the story quickly manages to turn from the fantastical journey of the main character across the landscape of Hell, into the rather mundane surroundings of "normal" city living and employment. I found this really bogged the middle of the story down and killed off the magic; I started dwelling on the inconsistencies and plot holes of how normal life could exist in suc ha place.
The relationship between the narrator and the demon Chara develops along an interesting idea but I don't feel it is ever realised to it's potential and lacks depth and detail.
The fallout from the rebellion in Oblivion again raises many interesting ideas, but the book ends abruptly without exploring these.
I feel Jeffrey Thomas had some cool ideas, but missed so many opportunities to really develop this into a great story with lots of substance. In the end, it was a quick read that felt somewhat glossed over and lacking depth.
I would recommend Wayne Barlowe's novel for someone wanting a similar flavour story, but with more depth.
September 1, 2025
I’m writing this review quite a while after finishing the book, but I felt compelled to put some thoughts down today because it really stuck with me. I really enjoyed it. The depiction of hell here was so cool (pun intended) and unique. Without getting into spoilers, if you want to read about day-to-day life in hell, a fascinating and unusual world setting, this is the book for you.
The storyline was good, but for me the real highlight was the worldbuilding. I wouldn’t say I’d want to spend time there, but the take on life in hell was so interesting that it has stayed with me long after reading. That alone, to me, is a sign of a good book. I definitely recommend checking this one out!
The storyline was good, but for me the real highlight was the worldbuilding. I wouldn’t say I’d want to spend time there, but the take on life in hell was so interesting that it has stayed with me long after reading. That alone, to me, is a sign of a good book. I definitely recommend checking this one out!
June 18, 2016
A travelogue - 87 days in Hades (read 'Hell' but without Satan. Interesting? Yes - and reminds me that I have other Thomas work to read... (And should probably also have another go at Dante, for comparison).
This is the lettered edition (T), leather bound, slipcased with a volume of the illustrations by Erik Williams (and with an additional story by Thomas - The Abandoned), The Art of Hades (no separate ISBN - 74 pages) which I read on June 9. The main volume includes the short story ( 'Coffee Break', rather different) that was the jumping-off point for the novel.
This is the lettered edition (T), leather bound, slipcased with a volume of the illustrations by Erik Williams (and with an additional story by Thomas - The Abandoned), The Art of Hades (no separate ISBN - 74 pages) which I read on June 9. The main volume includes the short story ( 'Coffee Break', rather different) that was the jumping-off point for the novel.
October 9, 2008
Jeff Thomas is always a great read but I prefer his work set in Punktown.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews