Book Review: The Devil's Apprentice by Kenneth B. Andersen

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 The Devil's Apprentice is the first book in The Great Devil War Trilogy. Written by Kenneth B. Andersen, the book has been translated from the Danish into various languages and came out in 2018.   The book is apt for readers in middle grade, but honestly who cares, this is such a fabulous book that age can not stop you from thoroughly enjoying this fiery ride.

This book tells the story of Philip, a 13 year old boy, who finds himself Hell because of a case of mistaken identity. Philip is a good boy, make that a very good boy, who never even lies, who finds himself face to face with who else, but the Prince of Darkness. Satan or Lucifer on the other hand, is withering and needs to put his replacement in place and now has this very good boy on his hands. The road looks difficult for the two main characters of our book who will have to go. Philip repeatedly fails at every task meted out to him and Lucifer sees no way in which to evoke the evil that lies buried deep within Philip. While all this takes place we also meet the various characters that live in hell-some of them real rockstars and other maybe not so much.

The book took hold of me from the word go and I really enjoyed reading it. I am keeping my fingers crossed that my daughter, who is 12, will also get around to reading it and loving it, just as much as I did. I have never before read any book set in Hell, in fact I wonder how many of them are there (I can only recall Dante's Inferno and that is just a part of a poem). The writing is wonderful- short chapters that help the story move forward swiftly, solid language (hats off to the translator for doing a good job with English language translation) and last but definitely not least in any way the word imagery that the author has conjured. I could see Satan's flame of life diminishing in my mind and I could very  well witness how Philip transforms as his horns, wings and tail appear.

Read this book if you are suffering from a Harry Potter hangover. It has plenty of twists and turns to satiate your hunger if mystery and thrillers are what you seek and it is so fresh and naive in ways that will make you think that you have stepped back in your childhood (that is if you ever left it behind somewhere).

Thank you @TheWriteReads for the ebook and making me part of the #blogtour.

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