Review of Inferno (Inferno, #1) by Larry Niven

I was in the mood for something fun.

Larry Niven often delivers on that front. If you are a fan of the Riverworld series, this will satisfy many of the same conditions toward your enjoyment. Of course, it aids your enjoyment further if you are relatively familiar with Dante’s Inferno. That classic serves as a model here for Niven’s wild, imaginative foray. The main character is typical of the pulp sci-fi genre. One might read him as an unkind analogue of the author himself. A self-absorbed s-f writer who rationalizes everything. He refuses to countenance the supernatural, though he made use of it continuously in his work. A skeptic in Hell makes a poor companion. As a main character, his constant doubting often grates on this reader’s attention span. Its world-building saves the book. As usual, Niven shines in this department. As in Ringworld, the major draw here is the visual panoply of Boschian terrors. Some of them are more successful than others. But the quick pacing, the brief chapters and the easy balance of interiority and dialogue push the narrative along at a gallop. It is hard to resist turning pages. There are moments of interesting subtext. We get to find out how Hell functions as a system, which is a conceit typically included in fiction and films for comedic effect. Taking it too seriously will entertain no one, so the humor off-sets the gruesome depictions of punished people. Our oafish protagonist discussed odd mixtures of various mythologies and Catholic doctrines here and there. His guide is less interesting than he might have been. Reminiscent of Farmer’s technique in Riverworld, the author concocts an afterlife scenario full of famous people. Chance encounters with them seem way too likely and convenient.
Despite these obnoxious flaws, it is still easy to have fun with this novel. A great distracting read for immersion. An imaginative jaunt. A pseudo-picaresque with little regard to sentence polish. Simply a page-turner of the finest stripe.