[LISTENED TO: December 2015] Heck
I read this book several years ago. I remember enjoying it but not loving it. But when we were looking for an audio book and I saw that this was narrated by Bronson Pinchot, I knew we had to listen to it. And the kids liked it a lot (although Tabby didn’t love the ending, which is sad, but is more of a set up for volume 2).
The premise of the book is that Heck is where you go when you die if you’re under 18. They’re not quite sure where you’re going to wind up, so you have to go through Heck, which is basically school, until they can sort out which layer of Hell you’re going to wind up in. Needless to say Heck is full of bad kids (and bad demons).
Our two bad kids are Milton and Marlo Fauster. Marlo is a troublemaker from way back. She is a petty thief and is always up to no good. Milton is a good kid. He never did anything bad in his life, and he always gets abuse from Marlo. As the book opens, Milton and Marlo are sprinting down the corridor of a mall where Marlo has just stolen something. She is planning on wreaking havoc with Grizzly Mall’s centerpiece: The State’s Second-Largest Bear-Themed Marshmallow Statue (that cracked me up).
The kids run to the center of the mall where they are cornered by security. Marlo is trying to think of an escape plan when Milton notices his classmate Damian. Damian torments Milton every chance he can get. And now, he is standing at the top of the marshmallow bear with matches. Milton also notices a fuse sticking out of the bear.
One explosion later, the kids find themselves no longer attached to their bodies, as they are rapidly sliding down to Heck. Marlo deserves to be there, she’s a bad egg. But what about Milton? It turns out that Marlo had slipped an item into Milton’s backpack, and therefore he technically stole something as well. A technicality but true nonetheless.
The rest of the book shows the kids in their gender-segregated classes. The boys learn physical education from Blackbeard the pirate and ethics from Richard Nixon (the Nixon bits were hilarious, and yet I can’t imagine many kids getting the jokes). The girls, meanwhile, learn home ec from Lizzy Borden (do kids know who that is?) and singing from an angel who is on a teacher exchange program.
And these classes prove to be just like real high school: Milton is laughed at by most people for being a brainiac (except in Heck, you’re not rewarded for being smart). And Marlo is mocked by the “cool” kids because she’s a goth and a troublemaker.
And to add to Milton’s woes, Damian himself was caught in that same blast, and he soon comes down to Heck as a glorified hall monitor, with great plans for future detentions (with Milton figuring largely in all of them).
It’s only when Milton makes a friend, Virgil, that things start to pick up. Virgil is a good egg (he’s in heck for sloth because he’s fat), and he is doing everything in his power to get out (he even has a map!). The kids try many plans of escape, two of which involve them trudging through the sewers–these are, indeed, the sewers that lead from the Surface to the gates of Hell…lots of poop jokes here). But when the kids join forces, they each learn a secret that helps them evade Heck’s security.
And the ending is genuinely a surprise.
The book is chock full of puns and witty wordplay. The Mall of Generica, Suburban Blight cheek-bronzer, Goodbye Doggie (instead of Hello Kitty), and lots of sentences like: “Some not quite awfully perfect and others not quite perfectly awful.”
Overall the story was a lot of fun, and my kids enjoyed it too. It started to drag for a me a little by the end (this was another kid’s story where it seems like they needed to be put through just one trial too many before the resolution to happen). And the story seemed a little mean-spirited for an 8 and 10-year-old (but perhaps they enjoyed it more than I realized).
There are several sequels out (the series is called the Nine Levels of Hell). Pinchot has read books 2 and 3, so I imagine we’ll check those out if only to hear the master audio book wizard. It was interesting to listen to this book soon after listening to his other audio reading. You can hear the same voices that he use din other books (which is understandable) and still be amazed at his variety and skill. The voice he does for the angel sent to heck is outstanding (she even sings in that voice), and then there’s the deep voices that he does so well. I have just checked out his list of audio books (there some 140 books listed here) and I want to listen to them all even if I don’t care about the subject.
If you like your kids stories dark and twisted (with lots of poop) this is for you. It’s also a good introduction to Hellish fiction, of which thee is plenty when you get a little older
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