Hell to Pay

Today's post is on Hell to Pay by Matthew Hughes. It is the last in his To Hell and Back series. It is 332 pages long and is published by Angry Robot. The cover is again in comic book panel form with the hero at the top and other scenes from the plot on it. The intended reader is someone who has read the first two. There is some language, talk of sex, and violence in this book. The story is told from the third person close of the characters moving from one to another as the story progresses. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- Meet Chesney Arnsthruther: once a mild-mannered insurance actuary, now a full-time crime-fighting superhero.
Meet Xaphan: wise-cracking demon and the source of (almost) all of Chesney's powers.
Meet Arthur Wrigley, a modest yet charming older gentleman whose nasty little hobby is fleecing innocent widows. Meets Simon Magus, ancient mystic from Biblical times now very much enamoured of Vegas, baby.
And pray you never meet the Chikkckikk, a proud and ancient race of, well, warrior dinosaurs, from the universe that God made then rejected before He started monkeying around with this one. What the hell is going on, this is definitely the third book in the wondrous To Hell & Back saga.

Review- This is the weakest of the trilogy. The first one was so funny then the second was not bad but not as funny and this one was not funny at all. Everything that I really liked about the first book is just gone in this one. The funny conminterary about religion, superheros, and the why of the world is just tossed out the window. Instead we get Dues Ex in this one. Nothing is what the characters or we the readers thought it was. In the end God makes Chesney into a little god for reasons that I just do not get. Because God is all powerful in this world, he could have just remade the opening scene in the first book and everything would have been fixed. Instead we get Dues Ex'ed. I hate that so much. I still love the first book. It is still funny and interesting but the other two were just really disappointing to me.

I give this book a Three out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I bought this book with my own money.