This is a short story about angels and demons that work in a call center. About an angel in particular, that is our narrator. The premise is really good and I thought this was going to be a comedy, but it turns out it had serious moments and surprising sex scenes too.

The story starts with the line “All prayers are answered, but sometimes the answer is no” and with a depiction of how it’s like to work in a call center. Having worked in two of those myself, those scenes were particularly funny. Besides those moments, the narrator also tells about their past sexual involvement with humans and how all of those ended.

I really enjoyed this story but it felt very much like a draft of an idea instead of a complete work and that is a shame. The characters and themes weren’t fleshed out enough and there was very little world building. I seldom have that last complain about anything, but by the end of this story I had so many questions about how this call center worked and how it came into existence and what was the actual purpose of it all. I really wish this story was longer. ( )

Angels work. Of course we do. We’re all on zero-hour contracts. Time, after all, is a human idea.

We get twenty-five minutes of it for lunch, with deductions for any bathroom or smoke stops we might have taken. Hating your boss is also a human idea.

The day everything changes, I spend my lunch in the break room with Gremory. There are many rooms in my Father’s house, but only one with a functioning coffee machine.

Meh. (FWIW, angel fiction is generally meh, from my perspective.) If angels and demons working a call center following a heavenly merger (and all that that implies) sounds good to you, YMMV. Available free from Tor:

http://www.tor.com/2016/03/15/your-orisons-may-be-recorded/ ( )

Heaven has modernised. Prayers are routed to a call centre where the staff of angels and demons - we are told that heaven and hell merged more than a millennium ago as a cost-saving measure - answer prayers with banal platitudes meant to keep the 'call' below seven minutes and encourage 'repeat custom'. It's not possible to speak to someone higher up as management has long been absent.


Our protagonist takes far too long speaking to clients - she loves humanity in a profound and, whenever possible, physical way - and so spends far too much time walking the Earth.


This is a fun, funny and deceptively light story that I found quite moving, and not just because of any similarities to my own working environment. ( )

I like Laurie Penny's voice. There's something very urban and English about it along with an attitude like a younger and slightly less cynical Warren Ellis. ( )

Our long-suffering narrator works Up There, fielding calls from all over the world, doing their best to answer, comfort and help the people who call. (I use 'their' with good reason because the angelic host don't have fixed genders, though they can assume either sex at will.) The problem is that the boss is absent, the facilities aren't quite up to scratch ('There are many rooms in my Father's house, but only one with a functioning coffee machine'), and the floor manager Uriel keeps a tight rein on call-handling targets and production goals. Our narrator isn't quite up to scratch: they're too compassionate for their own good, which can't be said for their colleague, the demon Gremory ('Hello... my name is Legion. How can I help you?'). This, then, is an odd-couple story of the best kind ('We all have our demons. Mine just knows me a bit too well'), irreverent, cool and funny, with eye-opening revelations about how angels spend their free time. Probably not one for the devout. Naturally, it is impossible to read this without thinking of Good Omens. ( )