This review contains affiliate links, which earn me a small commission when you click and purchase, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my small business and allowing me to continue providing you a reliable resource for clean book ratings.
Leave it to a professional trivia nerd to offer up a collection of brief descriptions about where all of us are headed and to pull those potential destinations from seven separate shelves. The Myth section of 100 Places to See After You Die encompasses afterlife scenarios from historical cultures found all over the planet, as does the Religion segment. Unsurprisingly, this pair constitutes the most well-known versions of what is going to happen when our bodies finally cease respiration, but there are some fun surprises distilled from a handful of lesser-known ideologies.
The author also presents concise chronicles derived from popular (and not quite so popular) books, again from multiple corners of civilization. From there, we segue into some of the most fun portrayals of the hereafter by examining how the arts (movies, television, theater and music) have presented different angles on how mankind may continue after the flesh is finished. We conclude with a small collection of miscellaneous interpretations, and there we are! One hundred points of view for your soul, spirit, katra or whatever essence may remain after you achieve permanent sleep. So many possibilities.
Actually, too many for most readers. Obviously, the number 100 sounds more complete than the number 50, but in reality, 50 of these essays could easily have been eliminated, and the volume would still have worked. Plenty of the treatises were not only obscure, but either bizarrely complex or just plain boring. Nobody would have missed them, believe me.
Ken Jennings writes with engaging prose, and his little sidecar boxes about Getting Around, What To Eat, and Top Attractions were well done and helped immensely to keep the reader interested. In fact, I found myself making notes so I could explore some of his presentations more deeply, or find a book or film to understand more.
100 Places to See After You Die is one of those books that would be well suited to a waiting room (unless you are at a cardiologist’s) or a coffee table, someplace handy to read a few portions and then go about your business. It is not designed to be read all the way through in a single sitting, unless, of course, you are already aboard the Trans-Eternal Railway and would like to know a good place to get off for a last meal.
Rated: None. The only content that may at all be of concern: the descriptions of bodily suffering may be upsetting for some readers, and there are three crude terms scattered through the text.
Click here to purchase your copy of 100 Places to See After You Die on Amazon.
