This book should not be confused with the Star Trek

Star Trek

Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...

 novel To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh

To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh

To Reign In Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh, is the final book in a trilogy of novels written by Greg Cox chronicling the life of the fictional Star Trek character Khan Noonien Singh. This final book deals with the life of Khan after he was marooned on Ceti Alpha V by Captain James T...

by Greg Cox.

To Reign in Hell is a 1984 fantasy novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by American writer Steven Brust

Steven Brust

Steven Karl Zoltán Brust is an American fantasy and science fiction author of Hungarian descent. He was a member of the writers' group The Scribblies, which included Emma Bull, Pamela Dean, Will Shetterly, Nate Bucklin, Kara Dalkey, and Patricia Wrede; he also belongs to the Pre-Joycean...

. It deals with the revolt of angels in Heaven

Heaven

Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...

 from a point of view that casts Satan

Satan

Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...

 as a sympathetic protagonist. The novel appears to be heavily influenced by John Milton's Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...

.

The novel has had three different publishers since its initial publication: SteelDragon Press (limited edition hardcover ), Ace Books (mass market paperback ), and Tor Books (Orb trade paperback ). The editions by SteelDragon Press and Ace Books are out of print.

Plot summary

The story begins by detailing the creation story of Heaven. There is a substance of raw chaos: cacoastrum; and stuff of order: illiaster. From the illiaster came consciousness that resulted in the firstborn angels: Yaweh, Satan

Satan

Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...

, Michael

Michael (archangel)

Michael , Micha'el or Mîkhā'ēl; , Mikhaḗl; or Míchaël; , Mīkhā'īl) is an archangel in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic teachings. Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Lutherans refer to him as Saint Michael the Archangel and also simply as Saint Michael...

, Lucifer

Lucifer

Traditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...

, Raphael, Leviathan

Leviathan

Leviathan , is a sea monster referred to in the Bible. In Demonology, Leviathan is one of the seven princes of Hell and its gatekeeper . The word has become synonymous with any large sea monster or creature...

 and Belial

Belial

Belial is one of the four crown princes of Hell and a demon in the Bible, Jewish apocrypha and Christian apocrypha...

. The firstborn create Heaven in order to protect themselves from the cacoastrum, which threatens to destroy them. This event is later referred to as the 'First Wave.' The walls of heaven have collapsed two times since then, resulting in the Second and Third Waves, creating, respectively, the archangels and angels.

After the third wave Heaven has been divided into four regencies named for the cardinal points of the compass. Belial, half-mad and trapped in the form of a dragon, rules the Northern Regency. Leviathan, a kindly woman in the shape of a sea serpent, oversees the Western Regency. Satan rules the South with his loyal servant Beelzebub

Beelzebub

Beelzebub -Religious meaning:Ba‘al Zəbûb is variously understood to mean "lord of flies", or "lord of the dwelling". Originally the name of a Philistine god, Beelzebub is also identified in the New Testament as Satan, the "prince of the demons". In Arabic the name is retained as Ba‘al dhubaab /...

, trapped in the body of a golden retriever

Golden Retriever

The Golden Retriever is a medium-sized breed of dog. They were historically developed as gundogs to retrieve shot waterfowl such as ducks and upland game birds during hunting and shooting parties. As such, they were bred to have a soft mouth to retrieve game undamaged and have an instinctive love...

. Lucifer rules the East, with his consort Lilith

Lilith

Lilith is a character in Jewish mythology, found earliest in the Babylonian Talmud, who is generally thought to be related to a class of female demons Līlīṯu in Mesopotamian texts. However, Lowell K. Handy notes, "Very little information has been found relating to the Akkadian and Babylonian view...

, who had previously been briefly involved with Satan. Yaweh oversees all of Heaven from the center, aided by his healer Raphael and warrior Michael.

Other important angels include the blind musician Harut, the poetry-quoting Ariel, the craftsman Asmodai

Asmodai

Asmodeus or Asmodai is a king of demons mostly known from the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit, in which he is the primary antagonist. The demon is also mentioned in some Talmudic legends, for instance, in the story of the construction of the Temple of Solomon. He was supposed by some Renaissance...

, the smirking Mephistopheles

Mephistopheles

Mephistopheles is a demon featured in German folklore...

, the dour Uriel

Uriel

Uriel is one of the archangels of post-Exilic Rabbinic tradition, and also of certain Christian traditions...

, the sneering Abdiel

Abdiel

Abdiel is a biblical name which has been used as the name for a number of fictional characters and as a given name for several notable people...

, the somewhat naive Gabriel

Gabriel

In Abrahamic religions, Gabriel is an Archangel who typically serves as a messenger to humans from God.He first appears in the Book of Daniel, delivering explanations of Daniel's visions. In the Gospel of Luke Gabriel foretells the births of both John the Baptist and of Jesus...

 and the coolly competent Zaphkiel

Zaphkiel

Zaphkiel , also written as Jafkiel, Japhkiel, Tzaphkiel, Zafkiel, Zafchial, Zaphchial, or Zaphiel, is an archangel. He is sometimes equated with Jophiel/Zophiel, but other times considered to be a different angel...

. A mostly independent subplot involving two angels named Kyriel and Sith gives the viewpoints of two low-level angels who get swept up in the story's events.

Trouble arises when Yaweh, worried about the imminent Fourth Wave, devises The Plan: the blueprint for a new, larger Heaven (Earth), with walls that the cacoastrum cannot destroy. Unfortunately, at least a thousand angels will die during the construction of his new Paradise. Yaweh charges Satan with securing the cooperation of every angel in Heaven, and Satan finds himself wondering if they have the ethical right to coerce anyone into participating.

Exacerbating matters is Abdiel, who craves Satan's rank. Abdiel begins playing Satan against Yaweh, telling each of them that the other will no longer discuss matters. Step by step, the factions escalate. Abdiel attempts to wound Beelzebub and accidentally kills the innocent Ariel. When Satan and Beelzebub attempt to avenge this, Raphael and Michael misinterpret this as proof their opponents have abandoned all decency.

Yaweh, attempting to rally his side, convinces his supporters that he is not only the eldest of the Firstborn, he is God. This announcement stuns not only his opponents, but even Michael, his closest supporter. Using the energy of his newfound worshipers, he creates a new angel, Yeshuah, who he proclaims his son and heir.

As the war continues, Zaphkiel intercepts Satan and brings him directly to Yaweh, where the two discover that Abdiel has played them both for fools. However, Satan will not acknowledge Yaweh's dishonest claim to Godhood, and neither will Yaweh abandon it, so the conflict continues.

Abdiel, now on the run from both sides, begins digging a hole in the wall of Heaven, but Mephistopheles finds and strangles him before he can finish the work. Satan's hosts gain the ascendency in the battle. Seeing that defeat is inevitable, Yaweh decides to destroy Heaven by expanding the hole that Abdiel had been deepening. Yet when the wall of Heaven is breached, flooding Heaven with cacoastrum, Yaweh finds that he cannot allow himself to be destroyed by the cacoastrum; it is not in his nature.

Yeshuah, seeing an opportunity to triumph over Satan's forces, sacrifices his life by leaping into the breach and directing the rupture towards the hosts of Satan, devastating them. Meanwhile, as the rebels fight for Heaven, Satan is captured but with the help of Beelzebub and Mephistopheles leaves Heaven; his followers join him in the abyss and create a third stronghold: Hell.