A review by barrybj
Hell and Damnation: A Sinner's Guide to Eternal Torment by Marq de Villers

informative slow-paced

2.75

well researched and often interesting, but held back by an authors voice that can often slide into snide and irritating rather than clever and irreverent. The middle part on torture slogged on and the epilogue felt like getting lectured to by a 15 year old and seemed unable to really comprehend how faith develops and why people need it, instead simply trying to disprove it in a way that felt less academic and more like petty jabs at anyone with a religious belief system. While this along with some faulty pacing and strange choices in translations for ancient texts (using a highly anachronistic 1920s translation of enkidus final speech to gilgamesh threw me off so hard i had to put the book down for a bit) holds the book back from being anywhere near a favorite, it is a thourough and often fascinating text that is worth using if you're doing research or just find the subject of hellish torture interesting.