A hitman, a hooker, a hobo and a homosexual go to Hell...
But Hell is not what you'd expect. It's really just the living world writ large, every petty injustice and stupid brutality turned up to eleven. The countless damned souls mill about in a Wretched Hive of a city, trying to stay out of the way of an abusive police force and avoid being sent to the dreaded Institute, all while being fed a steady diet of obvious propaganda by the Vox News.
Escape is, like all other things in Hell, futile... but each of the four decides that they have literally nothing left to lose by trying.
Escape From Hell! is a novella by Hal Duncan. Not to be confused with Escape from Hell (2009), a similarly-titled novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
This novel contains examples of the following tropes:
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: While not every sinner deserves the honour, some are intended to have their spirits broken until they effectively become demons.
- Beneath Notice: The Forgotten can't be seen by other residents of Hell without special equipment. This is actually preferable — there are all sorts of reasons to not want to attract notice in Hell.
- Corrupt Cop: Hell's police force is made up by cops damned for evil behavior. As Six points out, good cops don't go to Hell in the first place.
- Cure Your Gays: Matthew is subjected to this. Of course it's not actually meant to cure him of anything, just to break his spirit.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The end has the escapees getting ready to storm the heavily fortified gates of Heaven. Their success is far from certain, but then, no one expected them to come this far in the first place.
- God Is Evil: Everything that happens in Hell happens with his blessing.
- Groin Attack: Belle manages to escape by killing her current john, which she does by stabbing him in the crotch with a broken lamp, electrocuting him.
- Hand Wave: So how can you die when you're already dead? The question is repeatedly asked, but brushed aside each time.
- Hell of a Heaven: It's implied at the end that while Hell is bad enough, Heaven has also taken a turn for the worse over the centuries.
- Mundane Afterlife: Hell is really amazingly prosaic and just slightly worse than Earth. You can even die there, and go on to some unknown fate. Indeed, if you're one of the Forgotten, the cops make a sport out of hunting you down and killing you.
- Poke the Poodle: While it isn't expanded upon, at one point a character wonders if the bulk of Hell's population are just minor sinners being punished with things like eternal wage slavery.
- Satan Is Good: Turns out that he had good reasons for rebelling, i.e., the fact that God is a massive jerk. He also isn't responsible for the atrocities permitted in Hell. He's its first prisoner, not its ruler.
- Strawman News Media: Vox News, which blares out propaganda around the clock. It's not even trying to make its lies believable — it's just there to add insult to injury by describing the homeless people gunned down by the authorities as "rioters" and "looters".
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Hell's modus operandi. It tries to give people just enough hope to cruelly dash it.
