I’m now about halfway through On Earth as It Is in Hell, Brian Hodge’s new novel based on Mike Mignola’s comic book character Hellboy, the World’s Greatest Paranormal Detective.
No giant gorillas with huge freakin’ metal bolts sticking out of their necks. Dagnabbit!
Despite that failing, however, it is a mildly diverting read. Seraphim attack the Vatican Library and burn it, apparantly to destroy the Masada Scroll, a first-century CE parchment that appears to have been written by Jesus himself where he denies his divinity and accuses Saul of Tarsus of misrepresenting Jesus’ Jewish reform movement. Now Hellboy and Abe Sapien are trying to transport the Scroll, which escaped the destruction of the Vatican Secret Archives, and ascertain who or what may have summoned the Seraphim at this particular juncture.
I’m sensing a plot twist coming, perhaps within twenty or thirty pages. The story seems far too linear, and the prologue with its portrait of baby-selling in Weimar Republic Germany has had zero relevance thus far to the story.
More anon.