Tour ~ My review is voluntary and honest.

 

Thirteen-year-old Philip has the honor of dying and being sent to Hell. Honor, you say? Well, yeah. He’s slated to be Lucifer’s successor. Except he’s not. Due to a massive screw up Philip has landed in Hell in someone else’s place. Lucifer has one foot on a banana peel and the other in a grave, so he has to make the best of the situation. He must mold Philip, who never lies, into the leader of Hell and do it quickly. Oh, boy. Does Lucifer have his work cut out for him? Hell yes.

 

This is a fun story that fits into the younger end of Young Adult, teetering on the cusp of Middle Grade. It’s got a fine mystery to be solved, but it’s a simplistic straightforward one. Just because it’s set in Hell doesn’t mean it has to be dark and disturbing. The world is a bit weird. For Hell anyway. Philip is an amenable teen, typical in some ways and atypical in others. The plot is interesting (the reason I picked it up) and the characters are well-defined, most are actually quite likeable. Philip’s dilemma is a decent one and his development over the course of the book is a bit surprising. Even a little disappointing at times. But then he is only 13-yrs-old, so I cut him some slack. If you’re looking for a different kind of YA adventure then I recommend this one for a few hours of pleasurable reading.

 

"The Devil's Apprentice" is like no other Young Adult book I've read. It takes you directly to the Christian Hell and then makes you think through what exactly Hell is and how and why it works the way it does.

 

It sets Philip, a (very) good boy, who seems to have been sent to Hell through a misunderstanding, a series of challenges where to save Lucifer from death, he has to learn to make the evil choices rather than the good ones. Philip's challenges confront him with a variety of ethical problems, some simple, some not.

 

In the beginning, Philip's goodness blinds him to the choices he should be making but when he's put under pressure, experiencing anger and jealousy and betrayal and just how terribly unfair everything is, other choices open up for him.

 

When he's not being tested, young Philip is out and about making friends and enemies of demons and devils and falling in love with Satina, a young temptress devil who is trying to help him solve the puzzle of why the immortal Lucifer is dying.

 

I liked the fact that the book goes beyond the simple humour of making Hell an inversion of our world - making everything tonight or yesternight rather than today or yesterday, praising demons for behaving even worse than they're expected to, having rotting food as a delicacy - and takes an, often gruesome, look at the nature of endless, pointless, punishment.

 

The longer he is Hell, the less clear right and wrong is to Philip. He is innately good but even good people stumble over some choices, especially when some of the devils and demons around him are so likeable and so welcoming and when he has the opportunity to acquire huge amounts of power.

 

The plot is clever but it's the fearless world-building, underpinned by rigorous subjecting of difficult situations to an examination that often seems to pit logic against ethics that sets the book apart.

 

It's hard to imagine "The Devil's Apprentice" getting published in the US, never mind finding its way into school libraries. The US struggled with Harry Potter (not because it constantly pitched decency and courage against power and privilege but because it used witchcraft), what would they make of a YA series that generates sympathy for the Devil? As for having King David in Hell because he arranged the death of the husband of a woman he desired, while the logic is unassailable, my guess is that it's too much of a dog whistle item for American school libraries. The banned book folks would be lubricating their corruption of youth arguments with glee.

 

Fortunately, this book is Danish so it not only made it into print but spawned the hugely popular "The Great Devil War" series since its publication in 2005. The first English translation of the six books in the series was published in October 2018.  I'm hoping it's going to attract a huge following.

 

My thanks to Olga for making me aware of this series. 

 

I read "The Devil's Apprentice", the first book in a series, for Door 12 St. Andrew's Day in the 24 Festive Tasks challenge. 

I am writing this review as a member of Rosie’s Book Review Team (authors, if you’re looking for reviews, I recommend you check her amazing site here), and I thank her and the author for providing me an ARC copy of this book that I freely chose to review.

This is a fun book. Written in the third-person form the point of view of Philip, a thirteen-year-old boy who lives with his mother and who lost his father when he was very young, this novel is suitable for younger readers and also for adults. If you have given up on new adult stories because of their heavy reliance on romance and low-grade erotica, you are safe with this book. Yes, there is a love interest, but the book is a great adventure first and foremost. Rather than a reluctant hero, we have here a reluctant villain (well, more or less). A tragic mistake makes Philip end up in a situation that is totally out of his comfort zone, and he has to undergo a training that I’m sure many boys and girls would take to like a duck to water, but not him. He has to learn to be bad, and it is a challenge.

There are some world-building and some wonderful descriptions (of locations, like Lucifer’s castle, a church with a very interesting graveyard, the doors of Hell…), but it is not excessively complex, and it does not slow down the adventures. Philip, like the readers, is totally new to this place, and his descriptions help us share in his adventures more fully. He gets a variety of guides and people explaining how things work there: Grumblebeard, the hospitable devil guarding the doors of Hell, Lucifax (Lucifer’s wonderful cat), Satina (a young female demon and a Tempter) and Lucifer in person (in demon?). Everything is dark and night (people do not wish each other good day, but good night, you don’t write in a diary, but in a nightary…) everywhere, there are many types of demons, each one with his own characteristics and roles to play, and bad humans (and there are a few not-unexpected jokes about politicians, although some of the others who end up in hell might be a bit more surprising) get punished in many different ways, but Hell itself is a place where demons go about their daily lives, have their jobs, go to school, get married, tend to their gardens… It is a place full of dangers but also full of interest, and Philip gets to experience plenty of new things, not all bad.

The book’s view of Heaven, Hell and moral issues is far from orthodox. Personally, I did not find it irreverent, but it is a matter of personal opinion. Even though I did not necessarily agree with all the views exposed, these are issues well-worth thinking and talking about and I am sure those who read the novel will feel the same. I enjoyed the sense of humour, and I liked most of the characters, from the secondary ones (I’ve already said I love Lucifax, but I grew fond of most, from the cook to Death himself), to the main protagonists, like Lucifer, wonderful Satina, and Philip. He is not perfect (well, he is perhaps too perfect to begin with, and then he turns… but I won’t spoil the book for you), and he learns important lessons on the way, and he is not the only one. Although I felt at first that some of the changes that take place in the book stretch the imagination, when I thought more about it, time in Hell moves at a different pace, and for a character who is as inflexible and extreme as Philip, for whom everything is black or white —at least to begin with— the process he goes through makes sense. And by the end of the novel, he has become more human and more humane.

The book is a page-turner, there are heroes and villains (or baddies and really evil characters), a few secrets, betrayals, red-herrings, tricks and deceits, an assassination attempt, and a mystery that will keep readers intrigued. And a great final twist. (Yes and a fantastic ending. I had an inkling about it and about some other aspects of the plot, but the beauty is in how well they are resolved). The novel is well-written, flows well, with a language of a level of complexity that should suit adults as well as younger readers, and it managed to make me care for the characters and want to keep reading their adventures.

A few quotes to give you a taster of the style of the pitch of the book.

“Let that be your first lesson, Philip. Down here, humor is always dark.”

“God and the Devil roll dice at the birth of every human being,” the cat explained. “A one-hundred-sided die determines the degree of evil or goodness in each person. The results fix the nature of each individual.”

I particularly loved this accusation addressed at Philip:

“You look like a devil, but you’re not one. You are nothing but a sheep in wolf’s clothing.”

I am not surprised that this book is a popular read in Denmark. I expect it will do well in its English version too. And I’ll be eagerly waiting for the adaptation to the screen. I recommend it to anybody who enjoys well-written YA books in the fantasy genre, without an excessive emphasis on world building, who don’t mind some creepy and dark elements and appreciate a good dose of dark humour. I have a copy of the second book as well, and I can’t wait to see what Philip and his underworld friends get up to next.

 

What to say ... this one is difficult for me to review. On one hand, the story line was one that I hadn't heard of before (that doesn't happen very often!), the characters were pretty well written and the world that the author created were interesting. On the other hand ... it was just ... too much. This is considered a children's fiction book and it is very, VERY involved. There were tons of characters to keep track of and while I remembered all of them, sometimes it took me a moment to get back into the story.

That was another issue for me, the flow of the story seemed to start and stop every few pages because you were flip flopping between centuries and characters. Now, it's very likely that I had issues with that because I'm a stay at home mom and with two boys running around, I have to squeeze in reading time between taking care of those two monsters. But it really felt like I was in the car with a 15 year old who just got their permit and are learning how to use the break pedal ...

As a side note ... I really expected a tie in to the title by the time I was halfway through the book. But it really kept me guessing how it was going to happen and when. By about halfway through the book, I thought that maybe it should have been re-titled to The Doors or something. Anything having to do with the doors actually because that is what the story centered around for so long.

All of that being said, I did really like the conversations that the characters had ... I know that sounds weird but hear me out ... they went back and forth like a ping pong match and it was amusing to read. You can definitely envision actual conversations with this one, nothing seemed awkward or forced in that aspect.

I also liked the concept of doors leading to a new land or time. That was pretty interesting and I found myself wondering what they would encounter next. Each time I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued.

This isn't a BAD book but it's just not one of my favorites. I would probably try and read it again sometime. I mean, it really touched on all of the magical/fantasy/mythical creatures/beings and the like. I don't know if one more could have been

Oh, and Felinacious is an awesome name for a cat. Sounds pretentious, regal and lazy all at the same time.

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