Rating: 
Summary: Delightfully creepy, gruesome, and great!
Review: Edward Lee paints a very vivid, yet horrifying picture of the city of Hell. You can almost feel the heat and smell the sulphur as you follow the heroine on her tour of the damned city. Fast paced, and full of twists, and torturous turns, this page turner will leave you wanting more!
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful(?) Tour of Hell!
Review: Let me states first off, I loved this book, but the only reason I picked up this book, was because I wanted to read "Infernal Angel," which is the sequel of this book.
I had never read an Edward Lee novel before reading City Infernal, and I was missing out on my horror/chunk/pop quotiant. The story is very strange, about twin sisters(both virgins, and one commits suicide(Lissa)), the remaing sister(Cassie) becomes horribly depressed, and tries to kill herself as well. She is house in several institutes, but the father wants her with him, and they move out to a huge, creepy house in the boondocks. Then it continues on a story how Cassie meets up with three other suicide victims(Xeke, Via, and Hush), who are outsiders of hell.
They find out Cassie is a Etheress(meaning by circumstance, she is able to enter Hell alive), and she wants to go there to find and at least apologize to her sister for believing she is the reason her sister committed suicide. This leads to some gory battles throughout the city of Hell, which is built to the exact specifications as those of Heaven, just to annoy God a little more. This leads to a final, apocalyptic battle between Lucifer, Herself, and her memories, and it is quite amazing going through them with her, as she learns several truths, lies, and to never trust anyone. You HAVE to read this book, to find these out. If you love your horror gory, then you must read Edward Lee, and this is at least a good one to start with.
Rating: 
Summary: Time Is Illegal In Hell
Review: What Cassie did not expect when she and her sister (Lissa) went to their favorite goth club on night was to be drugged and then nearly seduced by her Lissa's boyfriend, be caught and then have Lissa shoot the boy and then kill herself. Instant psychological trauma, relieved only when Cassie's father figures they are both the worse for wear and moves to the Virginia backwoods, Cassie in tow, leaving a lucrative D.C. law practice behind.
This wouldn't be a horror story if the residents weren't weird, and the mansion wasn't originally owned by a Satanist who made a practice of sacrificing newborn children to his god. In fact, Cassie quickly makes friends with three sub-corporeal teenagers who have set up camp in the mansion, having run away from hell. In short order, things get even more complicated, and Cassie is riding the subway to Mephistopolis, which is a gigantic, bleak and horrible mirror of New York - a city that runs on terror and pain.
The reason for this trip is twofold, for one thing, her new found friends have discovered that she is the rarest of all creatures - an etheress. She has unexpected powers, and Satan covets her for his own dark dreams. Her other reason is that she is still seeking release from her guilty feelings about the death of her sister, convinced that she is the reason Lissa is in hell. Cassie wants to find Lissa and beg forgiveness. Of course, this is a horror story, not a fairy tale, and nothing works out quite the way you would expect it.
What surprised me is that Edward Lee is normally advertised as a 'gross you out' kind of horror writer. And while the cityscapes of Mephistopolis are reminiscent of Hieronymous Bosch, and organs and parts often go flying. The story somehow lacks shock value. In fact some of the features, like the mutilation squads and the subcarnation conservatory are more comic than horrible. I hate to think that, after all of this years, I've become jaded, but there are no moments here that will become burned in your memory. Still, tread softly if you have a queasy stomach.
On the other hand, the story, while a bit light weight, is actual both novel and interesting. Cassie is endearing as she makes her way from withdrawn and bitter goth to social reformer, and Lee's concept of hell makes a perverse sort of sense. Certainly the idea of having three young suicides as friends is an original. And the ending is hardly predictable. If you have been looking for a change of pace, City Infernal might be just what you are looking for - a unique combination of gory thriller and travelogue.
Rating:
Summary: Deliciously Provocative Must-Read
Review: Cassie and her sister Lissa are typical young Goth girls. Though they are twins, each have their own emotional issues and depressing angle at which to observe life. While at a Goth club one evening, Cassie makes the mistake of kissing Lissa's boyfriend (with some prompting by the boyfriend), and Lissa goes over the edge. She pulls a gun and kills her boyfriend and then herself. Trying to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life, in addition to trying to heal emotional wounds and recover from their loss, Cassie and her father move to a much more rural locale in the backwoods of Virginia. Little do they know that their new home was the former home of a Satanist, and contains a doorway to Hell.
A trio of dead souls, Via, Xeke, and Hush, who squat at the Deadpass in Cassie's house as fugitives and ex-residents, confront Cassie one day, and the three of them inform her that she is an Etheress. She unwittingly meets some very particular conditions that give her the ability to visit the infernal city and stir things up a bit in the process. Of course, her only goal is to find her sister and apologize for the unfortunate events that landed her in a place and position of eternal damnation.
Hell, however, isn't all that Cassie had imagined it would be. The city has evolved via advanced technology just as any other city in the Living World has. As Cassie explores the Mephistopolis, she finds that she has a lot to learn, and that things are more than meets the eye. Every street corner is ripe with depictions of systematized evil and atrocious oddities.
Edward Lee definitely ranks up there as one of my favorite authors. He has a simple, yet intensely descriptive way of describing the worlds he envisions and creates in all of his works. The Mephistopolis in this book is no different. This particular depiction of Hell is intricately woven and extremely well thought out, as is the plot in general. The picture of Hell that Lee has drawn within these pages is one of diabolical evil and grandiose design, and Lee hasn't left out a single detail, making for a titillating excursion that shouldn't be missed by anyone.
If you are familiar with any of Lee's other works, you know that he tends to push the extremes when it comes to the "gross-out" element of his writing. His literary signature is one of severe and extravagant, yet fascinating and intriguing, brutality that borders on the obscene and vulgar. In City Infernal, the portrayals tend to be much mellower, making this a great introduction to his work and something those with slightly weaker stomachs can enjoy.
This book was a fast-paced and fun read that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I have already bought and look forward to reading the sequel, "Infernal Angel." Very highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Decent, but not outstanding.
Review: I bought this book because Edward Lee was wearing a Black Flag shirt in his picture. Black Flag fans have to have interesting ideas, right?Well, I guess this was a decent time waster until Wes Eisold kicks out his novel. Yes, Edward Lee had some good ideas. Sometimes, though, they're just packed too quickly. The puns in Hell start quickly and make you gag. They lose steam fairly quickly, too, and you wish he'd just stop and take himself a bit more seriously. That's the problem overall - tone. It's a book about Hell, with Lucifer among the key characters, yet it has difficulties deciding if it should be serious or a parody. Either one could have resulted in a great novel, but a mix of the two wasn't the best choice. Of course, there's a thin line of success with subject matter like this. It's hard to find the balance I suppose. Overall it's readable. Nothing amazing, nothing memorable, but readable. Did I mention that the angel was named Angelique? I suppose all the thousands of angels in Lee's world have the word 'angel' in their name...
Rating:
Summary: Touring Hell
Review: I have heard a lot of great things about Edward Lee, so I couldn't wait to read one of his books. Finally I got "City Infernal". It was reminicent of Clive Barker's earlier stuff like "The Damnation Game". "City Infernal" is a horror fantasy novel about a young goth chic named Cassie. Her twin sister, Lissa (I did spell that right), commited a murder/suicide right in front of Cassie a couple of years ago. Now, Cassie has the chance to go into Hell to look for her. Hell itself is a brilliently imagined cityscape that is like a nightmare version of New York, Amsterdam, and other famous cities put together. Cassie finds out she is an Etheress, a living woman in just special enough circumstances to have magical powers in Hell. (I had a big problem with Cassie's just right circumstances; it feels like Lee made it up just for Cassie's situation.) Along the way she makes friends with Xeke, Via, and Hush, all suicides who can travel between Hell and Earth. They are Cassie's guide through Hell, which is filled with hidious monsters of Lovecraftian quility. I liked this book a lot. It is extreamly gory (though I'm told that Lee's earlier, non-commercial books are much more graphic) and the torture and violence is pretty intense. Lee is having a lot of fun with his geography, he has places like Iscariot Ave., River Styx, and many other occult references (including many Ceasers). Cassie is an ok hero, even though she hasn't accomplished her goal at the end of the book. Her side kicks are amusing and informitive. But where the book really gets it's kicks is in the demons and monsters. My favorite is Lilith, an incubus who slips onto Earth and nearly kills Cassie's father (that sequence was very unsettleing). The second half of the book (dealing with a waring faction of arch-angels rebelling against Satan, luckily it only the last forty pages or so) is no where near as good as the first half (basicly a guided tour through Hell). "City Infernal" is interesting for anyone looking for basicly Dante's Inferno light.
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