The art in the volume took quite a downturn, but the story more than made up for it. An excellent volume :) ( )

This volume contains the issue that is really at the heart of my love for the series as a whole. "The Yahweh Dance" is, in my least humble of opinions, great beyond measure. I love the way the series, in general, deals with alternate universes, and the chance to see Elaine try her hand at making a third is fantastic, slyly explaining the apparent paradoxes between an all-powerful creator and an apparently flawed creation. I love the art; I love the fluid nature of time; I love that Carey has now made two new universes with two new Gods. ( )

Though I have enjoyed Lucifer on the whole, its major plot strands sometimes became less than interesting-- and even when they might have been okay on their own, they got dragged out far too long.  Crux is a good example of this, at exactly the wrong time.  The previous volume, The Wolf Beneath the Tree, introduced the threat of Fenris; by the end of Crux, Fenris's threat still hasn't been resolved, and a snarling wolf-god who wants to unmake the universe when its death is already imminent for not-very-well-explicated reasons isn't interesting enough to be the major threat for this much of the story.  Nor was I particularly interested in the people hanging out with Lilith who wanted to do much the same for only-slightly-better-defined reasons.

However, there was some great stuff in Crux regardless.  "The Eighth Sin" takes us to Hell, where we see that Christopher Rudd, the damned man liberated from his torment, has become a messianic figure, preaching a message that neither damned nor demon needs to be subject to the torments of Hell, pointing out that it is unjust for God to keep them down there (little does he know that God absconded from the universe three books ago). (An appearance from Gaudium, the cigar-chomping-ex-cherub-with-a-heart-of-gold-but-not-much-competence doesn't go amiss, either.)

The best part of the book was of course "The Yahweh Dance"; Lucifer is at its most interesting when discussing the problems of being a deity, and "The Yahweh Dance" is no exception.  The archangel Michael has passed his demiurgic power onto Elaine Belloc, his half-human daughter, and she is struggling to maintain some kind of control over it-- and in doing so, accidentally creates a universe.  How do you balance wanting to protect people from harm with wanting to let people make their own decisions when you have omnipotence?  It turns out to be harder than you'd think.  In glimpses of another universe, this story plays out some of the fascinating ideas that keep me coming back to Lucifer every time.

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(Amy) And things gather nearer to the, er, crux, in this ninth volume of the Lucifer series, in which Lucifer himself is Sir Not Appearing (Very Much) In This Book, but at least we advance the plot line left hanging at the end of the seventh volume, and learn what Lilith's been up to for the last quite-some-time. It's also fun to watch what sanity the angels may have possessed at the beginning of it all unravel with increasing rapidity.

...I don't actually have much to say about this, I'm afraid, though I am enjoying the series immensely. Looking forward to the next two volumes, and to finishing the thing up.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/zenos-library/2009/08/lucifer_crux.html ) ( )

The Yahweh Dance a clear favourite. OMG, what happens next!? ( )