When you’re just trying to survive WWII but the Greek gods hit you with a ‘hold my lyre’ moment. Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black isn’t just a book—it’s a séance. Set in the ash-choked heart of 1944 London, it drags you into the delirium of Harry Black, a firefighter-artist who’d rather sketch dystopian futures than fight in one. When a V2 rocket obliterates the pub where his brother Ellis last stood, Harry’s reality fractures. What follows is a Twin Peaks-meets-Odyssey descent: part wartime survival tale, part mythic reckoning, all hallucinatory noir. The Sedgwicks (yes, actual brothers writing fictional brothers—meta, right?) weave Harry’s journal entries with Orpheus’s haunting verse, while Alexis Deacon’s illustrations drip with Boschian dread. Imagine a charcoal sketch of the Blitz, where bomber planes morph into Furies and rubble becomes Cerberus’s maw. Harry’s quest to dig Ellis out of the underworld isn’t just physical—it’s a screaming manifesto against the machinery of war. One minute, you’re in a bomb shelter; the next, you’re bargaining with Hades in a pinstripe suit. But here’s the kicker: this isn’t just Orpheus retold. It’s *Orpheus reloaded*. Harry’s Eurydice isn’t a lover—it’s his brother, and the "don’t look back" rule becomes a gut-punch metaphor for survivor’s guilt. The lines between Harry’s sci-fi novel drafts, his sketches of mechanized horrors, and the actual war blur like ink in rain. By the end, you’ll question whether the real underworld is the one with rivers of fire or the one where kids collect shrapnel like seashells .