A whole new storyarc begins in this collection, with a whole new demonic foe. The story begins with a rather odd group of monks off the coast of Scotland who discover that beside Heaven and Hell there is a third place in the afterlife. It is a place where there is no feeling - as an alternative to the joy of Heaven and the pain of Hell - and it looks like the ruling being (not sure what he is yet) has a plan to saturate the world with empathy to overwhelm the population with feeling so that they crave the non-feeling of his realm in the afterlife. It's an interesting situation for Constantine to be mixed up in, since he is known for caring too much and yet not at all... ( )

Constantine is entrapped in an elaborate scheme to create an engine to deliver hyped-up empathy reception to all, receiving the good and bad, and strives to understand his true enemy.

I've seen so many Constantine books on the library shelves over the years and it has always been at the back of my mind to try one but I may have picked the wrong one here.

I am perhaps one of the very few people who saw the movie Constantine with Keanu Reeves and really enjoyed it but this story is hard to understand and not really worth bothering with. It gets 2 stars because I still like the character of Constantine and some of the artwork is phenomenal but otherwise avoid. ( )

Mina's work on Hellblazer is not among my favourites. Still, there's a lot to recommend this volume: excellent artwork, nice nods to continuity, and a lot of genuinely spooky buildup. Once things start getting explained (here and in the next volume) it falters a little. ( )

Denise Mino has taken Mike Carey's place as the writer for this series. I'm a little sorry to see Carey go, as I think he did some excellent things with the character, but I'm excited to see what directions Mino takes things in. This is a good start. Mino's John Constantine is a little more vulnerable than we're used to seeing, but I think it works. She said in an interview that she sees Constantine not as a true cynic, but as an idealist who's been let down too many times, and I think that's pretty apt.

I did feel in this collection that she's still trying to find her footing; there's a pretty huge info dump toward the end that just doesn't work 100% -- basically, a character shows up expressly for the purpose of giving Constantine (and the reader) a huge amount of much-needed information, but it's not clear how or why this character knows all this. The central premise, however, that a cult is causing people to feel empathy for one another to a detrimental degree, is pretty brilliant, especially since empathy is something Constantine fights constantly against. I liked this well enough that I was tempted to run out and buy the subsequent single issues that Mino has authored. ( )