The angels at God’s office complex regularly turn out amazing projects. Lucifer happens to be working on the development of humans, within the larger Creation project. The other angels involved seem satisfied creating beings that aren’t living or feeling, a major problem, since Lucifer needs to create actual personalities before the fast approaching release date. To top it all off, he needs to fit rebelling against the Creator into his busy life if he ever wants to get a corporate promotion. Lucifer explores good and evil, fate and free will, and office politics in Heaven.
Why was Lucifer cast out from Heaven? What caused the rift between him and the bigwigs in upper management? Did Lucifer fall, or was he pushed?
Anyone who has ever worked in an office cubicle will appreciate the version of Lucifer who inhabits this tale. When we first meet him, he isn’t quite the vision of Hell that most are familiar with, far from it in fact. This isn’t anything close to the Father of Lies at all. He is a company man who relishes his work and likes nothing better than puzzling things out.
The change that slowly starts to occur within our lead is born of frustration, not anger or hate. Lucifer realises that evolution, development, free will, call it whatever you want, has to happen. If the humanity project is going to be a success, then human beings needs to be flawed, to be fragile and most importantly, they need to be able to find their own way.
Ironically, the only person he can turn to is his ultimate boss, God. The rest of his colleagues can’t, or won’t, even attempt to understand the thoughts that are rumbling around in Lucifer’s head. He is exploring new ground and “the big guy” is the only other being who can appreciate that this needs to happen. God is of course omniscient so it makes their conversations a bit one sided, think omnipresent sounding board and you are about half way there.
This is a rebellion of office politics, of middle managers and TPS reports. Lucifer’s annoyance at boundaries he is forced to endure, make him realise that he needs to find his own way as well. He needs to learn how to forge his own path. Needless to say, that does not go down well with the rest of the Heavenly horde.
If anything, I do think this novel suffers a little because of its length. I rattled through it relatively quickly and just at the point where things were starting to get interesting, they were done. Don’t get me wrong, I was entertained by what was there, it just felt a little like a prequel to a much larger story. I guess thinking about it though, this is kind of the point.
Overall I enjoyed Lucifer. It’s a modern take on the creation myth with some nice ideas, well executed. Most importantly it showcases an author with bucket loads of potential. I’ll be keeping an eye out for more from Alexander Kosoris in future.
Lucifer is published by Iguana Books and is available now.
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