Hell yeah! Finally a medieval horror book that is so unconventional it is still talked about on the r/horrorlit subreddit.

The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found a young girl alone in a dead Norman village. An orphan of the Black Death, and an almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas that plague is only part of a larger cataclysm—that the fallen angels under Lucifer are rising in a second war on heaven, and that the world of men has fallen behind the lines of conflict. Is it delirium or is it faith?

She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the righteous dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across a depraved landscape to Avignon.

There, she tells Thomas, she will fulfill her mission: to confront the evil that has devastated the earth, and to restore to this betrayed, murderous knight the nobility and hope of salvation he long abandoned.

As hell unleashes its wrath, and as the true nature of the girl is revealed, Thomas will find himself on a macabre battleground of angels and demons, saints, and the risen dead, and in the midst of a desperate struggle for nothing less than the soul of man.

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I loved this book – took me a while to finish it while at the end of my pregnancy and it was a hell of a lot easier read than Ancestor – Scott Sigler (and fewer mutations). The only monsters in this book are the religious nuts that sprung out with the rise of the Plague in France – and some literal monsters in the water… and let’s not forget the demons. Like literal demons. Not since my days reading “Angel Sanctuary” was I bombarded with so many names I already knew!

So back to the story – we have a knight that went rogue after the he lost in a battle at Crecy – a battle that is many times remembered through the book – a loss that meant the beginning of the fall. He’s travelling with some creeps and thieves and he decides to go solo when these people decided to also rape (not just rob) a very young orphan girl. He draws his sword and promptly kills most of them.

The girl is grateful and tags along with him, a picture of innocence and grace. And she’s a bit more as she keeps having visions of angels who tell her she needs to go to Avignon.

So the fallen knight, the young girl embark on a journey through medieval France. They gather a fallen priest (gay) and they face many challenges and weird happenings in a time where people were dying, dead or afraid of the living.

We see a plague-ridden France – hear the songs that people sing to be merry or to bury their dead and I loved the fact that you don’t know what’s going to happen next. We have shape shifting demons, cardinals who are evil, dead people brought back to life to collect grapes and make wine, stone statues going through the streets and knocking at doors to be let in..

The book is a festival. 5/5 stars from me.

PS: the ending was better than Dante’s inferno. Who would have thought that Hell could be a place where you get tormented until you become immune to a specific torment and then a new one would be found and used?