Pulling the Wings Off Angels (K. J. Parker)

Pulling the Wings Off Angels
K. J. Parker
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION: When a struggling, sinning clerical student gets in deep with local thug Florio, the bully demands an unusual form of repayment: hand over the angel his grandfather is rumored to have trapped and hidden in a place even the Almighty Unconquerable Sun cannot see. It's all just a rumor, certainly. Despite his vocation, the cleric doesn't really believe in physically manifesting epiphanies or angels... until Florio breaks open the hidden vault and they're both standing face-to-face with the impossible. This could be their ticket to the life and afterlife of their wildest dreams... or it could be the sin that reserves their spot in the eternal fires of damnation.

REVIEW: This very short novella was likened to The Good Place in the blurb on back, which was one of my favorite shows of all time; the humor was sharp, the characters flawed but trying, and the ultimate message - that change was possible, that justice could be achieved, that broken systems can be repaired - was hopeful and uplifting. So, despite being an atheist-leaning agnostic myself, and admittedly influenced by the free-to-me price, I decided to give Parker's little jaunt a try.
As one might surmise from the rating, I did not enjoy it.
The title promises petty cruelty and bullying right in the title, and the book delivers throughout. There's just a mean-spirited nature to the whole story that put me off almost from the start and never went away. Everyone in it is slimy, conniving, selfish, cruel, and utterly unaccountable to anyone but themselves. God is a bully running a rigged system, the angel's a jerk, and the story natters around in theological paradoxes where all the answers end in damnation and hopelessness. Is a world without a supreme deity pulling the strings better than one lorded over by a rat bastard who openly admits there's no way to win His inherently contradictory game? Not really, no, and any justice or vindication is hollow and short-lived. Instead of The Good Place's optimism, I got a bunch of snarky and unpleasant people being snarky and unpleasant and ultimately damned no matter what they do or don't do, so why bother.
Maybe if I were more of a theology student myself and were more personally invested in the religious debates and their histories (which Parker was obviously parodying in this alternate world), I'd have found it more amusing. But I'm not, and I didn't. This one can't go in the giveaway bag fast enough...

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