As things go, I went into this book read completely blind, not knowing what the book was about – just that it was a horror novel (of kinda epic proportions).

A young man descends into Purgatory to save his wife and unborn child in this gorgeous, illustrated tale of wonder and terror from the mind of master storyteller and acclaimed artist Brom

Fresh out of jail and eager to start a new life, Chet Moran and his pregnant wife, Trish, leave town to begin again. But an ancient evil is looming, and what seems like a safe haven may not be all it appears . . .

Snared and murdered by a vile, arcane horror, Chet quickly learns that pain and death are not unique to the living. Now the lives and very souls of his wife and unborn child are at stake. To save them, he must journey into the bowels of purgatory in search of a sacred key promised to restore the natural order of life and death. Alone, confused, and damned, Chet steels himself against the unfathomable terrors awaiting him as he descends into death’s stygian blackness.

With Lost Gods, Brom’s gritty and visceral prose takes us on a haunting, harrowing journey into the depths of the underworld. Thrust into a realm of madness and chaos, where ancient gods and demons battle over the dead, and where cabals of souls conspire to overthrow their masters, Chet plays a dangerous game, risking eternal damnation to save his family.

It turns out this book had a few horror elements I truly like – ghouls and ghosts, daughters of Lilith, vampires, and more importantly – Gods. Not since American Gods Book Review * Neil Gailman have I enjoyed reading about all of the forgotten Gods that used to be worshipped in the world. The Sphinx, Charon, Lethe, all about Lucifer and his army.

There will never be an end to suffering. You do what you can, only what you can. Peace comes from knowing you helped those that you could

I cried a little at the start – when Chad, after having been killed by his nana arrives in Hell and he is presented with human despair and confusion. In his path, he finds a little boy who could not yet walk, abandoned and overlooked by all the other dead souls. He picks him up and then realizes that Purgatory, because that’s where he was, did not care very much for orphaned children who could not carry themselves over the river. And the militia waiting for the souls on the other side didn’t care much either and would rather the children be thrown into the river.

By believing in Christ, they give their souls to Christ, to his rules, his dogma. If in the end he judges them unfit, then he can damn them, or just deny them Heaven’s kingdom, let them drift into purgatory. The irony is, if all those souls burning in Hellfire had never believed in Christ in the first place, then they’d never have ended up in Hell.

What follows is an epic depicting the format of hell, much like Dante’s vision – a place of many kingdoms, each ruled by a lord who was overseen by Lucifer. They collected coins from the dead and lacking coin, anything of metal – brass or copper and even gold. If they couldn’t pay for their fare in metal, they would pay in flesh.

Back on the above, the widow and the vampiric nana are planning a funeral. Only later does Chet find out the truth of his heritage. From ancient times, his grandmother would kill her children to feed and when the time would come, she would move her soul into a female offspring’s body and take over. Unfortunately her own daughter committed suicide and the only female of her blood left was Chet’s unborn daughter (who she promptly claims as her next vessel).

There’s a lot that goes on but suffice to say that the evil nana is killed (unfortunately so is Chet’s daughter) and Chet returns to the underworld to guide not only his daughter’s soul but also all the souls of all the children his grandmother has killed over the years who were not able to pass.

The ending is bittersweet but quite well done.

Purgatory is a majestic and solemn place, he thought. Terrible and wonderful. A good place for a soul to find himself.