The story begins in the beleaguered city of Cog. The protagonist, Jack Aviso, is himself a cog, a functionary in the soulless, profit-obsessed enterprise known as the Henry Sill Banking Corporation. When a routinely corrupt business transaction shatters both his marriage and his well-ordered life, Jack finds himself—quite literally—in Hell, where he embarks on a perilous, unprecedented journey of revenge.

Moving from the urban desolation of Cog City to the surreal landscape of a marvelously described Hell – a region unlike anything ever encountered in contemporary fiction – Damnation for Beginners is an utterly unique creation, one that combines the baroque pleasures of a powerful imagination with a cogent critique of an all too familiar society dominated by rampant, runaway greed. The result is a strange, wonderful, and terrifying tale, the work of a master storyteller with a wholly original point of view.