Angelfall Review

Angelfall by Susan Ee
Narrator: Caitlin Davies
Series: Penryn and the End of Days #1
Published by Feral Dream on May 1, 2011
Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
Genres: Paranormal, Post-Apocalyptic
Format: Audiobook
Goodreads

 It's been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they journey toward the angels' stronghold in San Francisco where she'll risk everything to rescue her sister and he'll put himself at the mercy of his greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again.

Locus Magazine, March 2012 Finalist for Cybils Bloggers Award for Best YA Fantasy & Sci-fi Book of the Year 2011.

 

   Julie’s Review    

This one was kind of hard for me to classify. It started off with a bang with the angel getting  his wings cut off by I guess a rival angel gang, while some of those angels kidnapped Paige, Penryn’s little sister. Penryn nurses the angel back to health in order to use him to find his sister, saying he owes her his life. Excellent start. The majority of the book was a bit “journey” for me (where the characters go from one place to another with some mishaps along the way, with one final destination in mind). I typically don’t rate those types of books too highly since the middle bores me. Or at least has me groaning and rolling my eyes saying “lets get on with it already.” But in this case the events were really interesting.

Some of the plot developments were completely unexpected, like all the bodies they kept finding with human-like bite marks. I was thinking to myself “is this an angel apocalypse novel or a zombie novel, or a little of both?” Well, it wasn’t a zombie novel but what the angels were doing with the kids was just so devastatingly twisted and tragic, deliciously so, that it definitely bumped this book up a star in my rating scale. I really liked how Penryn and the angel worked together and took care of each other, even though for much of the novel they were still enemies. Obviously their partnership cultivated loyalty to each other and it was really interesting to see how they managed to get out of certain situations, and into some places, by working together, while continuing to hide their angel or human status.

I learned that this series is supposed to be about 5 books long and I’m not really sure what to expect in the upcoming books, but the ending of this one definitely left a lot open to possible new adventures. It wasn’t a cliffhanger ending though (hate cliffhangers!), so that made me happy.

Here are some quotes I liked:

“I never kid about my warrior demigod status.”
“Oh. My. God.” I lower my voice, having forgotten to whisper. “You are nothing but a bird with an attitude. Okay, so you have a few muscles, I’ll grant you that. But you know, a bird is nothing but a barely evolved lizard. That’s what you are.”

“It is not the gentle kiss of a couple on a first date, nor is it the kiss of a man driven by simple lust. He kisses me with the desperation of a dying man who believes the magic of eternal life is in this kiss.”

“I knew from the start that your loyalty would get you killed. I just never thought it would be your loyalty to me that would do it.”

“I’ve never killed anyone before. What frightens me isn’t that I’m killing someone. What frightens me is how easy it is.”

“I never thought about it before, but I’m proud to be human. We’re ever so flawed. We’re frail, confused, violent, and we struggle with so many issues. But all in all, I’m proud to be a Daughter of Man.”

This book is somewhat similar in essence to the Iron Fey series by Julie Kagawa. So if you liked that series, you might like this one.

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