Welcome back and a Happy New Year everyone, this is the first book I am reviewing from a new source, and in the new year and I can definitely say I chose an interesting book to start off with!
This book is about “Satan”, his life story and how he’s really not the bad guy he’s made out to be. Given that I’m not really religious and since I read another book last yr by Charlie Ludlow who challenged our religious thinking, I was interested to see what this one would deliver.
This story is written in the style of Satan dictating his life to Wag, his author, so it really does feel like Satan is talking directly to you. With the occasional debate between Wag and Satan at the end of some chapters. We start off right back before “humans” had evolved, before the first cave paintings became a thing and before language was really starting to develop. We are right back to when Neanderthals are just starting to create tools from shaping rocks by banging them against each other.
We then proceed through various points in time throughout history and even have some pretty well known historical figures referenced (eg. Atilla the Hun) at various points in time. Throughout each of these encounters Satan was telling us about how he was trying to enlighten the human race and that if we looked closely we would see he was telling the truth. He discusses the various times in history when things were swinging his way and certain powerful people became afraid and so cracked down on the people with fear of damnation. As much as some of the stuff Satan talks about seems farfetched, there were quite a few parts that I really agreed with. I’m not really religious so I didn’t have the feeling that I was betraying my faith, or having to try and unlearn something that was completely ingrained in who I was. So for some people I can see this as being a difficult read. But if you take it as a fun way to see history and human nature in a different way then you will enjoy this.
The ending felt like rather than Satan telling us his history, he was trying to entertain Wag to the point were some comments from Wag even made it into the main text. At this point in time we crossed over from a different view of history to really questioning the universe. A new concept of how the world was created, aliens etc were all brought into it. And to be honest. Some of it felt like it could even be possible.
Does that mean I’ve reached the enlightenment that Satan is wanting us to achieve? Does that mean I’m open to new concepts? Or does it just mean I’m gullible to a good story? I don’t know. But I had fun contemplating these concepts and what it’d mean for us human’s if there was any truth to any of it.
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this review, on Monday I will be reviewing A Greek Affair by Linn B. Halton.
