REALJimBob

[a:Mur Lafferty|97284|Mur Lafferty|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1314461906p2/97284.jpg] gives no quarter here – there is no backstory, no exposition, no previously on. The unwary reader will find themselves dropped straight into the action, continuing immediately from the events of [b:Heaven|11408122|Heaven (The Afterlife Series, #1)|Mur Lafferty|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1314463484s/11408122.jpg|2282661]. Kate and Daniel are still travellers in the afterlife, still hunting for God's lost souls, and still skirting around that whole uncomfortable relationship thing. This time however, rather than searching through the myriad of heavens they need to travel down to the hells (none of the books in this series have particularly obscure titles). Through Purgatory and onwards down to hells of queueing, cat Hell (of course) and on to the seven levels of Hell to hopefully, finally, find those missing souls.

Not recommended as a jumping-on point into the series. In fact, not even recommended if you read Heaven anything longer than six months ago. I read the previous story just over seven months ago and I was immediately struggling – how had Daniel lost his eye (twice), who was this Katsuko character, how had the previous story finished again? I resisted the urge to go back to Heaven and remind myself, and luckily there are some reminders littered throughout the later story. Effectively though, this is the second half of a single story rather than a sequel. Arguably this is a better book than the previous one in the series. Taken as a whole, it's better written, better paced, has better characterisation, even Daniel is significantly less irritating. But, while Heaven got a bonus star for the fascinating idea of multiple heavens and deities all kinda overlapping, we've seen it now and multiple hells seems like an obvious follow-up.