About The plot against heaven
Death doesn’t stand a chance against love.
Hell-bent on confronting God after the death of wife Kate, Paul gate-crashes Heaven. With immigration problems and a wall, Heaven turns out to be nowhere near as welcoming as expected. Both Heaven and Hell are modern and militarized, and the cold war that exists between them is about to heat up, with him in the middle of it. Caught on the wrong side of Heaven, Paul faces an impossible choice if he’s to have any hope of seeing his wife again.
Death doesn’t stand a chance against love.
My Thoughts
This is an intriguing little book – just a few hours read – that takes you across unexpected vistas of the afterlife – God in his police state, the Devil in his Casino, both too self-absorbed to give much time to our heartbroken hero, who is only there because he wants to find his wife, and who never meant to get caught up like this… The working out of it nicely captures the paradox of the idea of a war between heaven and hell: what could it look like, such a war? Kirkbride forces it to absurdity, giving both sides a panoply of military equipment and personnel, not to mention the PR men, spinning their propaganda – this is no different from all the other wars, in our own worlds, all of them billed from both sides as battles between good and evil, with the accident of where one happens to live determining one’s allegiance. Kirkbride doesn’t appear to take sides – the Devil, as always, gets the better lines and the more attractive characters, but there is a redemptive moment at the end, reminiscent of the strange scene at the end of Kubrick’s 2001 Space Odyssey, where God gets a better look-in. It’s not a tract: the theological issues take second fiddle, in the end, to a touching love story – and a twist to die for.
Many thanks to Blackthorn Book Tours for the chance to read this book!
Isobel Blackthorn 
Thanks so much, Isobel.