I had a few criticisms of the first volume of Lucifer, but they were all pretty much par for the course with the start of a long running series. The following volumes, Children and Monsters and A Dalliance with the Damned, pick up the pace a bit and develop the plot further. The first volume introduced the characters and the story, and now that the writer is in a comfortable groove things get more interesting.
As these are only the second and third volumes in a series that will probably eventually fill ten or more books, not a whole lot gets resolved, and a whole lot of plot threads get introduced that don't really go anywhere at this stage, leaving the reader somewhat unsatisfied, but again that's just the way it is with a long series.
The plot itself is hard to describe, as in the big picture there's nothing much to elaborate on the setup first volume. Lucifer hatches his own clever schemes in response to the events of the earlier book, while his enemies in heaven, hell and the afterlives of other cultures try and do the same. There are some very cool scenes, including the whole of the first story, which takes place in the Japanese version of Hell, and a very clever inverted take on the story of Adam and Eve.
These books get better as they go along, so I'm really looking forward to reading the next ones.
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