The Road to Hell
Review by The Mad Bibliographer, submitted on 23-May-1997

A version of the following review is slated to appear in _The Vampire's Crypt 16_ (Fall 1997).

Review by Cathy Krusberg

Robert Weinberg. The Road to Hell. (Mage: The Ascension; The Horizon War 1) White Wolf, 1996; WW 11012; ISBN 1-56504-847- 4; $5.99/$7.99.

When Robert Weinberg completed his Masquerade of the Red Death trilogy (_Bloodwar_, _Unholy Allies_, _The Unbeholden_), he deliberately left a few ends loose. One was vampire Madeleine Giovanni, divided between loyalty to her clan and love for a mortal. And not just any mortal: Elisha is a young but talented mage and a promising student of one of the world's most powerful mages, a man known as Rambam. Consequently it's not surprising that _The Road to Hell_ is set in the universe of Mage: The Ascension rather than Vampire: The Masquerade.

Madeleine Giovanni has several appearances in this book and will clearly be an important player in subsequent volumes of The Horizon War. The trilogy, however, is set in a world where magic-technology (the Technocracy) vies with mages of the Nine Traditions, seeking to make the world a place of machine-like order . . . for the greater good, of course. _The Road to Hell_ focuses on a particular mage, known only as Seventeen, who escapes a Technocracy gene-manipulation facility just in time to give Tradition mages a shot at preventing the Technocracy's latest scheme for world domination. Making matters still more challenging is the setting of their confrontation: the Technocracy's own Horizon, a space-out-of-space woven according Technocracy rules of how reality should operate. Fighting the Technocracy is dangerous; fighting them on their own ground, well-nigh suicidal.

And Madeleine Giovanni's role in all this? Ezra, the mage who tried to betray her to her grandfather, head of Clan Giovanni, has ties to the powers behind Seventeen's imprisonment. Grandfather Pietro Giovanni is of course going to take his granddaughter's word over that of an insane mage and sends Madeleine herself after Ezra's head. Madeleine, nicknamed "Dagger of the Giovanni," is a skilled assassin; but Ezra, insanity and all, has powers to vie with Rambam's own. And while Rambam is willing to give Madeleine moral support, his hands are tied when it comes to actually dealing with Ezra. Consequently, Madeleine may be in over her head on this one.

Although vampires make only scattered appearances, there's no shortage of alliances, betrayals, scheming, and backstabbing -- all the things we're come to expect from White Wolf's World of Darkness. (And you really do need to check out Pietro Giovanni's blood roses.) Even if you don't *have* to find out what happened to Madeleine Giovanni, _The Road to Hell_ will introduce you to other characters with compelling stories. The second installment of The Horizon War, _The Ascension Warrior_, is slated for November 1997 publication.