How Does The Mandelbaum English Translation Of The Divine Comedy Compare To Others?

My wife, Cassia, was a wood nymph. A cursed one. Forbidden to love mortals. But she fell for me anyway. Every time her heart fluttered for me, the gods struck her down with agony. She willingly endured that torture ninety-nine times just for a chance to be with me. Then, demons dragged me to Tartarus. Hellfire and whips became my sun and moon. Right as I was about to break, I remembered a prayer Cassia taught me—a desperate whisper to the gods. It finally worked. But instead of help, I heard Cassia talking to her patron goddess, Hecate. "Cassia, how could you bargain with the Furies? You let them drag Aiden to Tartarus!" Cassia's voice choked with desperate tears. "Adonis was supposed to suffer this fate. But he's a fragile mortal. This would destroy his soul! I had no choice if I wanted to save him." "Aiden is a child of prophecy. His soul is strong. The Fates watch over him. He'll survive." "Once I save Adonis, I can stay in the mortal realm forever. Then, I'll use my eternal life and all my love to repay the hell he's enduring for me." My heart shattered. As the monsters closed in on me, I stopped fighting. I gave up.

On my twentieth birthday, I had to choose a husband from the six angel heirs. Everyone thought I would choose Adrian Seraphiel, the brightest golden-winged heir and the man I had loved for years. In my last life, I did. Because of me, he inherited eighty percent of House Seraphiel’s fortune and became the next ruler of the angel clan. But after our marriage, he got involved with Celeste, my adopted half-siren sister. When my dragon family cast her out of House Drakon, Adrian blamed me. From then on, he hated me. He surrounded himself with women who looked like her, humiliated me again and again, and finally replaced my life-saving medicine with slow poison. I died carrying his child, while the last of my dragon blood burned away. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on my twentieth birthday. This time, I decided to let them have each other. So in front of everyone, I chose Cassian Seraphiel, the sixth son of the angel family. Broken-winged. Mocked by everyone. No one believed he could ever inherit anything. The room burst into laughter. Adrian looked at me coldly and sneered. “Elena, are you choosing that useless cripple just to get my attention?” I ignored him. Because in my last life, after I died, this so-called useless cripple was the only one who collected my body, found the truth, and avenged me by stripping Adrian of his golden wings. But then Adrian stepped closer. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Funny,” he said. “That wasn’t who you chose in your last life.”

Sophie is delighted to be marrying Sebastian, the billionaire heir to the Castillo line, who has always been her childhood crush. She counts herself one of the few amongst her peers, who wouldn't have to deal with the unpleasant ordeal of a loveless marriage, But all that hope is crushed when she's jilted at the altar by her intended groom who doesn't show up. But worse than being the jilted bride, is the crushing reality that the wedding is expected to go on. Only, instead of marrying Sebastian, she would be marrying his cold hearted, arrogant recluse of a half-brother; Dante Castillo. And in her opinion, that was the worst fate any young lady could ever be sentenced to. Or was it..?

She can see the chains on his soul. He can't see the knife in her hand. Seraphina Luca has spent her whole life watching powerful men wear invisible chains they don't know exist—contracts written in shadow, binding their souls to an ancient debt. She never asked for this gift. It's only made her isolated and alone. Then Dante Romano stole her father's soul to burn his own contract. He's the most feared name in the underworld—cold, ruthless, and utterly convinced the ends justify the means. Seraphina should want him dead. God, she wants him dead. She also can't stop watching the way he flinches when someone calls him a monster. Like some small, starving part of him agrees. When she's pulled into his world, the attraction is immediate and electric. He sees her as leverage. She sees him as the man who destroyed her family. They circle each other, testing and taunting, until the wall between hatred and hunger crumbles. She falls into bed with the man who orphaned her—and hates herself for wanting to stay. But the clock is ticking. The ancient god who holds their contracts is dying. Someone is planning a massacre that will shatter the system forever. Seraphina has one choice: help Dante burn it all down, or watch everything she loves disappear. She can't have vengeance and love. She can't save the world and save herself. She has to pick one.

As you know, angels are at the head of the good mortal world, and demons rule the ball in hell. But the angels are not as kind as the people of the church have always made them out to be. The human race is not so important to them. And now, in their wars for our souls, they have completely forgotten about us. But people like me don't consider themselves to be ordinary people. We live twice, and sometimes three times more than ordinary people are allowed to live. Our society is called the priests of Ultima. That's all we want to tell about our world...

In my previous life, I married Apollo, the Sun God, as the Goddess of Wisdom. Only in death did I discover that I was nothing more than a blood supply he had been raising for my mortal stepsister. To keep his powerless stepsister alive on Mount Olympus, he pierced my chest himself, ripped out my divine essence, and forced it into her body, declaring without a shred of remorse, "You're the older sister. Taking care of her is your duty." With my divine essence stripped away, I was too weak to resist. He chained me beneath a blazing sun of his own making and left me to burn alive. Meanwhile, my stepsister walked over my bones in the wedding gown my mother had spent a hundred years weaving before she perished, and married him. The man I had loved for a thousand years saw me, from beginning to end, as nothing more than a vessel to keep someone else alive. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the eve of the wedding. I threw the divine marriage contract to my stepsister and let my blood drip onto an obsidian stone bound to the Abyss. A deep voice echoed through my mind. "As you wish, my bride." This time, the one I would marry was the Lord of the Underworld, the one all the gods feared. Together, we would destroy Apollo.