This short story fits into the growing number of books (is it a legitimate subgenre yet?) that attempt to take a comedic look at the afterlife—specifically what happens to people who end up in hell. The protagonist is a woman who died in a motorcycle accident. She has a series of failed relationships behind her and a lot of “attitude” that doesn’t let her take anything sitting down. She’s basically likeable and wondering how she ended up in hell and why hell isn’t like what our religions told us it would be.
In fact, hell appears to be a sort of dormitory-style existence in which most people have nothing to do but sit around watching sports or other television programs and reading books in the library. Our heroine is one of the unlucky ones who gets a job. She is supposed to welcome people to the second floor of hell and has to wear a uniform composed of sexy lingerie to do so. The devil is a bodyless woman named Pandora (yes, probably that Pandora) who basically doesn’t know why they are doing what they are doing. The bodyless voice was described as being very sexy, but she seemed rather humdrum to me—as does the whole of “hellish” existence.
Most of the story focuses around the protagonist making up with her ex and convincing him to become interested in existence again. It wasn’t particularly gripping. There is also some sort of sexual predator who gets mistakenly released on the second floor but dealing with him is literally a deus-ex-machina so again, an opportunity for conflict and resolution was lost.
I gather this story is the springboard to a series, but as nothing apparently happens in hell, I’m not certain what the series would be about.
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