The Morningstar Confession – Matthew Lutton

3 stars

The Morningstar Confession takes everything you know about Lucifer and Jesus/Joshua and twists it all on its head for a new perspective! We all know about Jesus: son of God brought to Earth to save humanity from their sins, tempted by the Devil, betrayed by Judas, executed by the Romans, etc. But did anyone ever think to ask Lucifer for his story?

I absolutely loved the glimpses into the past that Matt gave us. It was such a fresh take on the events of Lucifer’s fall and the life of Joshua, and it gave a unique feel to the story as a whole. Slightly less effective for me were the confession scenes. I found myself missing the “Bless me, Father, it has been blah blah days since my last confession. These are my sins….” so it felt more like an exposition than a confession to me. I wanted to see maybe a specific sin, then the story of the past, then another specific sin, and so on just to keep it in my mind that this was a confession. It wasn’t super clear why Lucifer was confessing in the first place, so I struggled a little until the end to figure out what he was hoping to get out of this.

There was something in the end that felt a bit off to me. I don’t want to say too much for fear of spoilers, but there’s a scene where I felt the padre took a step back character development wise, and it left me feeling a little wanting when I closed the book. Though there was a lot of room left for some quality torment via Lucifer, so maybe it evened itself out.

All in all, this book left me with some interesting thoughts. While I haven’t been to a church since I was 18, I was raised Catholic, and I actually felt a little sorry for this fictional Lucifer, so props to Matt for writing such a fascinating character. I do have a little mixed feelings for Morningstar Confession, but I did enjoy it overall (despite what seemed like a lot of gratuitous vomit and poop)!