The Salvation War

[Feloidea]

I just stumbled upon this marble (thanks TVTropes!) and am about two thirds down the first part "Armageddon" and have to say this "book" is flat out brilliant.

http://www.tboverse.us/HPCAFORUM/php...forum.php?f=29

To read, just start up with Armageddon 1-5 and then go forth.

A small in-take on the setting:

God, named Yahwe in this setting, is fed up with humanity not worshipping him in blind, unrelented faith as he/she/it demands and send "The Message" to the realm of earth, stating heaven's gates are closed as of now and everyone is supposed to lay down and just die to roast in hell for eternity.
Going with that, Satan proclaimed Earth his dominion and demands humanity to submit to his will, meaning of course roasting in hell.

Question: What does humanity when God basically told them to f*ck themselves and go to hell and the Devil boasts about usurping Earth and all within it?

Answer: The declare war!


That is just fine by Satan's will as he is keen on spewing some torture on those hapless monkeys, though he gets on finding out that even supersized and equally strong demons (Baldricks) in their shiny bronze armor and lighting spewing tridents are just a little itsy bitsy understrenght when dealing with modern combined arms warfare, EM hardened tanks and MRLSs raining steel on his legions of hell.

Suffice it to say they halfway through the first part, there is a literal Highway to Hell, the People's Front for Liberating Hell is raising havoc in the sixth Circle of Hell, Gaius Julias Caesar and his Guards Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo laugh heartily watching "Rome" and the Human Expeditionary forces are in the process of transitioning 3.6 million demons that were sent to repell the human forces from Hell.

Oh, and God's favourite pet is a giant beast capable of wreaking destruction absolutely disproportionate to its dreadful name ... Wuffles.
Count in Archangel Micheal running a drug-ring in Heaven and celestial hookers and you have a rough idea how awesome "The Salvation War" is.

And do not make the mistake of thinking my rather sensationalistic preview does the excellent writing justice, it is not a simply gag-show of mass-slaughter and comedy, but a sensible and very intelligent thought of storyline.


In other words: One hell of a read!


Any thoughts you might want to share (after reading a bit of it of course)?

[Commander32]

....what?

[Lord-Vale3]

Not interested. Not big on making fun of peoples beliefs, however disagreeable they may be.

[Feloidea]

Not interested. Not big on making fun of peoples beliefs, however disagreeable they may be.

Huh?

Since when were What-If's categorized as making fun of something?

I would say you just read the first five or ten chapters (posts) and then you may pass your judgement on the work. It is not picking fun on beliefs. It has a good deal of irony embedded as an effect of the setting, but I don't see how it is offending to other people than the most religious nutcases (in fact the publishing of this work as hard copy was abandoned after a Ukranian pirated and sitributed the scripts because "It offended his beliefs", but theres always people that will be offended by something).

Irony, yes, that comes with the story, but there is no picking fun of beliefs.



This no backhand fan-fiction some guy wrote because he felt bored, that is a full blown novelle and both in setting and writing mature enough to be perceived above petty "It has religion in it and it is reviewed in a critical fashion, so it is offending, durr".



If you don't like it, well ... then you didn't like it, there would be no argueing, but I like to stress it is NOT picking fun on religious people.

edit://
In fact, it has a part in which a Quaker explains how exactly the setting does not adhere to anyone's beliefs as they stand in the real world/stood in the pre-setting of the in-universe.

[Klandri]

Lol, sounds like 'one hell of a read'. Unfortunately my book list is quite full at the moment, I have to read a book for my Icelandic class and I put another book on hold to finish it, and I'm probably going to preorder The Inheritance but I hope I might read it if I get time.

[Feloidea]

Lol, sounds like 'one hell of a read'. Unfortunately my book list is quite full at the moment, I have to read a book for my Icelandic class and I put another book on hold to finish it, and I'm probably going to preorder The Inheritance but I hope I might read it if I get time.

As I hinted a case of copyright infringement pretty much destroyed anyhope for a final hard-copy deployment of this work (as does the last part of the trilogy seem unlikely to see further work invested to it, a shame) because some idiot torrented the work out of some religious BS in the very public aim to inhibit any commercial future of this work. The publisher caught right on that one sadly, so the whole trilogy won't be finalized as of now, but from what I read (only part 81-End missing, the rest was a brilliant read the last two days) I still think this is great work and I would pay for it. Somewhat a shame the author is running other successful stories that will likely see publishment on which s/he can focus, so any vain hope in getting the last pieces out of luck are faint at best (damn you piracy!).


That said, I don't see how you could get past a hard-copy anyway (I have asked in various book stores and outlets around and they found no hint of a copy I could buy, ... hell) so you'd have to do the same as me and simply read the scripts of the first two parts (The Salvation War: Armageddon and TSW: Pantheocide (the final part was meant to be TSW: Lords of War and supposed to deal with the repercussions of having beaten both Hell and Heaven and all that comes with it)), but I can assure you it is worth the read (though mind your eyes, focused reading on a monitor for hours is tiring as I can tell first hand, even if only a little).



The scripts are, apart from very few format errors and rarely some double words or two, very easily just as readable as any novelle and I have cracked up laughing at multiple times on both the events described aswell as how they are written and can tell you it is a very amusing read at the very least, especially of course if you enjoy the irony of the Catholic Church excommunicating God himself and the likes (no mockery on religions as I want to stress again, it is very sensible in the context of the setting and my everyday thoughts about religion and especially churches as an agnostic/ignostic are much more militant that what is presented or played within the story!).


Now if you excuse me, I have to read the last chapters and shall then enjoy Archangel Michael ****ing of Yahwe with the power of Rock (you read that right).

[PizzaAtomica]

This actually sounds like it would be a pretty awesome setting for a new CnC universe.

[Klandri]

Dear god no.

(Pun intended)

[Feloidea]

Funny, all of the sudden this topic gets one-star'ed ... guess we have some people easily butthurt over their personal business in here aswell.

To them I tell what I tell everyone: "Deal with it."

[Klandri]

I never bother to rate threads but I gave it 5 stars in an effort to even it out.