The Pit: Watchmaker's Hell: Book One (1)

In life, we are plagued by the uncertainty of an afterlife, and it is often expected that when we die, everything will suddenly make sense. But when a group of strangers, similar only in their time of death, find themselves in the afterlife, they are faced with more questions than ever before. Are they in Heaven or Hell? If they’re in Heaven, why is there a Nazi wandering around? Why are there no children? If they are in Hell, what universal law did they break? Is there a way to repent and move on to a better eternity? At least one man seems to have some answers. Marcus, a Roman dead for 2,000 years, gains the group’s trust by leading them through the perils of their new reality. But soon it becomes clear that Marcus is only telling them half the story.

From Publishers Weekly

Barnes’s debut is a disappointing, meandering story populated with a jumble of characters who aren’t sure where they are or what they’re supposed to do. The Pit is the entrance for those condemned to hell, run by Marcus, a 2000-year-old Roman. He is recruiting the newly dead to fight on his side against Virgil Offgood, a Chicago cop who controls an area of hell called the City. Deborah Molinsky, a Jewish prisoner of Auschwitz, is doing her own recruiting; she believes the residents of the Pit can be redeemed. She converts Heinrich von Helldorf, a Nazi guard from Dachau, and Misha, an Atlantic slave ship captain. Marcus, Virgil, and Deborah compete to win over London lawyer Nadia Patel, Los Angeles teenager Allison Yates, German history professor Christoph Schmidt (who believes Allison is the reincarnation of his wife), Korean housewife Yi Soo, and American soldier Avery Fox. Piecemeal worldbuilding, incomprehensible character backgrounds, the glacial pace of revelations, inconsistent points of view, and an unresolved ending jettison a promising concept. (BookLife)\n

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