**AS THIS IS A REVIEW, EXPECT THERE TO BE SOME SPOILERS IN THIS POST!**
'Angelfall' is the first book in Susan Ee's 'Penryn and the End of Days' series, which I believe will have 5 books in total. This book is based in a mid apocalyptic world, where angels have fallen from the sky, and are causing havoc. The story follow the main character (Penryn) and her family, trying to escape where the have been hiding out for the past 6 weeks, as they are running low on supplies and the street gangs are sure to come and find them. Of course, they can't just escape and make it safely to their next check point, very quickly into there mission (which they do during the night in the hopes no street gang would catch them, as the angels come out to play at night) an angel fight literally stumbles on top of them. Penryn and her family dive for cover behind a car, but their morbid curiosity gets the best of them, and they watch. First the see an angel with huge, white feathery wings, and soon after follows another angel with dark wings, and a load of angel buddies, clearly ready to fight the 'snowy' angel. It strikes Penryn that the snowy angel must be strong if he is fighting off a group of angels, but he is also very weak, and can't keep them off long. The dark angel and his friends soon have him on the ground, and are taunting him, and then he brings out his angel sword and begins hacking off the snowy angels wings, as he screams in pain. Penryn's sister, Paige, makes a sympathetic noise, and the dark angels hears, and swoops round and spots them straight away. Trying to save her family, Penryn tells her mum to take her wheelchair bound sister and run for it, but the mother flees without here in blind panic. She knows she has little else left to do, so to give her sister some more time to wheel herself to safety, she runs headlong into the dark angel. She manages to give the snowy angel his sword back, hoping he will be able to fight them for both their sake, and he does. Unfortunately, the dark angel flees, rather than fights and in his fury, he picks up Paige and fly's away with her, leaving Penryn with no one, but an almost dead angel.
In this new world, angel parts can be worth a high price (in objects, as money is pretty much useless) so she knows she can't leave him there because;
- She needs to know where that angel has taken her sister, and who better to help than another angel.
- If she left him, he would die, and people would take him apart, so she would never find Paige again.
She finds relative safety, and watches the angel for days, who sleeps in order to recover from his injuries, which were pretty substantial. When he wakes, Penryn demands he helps her, or he won't get his wings back, which he finds amusing, because even though he's hurt, he could very easily kill her.
“Why were the other angels attacking you?"
"It's impolite to ask the victim of violence what they did to be attacked.”
I love the character dynamics between Penryn and Raffe. They are both so sassy! Raffe is actually hilarious, even though he is an angel, you do find yourself forgetting this, along with Penryn, who is constantly reminding herself that he isn't human. Penryn is a very strong female lead, I love that she can be independent, and handle herself pretty well in the new world she is in, and never loses sight of her main goal; to get her sister back.
I feel most of the characters in this are very strong, and well developed. They all have their own personality, that makes it very easy to distinguish between them.
This may sound weird, but I am glad that the world they are in is gory, and brutal. I feel a lot of similar books, don't push it far enough in that side of things, so it's not really that believable, but this book does it, and it does it well, making it a central part to the story.
“The next time you have a quarrel with me, I'd appreciate it if you could just talk to me first before resorting to pelting me with rocks.”
There is a lot of funny, and light hearted scenes throughout the book, to break up the tension build in the story, which works really well, and makes the pace of the book very fast, making it a real page turner. The funny scenes tend to be between Penryn and Raffe, having a friendly, sarcastic dialogue between them, and obviously we begin to see a spark! (We like shipping, OK?!)
“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.”
But of course there is some heart break thrown in there too, for example, when Raffe says to Penryn he doesn't even like her after their kiss, even though we know he is doing it to protect her, she doesn't and it hurts so bad. Although she feels hurt, she still manages to soldier on, and work along side him to get her sister back, which just highlights what a strong character she is. And after the main fight near the end, there is another heartbreaking scene when Penryn is lying momentarily paralyzed and conscious, but Raffe thinks she is dead, and goes crazy and starts smashing everything up, after it is made clear, he does have feelings for her.
“He runs his finger tips along my cheek, caressing my face. “Hush. I’m right here.” He looks at me with deep anguish in his eyes. Like there’s so much he wants to tell me but feels it’s too late now. I want to stroke his face and tell him that it will be okay. That everything will be all right. And I wish so badly that it would be.”
Angelfall is one of the best books I have read in a while! And I would definitely recommend it! I gave it 5 stars on my good reads page for a reason! Be sure to pick up a copy!!
Hello Everyone! Enjoying the commonwealth Games? Come on Scotland! It's being hosted in the city I live - Glasgow - and there really is a buzz in the city, it's great!
