Kings in Hell

Heroes in Hell #4

by C.J. Cherryh, Janet E. Morris

As the Second Trojan War begins, history's greatest champions and villains, including Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, Brutus, and Machiavelli, fight the Battle of the Ages

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

378 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1987

About the author

Currently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J. Cherryh has won four Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. She is the author of more than forty novels. Her hobbies include travel, photography, reef culture, Mariners baseball, and, a late passion, figure skating: she intends to compete in the adult USFSA track. She began with the modest ambition to learn to skate backwards and now is working on jumps. She sketches, occasionally, cooks fairly well, and hates house work; she loves the outdoors, animals wild and tame, is a hobbyist geologist, adores dinosaurs, and has academic specialties in Roman constitutional law and bronze age Greek ethnography. She has written science fiction since she was ten, spent ten years of her life teaching Latin and Ancient History on the high school level, before retiring to full time writing, and now does not have enough hours in the day to pursue all her interests. Her studies include planetary geology, weather systems, and natural and man-made catastrophes, civilizations, and cosmology…in fact, there's very little that doesn't interest her. A loom is gathering dust and needs rethreading, a wooden ship model awaits construction, and the cats demand their own time much more urgently. She works constantly, researches mostly on the internet, and has books stacked up and waiting to be written.

Reviews

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A must-read if you've ever wanted to read Aeneid fanfiction! This series is pulpy candy, all about "What would Kleopatra think of Helen of Troy, anyway?" and "Which handsome men throughout history would Alexander the Great want to bang?"

I mean ... that's what I'm reading for, anyway.

It opens mid-battle and ... stays there. I'm not really sure anything progressed in this book, it's confusing. Still, it was an enjoyable confusion and I stayed with it.

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although it was almost 34 years ago, I remember enjoying the first volume of the "In Hell" series - Heroes in Hell - enough to read the following two books. What I couldn't remember, however, was why I didn't keep going with the series. So, all these years later, I came across Kings in Hell and decided to pick up where I left off.

Now I know why I left off all those years ago.

The concept remains really interesting - famous figures from history and myth co-exist in a multi-faceted afterlife that is far less desirable than Paradise. Some understand their fate, and have adapted to it, much more than others. The execution, on the other hand, seems little more than a stream of consciousness fever dream. There are occasional glimpses of a plot, but by and large this volume is a mass of confusion due to rapid POV shifts as well as characters being referred to by multiple names/nicknames - sometimes within a single paragraph.

Maybe someone with an affinity for reading the abstract would enjoy this far more than I did, but I prefer a more organized (and recognizable) plot than this delivers.

[Rebecca M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't realize it was part of a series when I picked it up secondhand, so to say I was lost.... Yeah.

Middle of the road for me, I'm sure it's a decent series.

[Molly]

I read the first chapter or so when I found it in a used book store, and I was absolutely hooked. Achilles has a helicopter. With guns on it. Reflect for a moment on how awesome that is. At that point, I was sold on the entire series, but I thought it was best to start at the beginning. I'll have to come back to this one when I finish the ones that precede it.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this series filled with figures from history all interacting in Hell. Reread 2018 - slow read as I continue Googling Diomedes, Paris, Helen, Achilles, Alexander, Hatsheput, Caesar, Decius Mus etc.

[John Devlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Inventive looks at famous personages thrown together in Hell for some interesting and amusing reasons.

[Nancy Raines]

Hell Book 4