I love Dante Alighieri's "Commedia," the "Inferno" being my favorite part of the whole. When I found David Wisehart's novel Devil's Lair, I couldn't wait to embark on a journey back down into Dante's rings of Hell.
Not only is this novel deftly written, but also it is undeniably entertaining. A work fraught with adventure, history and intrigue, I couldn't put it down. I admit the novel is enhanced when one is versed in works of antiquity and the Middle Ages, but nonetheless it stands alone as a first-rate work of fiction.
The imaginative marriage between literary history and church mythology enriches "Devil's Lair" and makes it a novel that is not easily forgotten. What student of literature wouldn't want to witness a meeting between two of the greatest Italian poets, Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarch? Wisehart brings them both to life and puts them in the same room. I couldn't help but smile at their admiration for one another:
"Beaming a smile, Petrarch stepped forward, clapped Giovanni on the shoulders, and kissed him on both cheeks. `Welcome, old friend. I've met you many times by candlelight, in the quiet of an evening. Now here you are. I know you well, and not at all. You are truly a gift to our language.' Giovanni felt a blush. `Whatever gifts I possess have come from you and Dante.'"
This is what makes Wisehart's novel a work of virtuosity. He breathes new life into characters--some real, some fictive--that have long been lost in the pages of antiquity and medieval times.
Wisehart appropriates Dante's ice-bound Lucifer and gives him the voice of the Miltonic Satan from "Paradise Lost." Wretched and regretful, it is difficult not to sympathize with the fallen angel who will forever be separated from God. Fated to spend eternity yearning for the light he has lost, Satan lies trapped in a frozen bed of his own tears.
The novel is so rich with literary mythos, I commend and admire the breadth of Wisehart's erudition. He has reinvented the quest for the Holy Grail by placing it in a realm well beyond our own, not just physically but spiritually as well. Relying on Dante's brilliant depiction of a tormenting Hell, Wisehart takes his reader into a world that is both memorable and recognizable, a place to which we have ventured before.
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