Monday, February 4, 2013

Angelfall by Susan Ee [REVIEW]

TITLE: Angelfall
           (Penryn & the End of Days #1)
AUTHOR: Susan Ee
PUBLISHER: Feral Dream
PUB DATE: Jan 1 2011
Summary from 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."

Rating:

*Sigh* Where do I even begin?

I’ve been rather picky when it comes to books about angels nowadays, unlike when I was a newbie over these kinds of stories; I gobbled them up once I hear about them. If you’ve been in the loop of the books in this genre, sometimes the details seem to blur into one another and turn out just the same as always. I guess that’s probably why I only picked up Angelfall just recently. I thought it was just another one of those forbidden love stories. And if my bookish buddy, Maria @ Bookchilla hadn’t pushed me to read this I would have read it even later. Heck I even complained to her that the font of the texts was too small, and I feared it might turn out to be a much longer read. When I finally started reading Angelfall I wanted to slap myself for all the things I said beforehand!

The moment I was greeted with an epic action scene from the beginning, I knew I was going to have the time of my life reading Angelfall. Oh yeah! This was terrific!

Do not be fooled by that simple synopsis that Penryn and Raffe, our protagonists, are just in for a sure-fire, struggling journey to wherever. There’s more to it than that. While other books go for the Nephilim-are-heroes kind of tale, here you find them dangerous, gruesome and downright bad monstrous creatures. And if you think guardian angels are there to keep you safe, think again. In this book, they are your worst nightmare. Not to mention that if politicians in our world are blatantly ruthless and power hungry, wait until you see how angel politics go. Now is that unique or what?

I don’t know if I’m just starving for something new on the table, or that my sense of entertainment has just evolved from somewhat dark to weird, creepy, and utterly disturbing. Well, let’s say it’s the former just so I don’t scare you away.

I love how Ms. Ee’s execution of a rather twisted world that even though I had found scenes alarming, I find myself seeing reason and understanding the logic behind what was created. Like the scene where Penryn accepted the kind of behaviour her mom had regarding a dead body at this building; she stately claimed the “I am crazier than you” battle to be sensible to me. Wow. I don’t know what is wrong with me. Haha!

Angelfall truly has the perfect blend of action, adventure, mystery and the twist of a romance. The pace of the book is just as well laid out smoothly, making each chapter worth anticipating. This was an incredibly breathtaking story, although a dark and grotesque one, and is probably the best angel book I’ve read.