DIRE : HELL (The Dire Saga Book 6)

DIRE : SINS (The Dire Saga Book 5)  had one of the most crazy cliffhangers ever, on the same level of WTF? moments as how EVIL DEAD 2 ended, or THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, or AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. When I finished that book, all I wanted to do was bombard Andrew Seiple with email and snail mail to pester him to write faster. And, now, here's the sixth book. You're welcome, everybody.And where did DIRE: SINS leave off? With Doctor Dire and her minions and allies getting sent to Hell, that's where!! DIRE: HELL picks up from there, with a bit of time having elapsed, enough time that Dire had made a bit of headway with her masterplan to either break out of Hell... or reign in it. It's one of the many things I love about Dire. She dreams big. And only Dire is audacious enough to come up with her latest villain's lair.I'm not familiar with Dante's Inferno, so I don't know too much about the 9 Circles of Hell, but, apparently, one of them has to do with apathy. I'll admit, maybe I got caught up in the same torpor that had our crew of misfits ensnared. It took me a minute to really get into the story. The author devotes the opening chapters to catching us up with how Dire's spent the past few months in Hell and how she'd gone about establishing her power base, and, yeah, I was impatient reading thru those passages because I wanted Dire to get a move on already and embark on her assault on the hordes of Hell.Which she does, eventually. And then the book picks up momentum that it never does relinquish. See Doctor Dire take on the spawns and demons and beasties of Hell. Observe as these infernal forces come to cower before her armored might and her timely application of kayfabe. I think my favorite toy of hers is her booming voice modulator that allows her to speak in all caps. I want one of those! Then, I, too, can say hammy, awesome sh-- like "DON'T BOTHER RUNNING. YOU WILL JUST DIE TIRED." Or "SOMEONE NEEDS A RECKONING, AND SHE'S IN A MOOD TO DELIVER SOME INFERNAL JUSTICE..." Man, I love Dire's swagger.As per norm, Seiple threads in bits of levity. Dire's Chorus - her five automated minions - are the main source of humor. Heck, there's even unrequited love that springs from an unexpected source. But, back to the Chorus. I think I'm finally beginning to separate them by their personality, even though there are still moments when I can't tell who's who. I think Alpha and Delta are my favorites.Dire's superpower revolves around her brain's enhanced processing speed. She's super-super-super-smart and can line up contingency plans from A to Z. But her smarts and mad science tech and bold theatrics would've meant diddly if she hadn't had the cosmic luck of having had an immortal alchemist and the world's most ingenious metahuman biologist trapped in Hell with her. So, I like that the Last Janissary and Dr. Vector get more developed as characters.Just what exactly is the Shared Lie that came to enthrall Hell's immortal suffering meat-sacks and their tormentors? How did Johnny Cash's ominous "The Man Comes Around" play an awesome part in Dire's kayfabe? And will we ever learn Dire's true secret origin? Dire is such an interesting character. She's fiercely loyal and stands up for the underdogs. Yeah, some villain. Who ya foolin', Doctor Dire? Seiple has done such a boss job of character- and world-building. Six books in, and there's a lot of moving pieces now, but Seiple manages to keep them all straight in my head. I can't wait for the next installment. I'm just about ready to rank the DIRE series as on par with the five superhero prose series right below:- Marion G. Harmon's Wearing the Cape- Peter Clines' Ex-Heroes- Jim Bernheimer's Confessions of a D-List Supervillain- Matthew Phillion's The Indestructibles- Drew Hayes' Forging Hephaestus (Villains' Code Book 1)

Doctor Dire is a "villain" in the same vein as Doctor Doom, except with better ideals, and winds up in Hell, where she proceeds to take over. :)The characters are awesome, the plot flows along, and I was able to totally suspend my disbelief long enough to enjoy it from start to finish.I haven't decided whether the author just *has* to occasionally plug progressive messages from time to time, or if it's just meant to add some color to the character, but despite having different political views, I was able to just let it go by with a few eye rolls, and enjoyed the story.This series is great if you like stories that constantly make you think, "Wow! What will she get away with next?" Give it a shot!

This series is an interesting take on the notion of Good and Evil. Using Super Heroes and Super Villains who battle their way through Earth and Hell, literally.This final instalment strikes some hard hitting punches at religion and guilt. Dire, being D.I.R.E. is apart from all that, but understands the concept and the way humans are affected.Her battle is not against the perpetrators so much as the methods they use to achieve their goals.There are rules. Much like the rules in M&M (the book’s equivalence of D&D). It’s the ones who pervert or break the rules that she is against.So people have the freedom to be chaotic evil or paragons of virtue, each with all the strengths each choice grant, as long as they follow the rules. Simple really.

I am holding at four stars for now just because part of the criteria I use is a story's ability to be read multiple times. Seeing as this is the first time I have worked my way through this book, well, that is still hard to determine. I have liked Dire from the start of the series. Strong, smart, willing to risk,and willing to start over with nothing just to make the slightest change where it needs to happen. It isn't the big things that Dire has caused that will win it, but the little ones that she has influenced, that is where Dire has succeeded the most. Dire is a long term plan ment to play over possibly decades of time. She is there for the long game, don't get in her way. M and M. Now that Is just mean, funny, but mean.

Rated this five stars for how the stories and the writing culminated at the end. As always it was a sinister joy to follow Dires' adventure on her way to a better world, though I'm glad it was not a closed ending, I know that the author doesn't plan to write more for this series for a while. If Andrew does write more books for Dire I would love to see continuence or closure of the Dotty and Grim story arc's. The caricters Andrew makes are always a joy to read about, and some feel like they need more time in Dires' adventure. (SPOILERSJust like when certain caricters were given better closure in this story it feels like literary justice was served for them and their story line. I enjoyed the reintroductions and would enjoy them in for any other caricters in any further books.)

Dire Hell begin when we left off in Dire Sins, it was a mix of survival and Odyssey like story with the usual awesomeness of Doctor Dire and her allies. I shipped her with the Janissary but nooo they had to do without the romance in this book. Too bad. Well after all Dire comes back from a messy break up I understand. This was gritty, dark and full of action. I liked how everything went down.I can't wait for the next one, and I hope with no Demon in it!

The book was written well in a technical sense, but just wasn't very entertaining. The version of Hell shown is unimaginative and obviously based on nothing more than the shallowest of pop culture on the subject, there's zero narrative tension throughout, and all of the antagonists are both conveniently stupid and conveniently vulnerable to outside context problems despite that making no sense in context.

A+++++

I've loved this series since I came across book one, but this is not it at it's best. The story loses steam halfway through, and ends in a literal deus ex machina. It left me with the impression that nothing that happened in this book will impact the plot going forward, with the exception of where the character physically is at the end. The author has stated in a blog that this is likely the last we'll see of the main character for a while, which makes this a pretty disappointing jumping off point. I don't think you'd be missing much if you decided to skip this one.