What do you think?
Hell on Earth
FINALIST: 2026 American Book Fest Legacy Book Awards
Ten years ago, the sky turned black. Now it is 2023, warlocks keep the peace, and Hell is not a metaphor. It is a borough of London.
London is a nation state where warlocks keep the peace and humans share power with creatures from another dimension. Detective Superintendent Dougie Randall leads Murder Squad Number Five. His investigation into a serial killer will uncover interlocking conspiracies that reach into the highest levels of both human and Hell Dimension power.
Lavie Tidhar (World Fantasy Award winner): I adore everything Philip writes, and am delighted to introduce you to his magical madness.
John Jarrold, Agent and Editor: Hell on Earth is brilliant: horrific, gripping and darkly humorous.
Ten years ago, the sky turned black. Now it is 2023, warlocks keep the peace, and Hell is not a metaphor. It is a borough of London.
London is a nation state where warlocks keep the peace and humans share power with creatures from another dimension. Detective Superintendent Dougie Randall leads Murder Squad Number Five. His investigation into a serial killer will uncover interlocking conspiracies that reach into the highest levels of both human and Hell Dimension power.
Lavie Tidhar (World Fantasy Award winner): I adore everything Philip writes, and am delighted to introduce you to his magical madness.
John Jarrold, Agent and Editor: Hell on Earth is brilliant: horrific, gripping and darkly humorous.
638 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 2017
About the author
Philip Palmer
51 books59 followersPhilip Palmer is a British science fiction and fantasy novelist and an award-winning screenwriter and radio dramatist whose credits include productions for the BBC starring Iain McDiarmid and Simon Russell Beale.
His novels blend dark humour, genre-bending world-building, and relentless plot momentum. Hell on Earth, his alternate-London crime thriller set in a world where Hell is literally a borough, was named a Finalist in the 2026 American Book Fest Legacy Book Awards. Lavie Tidhar (World Fantasy Award winner) calls his work 'magical madness', and agent and editor John Jarrold calls Hell on Earth 'brilliant: horrific, gripping and darkly humorous'.
His other books include the SF thriller Version 43, the space opera Hell Ship, the novella Morpho, the horror novella Murder of the Heart, and the magical realist thriller The Great West Wood.
Readers who love China Mieville, Ben Aaronovitch, or dark British urban fantasy will find a new favourite here.
His novels blend dark humour, genre-bending world-building, and relentless plot momentum. Hell on Earth, his alternate-London crime thriller set in a world where Hell is literally a borough, was named a Finalist in the 2026 American Book Fest Legacy Book Awards. Lavie Tidhar (World Fantasy Award winner) calls his work 'magical madness', and agent and editor John Jarrold calls Hell on Earth 'brilliant: horrific, gripping and darkly humorous'.
His other books include the SF thriller Version 43, the space opera Hell Ship, the novella Morpho, the horror novella Murder of the Heart, and the magical realist thriller The Great West Wood.
Readers who love China Mieville, Ben Aaronovitch, or dark British urban fantasy will find a new favourite here.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 13, 2017
A brilliant tale. At over 800 pages, it's a long haul, but worth it. London is suddenly overtaken with demons and the resurrected dead, Warlocks come out of the shadows and negotiate a peace. The Demons are confined the City of London, but some are allowed to into the rest of greater London, under license. That's the setting for this detective/thriller fantasy. As usual, in a crisis, the inhabitants of that great city take it in their stride and continue with their lives. The demons and the resurrected insinuated themselves in every walk of life, even crime. That where Dougie Randal steps in. He's the head of Murder Squad Three, in the East End, with a backlog on unsolved cases. There's a new serial killer on the loose, the death toll is mounting and the Old Bill don't have a clue. Apart from that, Dougie has a problem with a corrupt superior. Mr Palmer has a very vivid and weird imagination, but despite that this story hangs together very well. All the characters are well portrayed and life-like, many with their own problems. Every time you think it's all done and dusted, the killer strikes again! More twists and turns than a corkscrew. You'll never guess who the villain really is. A real edge of your seat tale. Gripping stuff. I highly recommend this novel to any fantasy lover, whether they are demon fans or not.
September 6, 2017
My first time with this author. He was looking for an honest review and so I offered him one.
An interesting concept. Our near future, hell is a dimension and some of its inhabitants have crossed over to London, England.
I wanted to give this book a 3.5 rating but as we all know, cant do that on GoodReads. For me it was not a four so i had to settle for a three.
This story is about the ultimate serial killer and how he plays games with the police while not getting caught. The psychological aspects are intriguing and the character of the killer is nicely done. The main character of Dougie is also quite well done. There are a couple of leaps of faith here in the solving of the murders that left me thinking that maybe not or not that quickly. I would have made Dougie work a little harder.
The character least like by all in the book, Fillide. There is a quite lengthy chapter about her back story and how she got to be the broken piece of art that she is. I dont consider myself a prude but the description of the sexual abuse she suffered and some of the things that happened to her i would categorize as not needed. More description there then needed.
Also, Mr Palmer had his thesaurus on hand for this one i think. There are several what i call $10 words that had be looking for my dictionary. First time that has happened to me in quite some time.
Now i am not sure if this is a stand alone book or maybe it is book one in a series but there were several loose ends in this one. In the mayhem of the demon attack it is unclear what really happens to Gogarty (the killer). Dougie seems to disappear in the last chapter, no wrap up from him.
I was left feeling a little empty.
So, all in all, i enjoyed it but i was not blown away by it. Some solid characters, some good thriller work. I would not be adverse to trying another of Mr. Palmer's books.
An interesting concept. Our near future, hell is a dimension and some of its inhabitants have crossed over to London, England.
I wanted to give this book a 3.5 rating but as we all know, cant do that on GoodReads. For me it was not a four so i had to settle for a three.
This story is about the ultimate serial killer and how he plays games with the police while not getting caught. The psychological aspects are intriguing and the character of the killer is nicely done. The main character of Dougie is also quite well done. There are a couple of leaps of faith here in the solving of the murders that left me thinking that maybe not or not that quickly. I would have made Dougie work a little harder.
The character least like by all in the book, Fillide. There is a quite lengthy chapter about her back story and how she got to be the broken piece of art that she is. I dont consider myself a prude but the description of the sexual abuse she suffered and some of the things that happened to her i would categorize as not needed. More description there then needed.
Also, Mr Palmer had his thesaurus on hand for this one i think. There are several what i call $10 words that had be looking for my dictionary. First time that has happened to me in quite some time.
Now i am not sure if this is a stand alone book or maybe it is book one in a series but there were several loose ends in this one. In the mayhem of the demon attack it is unclear what really happens to Gogarty (the killer). Dougie seems to disappear in the last chapter, no wrap up from him.
I was left feeling a little empty.
So, all in all, i enjoyed it but i was not blown away by it. Some solid characters, some good thriller work. I would not be adverse to trying another of Mr. Palmer's books.
May 31, 2017
A great read and quite a departure for the author.
As always a unique approach to a, too often, attempted genre. The magic, infused urban future. This one is character driven and awesomely plotted. Many twists and surprises. A really great story.
As always a unique approach to a, too often, attempted genre. The magic, infused urban future. This one is character driven and awesomely plotted. Many twists and surprises. A really great story.
November 17, 2017
If you look over my reading list, you'll find I have a wide variety of genres under my belt, with horror, fantasy and sci-fi hitting the top of my lists. And I don't mind the occasional bit of crime or thriller added in. And I loved Philip Palmer's previous work. It was brutal, brisk and merciless in a way I had never read before. But here....
I have a theory about good and bad books. A good book will highlight all the positives about an author's writing style while a bad book will highlight all their flaws. And Hell on Earth for me highlighted all the flaws in Palmer. Let's go through the list:
1. The book is too fucking long! 800 pages! This book felt like three stories crammed into a single volume and maybe it started out like that. But there was so much needless exposition in this, that by the last 20% I was flicking through pages, speed-reading as fast as I could.
2. Time skipping. There is A LOT of it and what was an 800 page slog, becomes an 800 page slog through a fucking time machine. So many times we are taken back several days, months, years and it all feels so choppy and poorly executed.
3. Thin characters. Now this is one area that I think Palmer needs to work on. Even in his earlier novels, a good chunk of his characters were either wooden, paper thin or not interesting enough to hold my interest. And when you've got an 800 page novel with a main cast as long as my arm, you better make sure they're engaging. But Dougie Randall is anything but. He's a bit of a prat to be honest. And while there are a few characters who's lives are interesting (like Fillide) she like Dougie is too much a git to sympathise with.
4. The plot meanders like my piss stream after a night of sex. I'm not kidding, the heavy duty bastard of a plot flies all over the place, going through what seems more like a host of subplots all strung together in a weak-kneed attempt to make for a big stakes game of cat and mouse. But so much of the plot is just vestigial. It doesn't feel like it has any overall bearing on anything.
Sorry Phil. I really like your work. I loved Debateable Space and I loved Red Claw. Even Version 43 was a fun read. But this one fell completely on its face for me. It felt more like a slog than a read. Future wise, tighten up the plot, cut the cast down to a manageable number and give the characters some down time for the readers to collect themselves.
I have a theory about good and bad books. A good book will highlight all the positives about an author's writing style while a bad book will highlight all their flaws. And Hell on Earth for me highlighted all the flaws in Palmer. Let's go through the list:
1. The book is too fucking long! 800 pages! This book felt like three stories crammed into a single volume and maybe it started out like that. But there was so much needless exposition in this, that by the last 20% I was flicking through pages, speed-reading as fast as I could.
2. Time skipping. There is A LOT of it and what was an 800 page slog, becomes an 800 page slog through a fucking time machine. So many times we are taken back several days, months, years and it all feels so choppy and poorly executed.
3. Thin characters. Now this is one area that I think Palmer needs to work on. Even in his earlier novels, a good chunk of his characters were either wooden, paper thin or not interesting enough to hold my interest. And when you've got an 800 page novel with a main cast as long as my arm, you better make sure they're engaging. But Dougie Randall is anything but. He's a bit of a prat to be honest. And while there are a few characters who's lives are interesting (like Fillide) she like Dougie is too much a git to sympathise with.
4. The plot meanders like my piss stream after a night of sex. I'm not kidding, the heavy duty bastard of a plot flies all over the place, going through what seems more like a host of subplots all strung together in a weak-kneed attempt to make for a big stakes game of cat and mouse. But so much of the plot is just vestigial. It doesn't feel like it has any overall bearing on anything.
Sorry Phil. I really like your work. I loved Debateable Space and I loved Red Claw. Even Version 43 was a fun read. But this one fell completely on its face for me. It felt more like a slog than a read. Future wise, tighten up the plot, cut the cast down to a manageable number and give the characters some down time for the readers to collect themselves.
July 15, 2018
There was a lot I really liked about this book - London coming to terms with a sudden influx of (feared, despised and mistreated) demonic immigrants is both an obvious but nicely judged allegory, and well realised - you can almost smell the brimstone. Most of the characters fell some way short of me feeling invested in them or their fates, however, meaning my urge to continue only occasionally edged into the compulsive. Exceptions were the formidable antagonist (though ultimately the character's journey to monstrousness didn't resonate the way I'd hoped), and a lethally capable but cruelly subjugated dead prostitute: a wonderfully realised and surprisingly sympathetic character I found myself rooting for more than any other in the book. Still not quite sure why I didn't like it more than I did. It had all the right ingredients, including some great imagination, but for me they somehow didn't gel in quite the satisfying, epic way promised by its premise and ingredients. Still, a solid, interesting bedtime read.
August 24, 2018
Hell on Earth was enjoyable for its imaginative, often-fascinating characters and its strong world-building.
The somewhat unconventional narrative has a gestalt feel: it's pieced together (successfully) from a patchwork of voices and perspectives, with temporal jumps. And yet the overarching story feels complete and satisfying.
The somewhat unconventional narrative has a gestalt feel: it's pieced together (successfully) from a patchwork of voices and perspectives, with temporal jumps. And yet the overarching story feels complete and satisfying.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews