John Milton revisited

I'm curiously drawn to re-interpretations in modern fiction of the underpinnings of Christian theology, such as the one in the beginning of Tolkien's Silmarillion. Since I've enjoyed Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels, I picked up To Reign In Hell at a con or bookstore, and gave it a read.

Well, I tried to. Twice. The first couple of times, for some reason I couldn't get a sense of the characters or the premise. Last night, I took a deep breath, and tried a third time with much more focused attention, getting much farther into it. The attempt didn't work out...

( Spoiler-laden discussion )

I still say the Taltos novels are pretty good, and maybe I'll pick up the next one in line, soon, as a palate cleanser. And the first sentence of this post sure is pleased with itself.