Why You'll Love This
Hell turns out to be funnier than you'd expect — especially when a near-sighted boy and his dachshund are running loose in it.
- Great if you want: darkly comic fantasy with genuine wit and heart
- The experience: breezy and irreverent — reads fast, laughs often
- The writing: Connolly weaves deadpan footnotes and sharp comic timing throughout
- Skip if: you haven't read book one — context matters here
About This Book
Hell is not where Samuel Johnson expected to end up — especially not twice. In this second installment of John Connolly's Samuel Johnson series, the young hero and his steadfast dachshund Boswell find themselves dragged through a portal into a demon realm hungry for revenge. The stakes are genuinely dire, yet what pulls readers forward isn't fear so much as fierce affection for a boy who faces the impossible with bumbling courage and quiet heart. Connolly takes the classic pairing of a child and his dog and drops them somewhere so strange and dangerous that the bond between them becomes the only fixed point in the story.
What distinguishes the reading experience here is Connolly's voice — deadpan, digressive, and gleefully learned. Footnotes interrupt the narrative with comic authority, asides spiral into minor philosophical detours, and the darkest moments arrive wrapped in dry wit. It's a mode that demands a particular kind of attention and rewards it generously. Connolly writes horror and humor in the same breath without cheapening either, and that tonal precision — never quite tipping into parody, never losing its genuine menace — is what makes this book feel genuinely singular on the page.
