Breaking The Devil's Heart

( 2 )

Overview

When Stewart and Layla recruit a demon to spy on the Devil, their decision takes them on whirlwind ride through the afterlife. Journey alongside this young couple in H. A. Goodman's new novel, Breaking the Devil's Heart, and join forces with a teenage Angel outcast to bankrupt Satan's underground Company and save Heaven from civil war. H. A. Goodman's Breaking the Devil's Heart is a rollercoaster afterlife experience that tests a young couple's love, their grasp on reality, and the essence of human nature. What ...
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More About This Book

Overview

When Stewart and Layla recruit a demon to spy on the Devil, their decision takes them on whirlwind ride through the afterlife. Journey alongside this young couple in H. A. Goodman's new novel, Breaking the Devil's Heart, and join forces with a teenage Angel outcast to bankrupt Satan's underground Company and save Heaven from civil war. H. A. Goodman's Breaking the Devil's Heart is a rollercoaster afterlife experience that tests a young couple's love, their grasp on reality, and the essence of human nature. What happens when Stewart and Layla tour Hell's Marketing Department and Stock Exchange? What happens when their relationship is tested by Satan? This book is unlike anything you've ever read, or ever thought the afterlife might be like. Breaking the Devil's Heart is an enlightening look into an alternate world, a new afterlife, and a profound journey inside the human conscience.
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Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews
Celestial gumshoes search for the source of evil in this knotty supernatural allegory. Recently deceased ex–CIA agent Stewart Willoughby is an Observer, an almost-angel who uses rough tactics in the fight against demonic adversaries. He gets a break when he recruits a new informant, a senior executive at the Company--aka hell--who's willing to give him information on "The Formula" that demons use to goad humans into sin. (The impish fiends are forever whispering malevolent hints into people's ears, sometimes in person and sometimes over the phone from infernal call centers.) With his fetching partner and former fiancée, Layla, Stewart embarks on an extended investigation into the nature and causes of evil, from garden-variety manslaughters to horrific genocides. Their sleuthing takes them to some of history's grisliest crime scenes--and eventually starts to eat away at their souls, as they resort to methods that are uncomfortably similar to the brutalities they want to eradicate. In this installment of his Logic of Demons series, Goodman continues fleshing out his inventive vision of the afterlife as an edgy, inglorious, down-to-earth place, where heaven itself is divided between hostile liberal and fundamentalist factions, and no one is sure that an always-absent God even exists. The devils, as usual, get the best lines; Goodman's portrait of hell as a dreary corporate bureaucracy is a satiric gem--the chief torments are pointless routine, office gossip and nasty performance evaluations. The novel drags, though, when it focuses on Stewart and Layla's relationship, which stays blissfully bland even after it takes a satanic turn. But Goodman also probes meaty philosophical themes with sophistication, as his characters wrestle with the problem of evil and the blurry line separating right from wrong. Subversively, he suggests that evil may not be a demonic plot but just another name for human nature. Goodman's allegorical symbology isn't too intricate--a farm boy Stewart encounters turns out to be the quite literal embodiment of Time and Chance--and at times the novel's intellectual debates feel like an undergraduate seminar. Still, Goodman's cross between a detective novel and The Screwtape Letters makes for a stimulating read. A smart, entertaining take on eternal conundrums.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781432790585
  • Publisher: Outskirts Press, Inc.
  • Publication date: 4/5/2012
  • Pages: 352
  • Sales rank: 695,546
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 0.73 (d)

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
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Sort by: Showing all of 2 Customer Reviews

  • Posted March 3, 2013

    Wow... I really wasn't sure what I was getting into when I start

    Wow... I really wasn't sure what I was getting into when I started this novel because up front, you're told it's different than anything you've ever read. Definitely true! At first, the novel started a little slow but then it built up more and more. The pace ended up moving at a steady speed. The novel is told through Stewarts POV so that's always a breath of fresh air for me. I'm so used to reading novels told from the female lead's perspective. Although, I have to admit, I enjoyed The female lead and would've been interested to see a lot more from her perspective to swap it up a bit. The author's new spin on hell as a corporation who sells the "formula" is pretty genius - totally the most creative spin on hell I've read in a while. There are a few places where the writing style felt more like I was reading a dictionary of sorts - pretty formal and felt almost apart from the novel, but overall, it wasn't a hindrance. Overall a really thought provoking read that I enjoyed but I'm not jumping up and down screaming get it, get it. If you like fantasy and enjoy something a little different then definitely get it. I think the ebook was only $.99 so definitely worth that plus a little more. Can I just say the cover is a work of art??! It's really pretty amazing.

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  • Posted February 27, 2013

    more from this reviewer

    Bizarre, but interesting story. I found the writing to be solid

    Bizarre, but interesting story. I found the writing to be solid and approachable, even if it did contain too many descriptors (a personal preference). I was annoyed whenever a word broke across a line, but that has nothing to do with the writer. Overall, this is a solid book and should appeal to a wide audience of people who enjoy paranormal or sci-fi books (even though it only generally fits those categories).

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