Passport To Hell

Whilst the road to Hell may be paved with good intentions it seems that even here you need a passport.

Enter, The Unemployed Philosophers Guild who bid for and won the contract to supply bureaucratic paperwork to the inhabitants of Mr Morningstar’s realm.

I originally came across the Passport by accident when following a link from one site to another and thought it quirky and fun but now given what is currently happening in the EU obtaining a passport for the underworld is starting to seem like the smart choice.

Joking aside; I next saw these Passports on Amazon and thought ‘why not’, placed an order and a few days later the Passport arrived. As this is a fun product my expectations were not high assuming what I would receive is a basic notebook with mediocre paper. I was wrong and I am happy to admit it. What arrived was a small well-made notebook with decent paper and a good quality cover.

So, to business. What you get is a passport sized notebook, 12cm x 9cm, sealed in a plastic envelope.

The cover is made from a sturdy card stock and on the front cover the figures of the travellers, the demons and the word HELL are all raised; the illustration is good quality and is all set on a suitably deep blood red coloured background. The rear cover shows an image of the notebook’s pages, the Guild’s details and a Yiddish proverb “Hell shared with a sage is better than paradise with a fool”.

The inner front cover is a standard passport page requiring all the usual information and a photograph whilst the inner rear cover has some ‘Travellers Tips’; my personal favourite is “Snowball fighting is strictly prohibited”.

 

Binding for this notebook appears to be a two-stage process. When the pages are being stitched, they have the cover added and once that is done then an outer cover is sealed over the top to conceal the stitching and I would guess it’s quite an expensive process which tells you something about the design and build quality of this notebook.

To test the durability of the covers/binding I have bent them this way and that without any damage, my only advice on this is that I don’t think they would survive being folded all the way around as that may over stress the binding and cause the cover to come lose.

 

 

The internal or infernal pages (32 sheets/64 sides) are cream and lined in a pale orange/red and the corners of the pages (upper left and lower right on a two page spread) are decorated with Hell designs. I ink tested the pages with Diamine Oxford Blue using a swab, a very wet pen and normal pen and the results were very good. There is some show through from the swab and the normal pen and a little bleed through from the very wet Jinhao 159. All in all, I would say the pages of this notebook are suitable for fountain pen use as long as you steer clear of very wet pens.

So, is Hell’s Passport worth the money? Yes, it’s a good quality pocket notebook with a design that sets it apart, I paid the equivalent of $6.50 USD with free shipping which I think is a good price for this notebook. 

A final word of caution, no matter how tempted you are don’t fill this passport in or you may find yourself in a very strange departure lounge holding a ticket for Flight 666 on Ed Force One.

 

Disclaimer: The notebook was purchased with my own funds at retail price. The opinions expressed in this review are my own; and I am not connected with either the retailers or manufacturers in any way.