Review: Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton
From Goodreads: This debut, the first novel in a trilogy, is achingly romantic, terrifying, and filled with blistering action.
When seventeen-year-old Ellie starts seeing reapers – monstrous creatures who devour humans and send their souls to Hell – she finds herself on the front lines of a supernatural war between archangels and the Fallen and faced with the possible destruction of her soul.
A mysterious boy named Will reveals she is the reincarnation of an ancient warrior, the only one capable of wielding swords of angelfire to fight the reapers, and he is an immortal sworn to protect her in battle. Now that Ellie’s powers have been awakened, a powerful reaper called Bastian has come forward to challenge her. He has employed a fierce assassin to eliminate her – an assassin who has already killed her once.
While balancing her dwindling social life and reaper-hunting duties, she and Will discover Bastian is searching for a dormant creature believed to be a true soul reaper. Bastian plans to use this weapon to ignite the End of Days and to destroy Ellie’s soul, ending her rebirth cycle forever. Now, she must face an army of Bastian’s most frightening reapers, prevent the soul reaper from consuming her soul, and uncover the secrets of her past lives – including truths that may be too frightening to remember.
What can I say about Angelfire that isn’t going to sound like I am just garbling out a litany of adjectives!? If you follow my Twitter account you may know that this first half of February has been a funk of reading for me but Angelfire has been the one book I keep going back to and the only book I have finished this month so far. That in itself should say a lot.
As someone who is not religious in nature I immensely enjoyed the way Moulton employed not only Christian Bible religion but other Eastern traditions as well. I enjoyed her mythology and I thought it was very well done. I have read most of the Angel Lit (as I have dubbed it) out there and I truly only feel comfortable recommending this book and one other (Unearthly) as those you should read. This book is begging to be read!
Some of the mythology:
“Do you mean that real angels exist? The Fallen are demons, aren’t they? Does that mean that God exists? Satan too?”
He took a breath. “Yes. Lucifer rebelled against God and lost the First War, as you have probably learned at some point in your life. God banished Lucifer from Heaven, and he fell into Hell, but his war fell to Earth. The angels who joined Lucifer’s cause fell with him and became demons – the Fallen. Two of the Fallen bore horrible children, whose decedents are the creatures we know today as the demonic reapers. In desperation for more soldiers to fuel his army of the damned, Lucifer uses the reapers to collect human souls.” Pg 123 ARC
Moulton writes action scenes that are big screen worthy. The characters are well fleshed out and fabulous. Ellie is reluctant but not whiny. I had no problems with the writing, and generally nothing to to complain about at all, except maybe for the shady way her father acts but my instincts tell me that is going to play a part in books to come.
Ellie has a fantastic Mom which is something I love seeing in YA fiction, while her Dad leaves a lot to be desired, like I said I think this is going to play a part later to come. Will is a fantastic love interest but we meet a dashing young man closer to the end of the novel and I find myself wondering a lot about him.
I give it a 4.5 out of 5 only because the fantastic action scenes felt a bit repetitive at times and amnesia is a personal problem for me I want my characters all knowing and even though Moulton does a fantastic job with Ellie not remembering everything and it didn’t annoy me in the slightest, I had I’m on a boat syndrome.
Ragnuk at times seemed that he was going to utter Wizard of Oz lines his evilness was tinge over the top but I am telling you people. That is what makes Ragnuk so bad-ass. You really must read Angelfire.
FTC Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in ARC form in return I gave them a fair review.
Review: Mass Effect: Revelation
Every advanced society in the galaxy relies on the technology of the Protheans, an ancient species that vanished fifty thousand years ago. After discovering a cache of Prothean technology on Mars in 2148, humanity is spreading to the stars; the newest interstellar species, struggling to carve out its place in the greater galactic community.
On the edge of colonized space, ship commander and Alliance war hero David Anderson investigates the remains of a top secret military research station; smoking ruins littered with bodies and unanswered questions. Who attacked this post and for what purpose? And where is Kahlee Sanders, the young scientist who mysteriously vanished from the base–hours before her colleagues were slaughtered?
Sanders is now the prime suspect, but finding her creates more problems for Anderson than it solves. Partnered with a rogue alien agent he can’t trust and pursued by an assassin he can’t escape, Anderson battles impossible odds on uncharted worlds to uncover a sinister conspiracy . . . one he won’t live to tell about. Or so the enemy thinks.
This is a guest review by Marco
This book by Drew Karpyshyn serves as a prequel to the Mass Effect videogame trilogy (PC and XBOX 360), of which two games have been released so far. Drew Karpyshyn is the main storywriter for these games. The Mass Effect games are the best I’ve ever played since I first touched a videogame. The storyline is incredibly deep and the characters are amazing. I actually found myself feel bad when anything happened to them which is an amazing accomplishment. I’d call Mass Effect ‘The Avatar of videogames’, but with a much better story.
Obviously this is not a videogame review but I had to mention this to set the context for this book. Playing Mass Effect 1 and 2 left me wanting more so this book had to be read. The big question is, did the book deliver? The answer: Yes and no. Let me explain.
First of all, I really enjoyed reading this book. That however doesn’t at all mean it’s a really good book. Unfortunately it really isn’t. I’ve read a whole lot of great science fiction and this book can’t even stand in the shadows of the works by my ‘hero authors’ such as Greg Bear, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Orson Scott Card and many more. Character development is really shallow and the writing style is not very mature to say the least. The story is incredibly linear as well. Don’t expect any twists here.
Then there’s the aliens. Several alien races (that also appear in the games) are described in the book but none of them seem very alien. It’s like they’re all having the same human motives rather than their own alien ones. I feel the games have more depth in this department while one would really expect a book to win here. Kind of a bummer really.
Despite all this I did like reading this book. But … only because I played the games. This book provides a lot of background to things that are briefly mentioned in the games but not really discussed. How did the antagonist of the Mass Effect 1 game turn evil? This book will tell explain this, and a lot more!
So here it is. Even though I really enjoyed reading this book I can only give it two stars (barely) because it just isn’t very good science fiction. The games are MUCH better in every way. They’re like a fully interactive space opera with YOU playing the main part.
If you enjoyed the Mass Effect games as much as I did you’ll want to read this book, if only to get the extra background information. If you don’t plan to play the games you probably best skip this book.
