Thank you very much to the publisher for sending me this copy via Netgalley.
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.
From what I can remember this is my first 'angel' genre book so I haven't got much to compare it to or much knowledge of how they operate etc, so I was pretty open for interpretation and ready to embrace the world of angel's and demons.
The first half of the book for me was a bit slow, not a lot of world building so it was a bit overwhelming as to what was happening. We meet Penryn, her sister Paige and their Mum. Soon after Paige is taken away and Penryn makes her journey to save her little sister. On the way she is stopped abruptly and witnesses a conflict between to angel's, the fight ends with the angel Raffe's wings being cut off. Together they journey to the aerie to seek out both of their goals, saving Paige and finding someone to sew back on Raffe's wings. Other than this, a lot of the first part was quite brief and not a great deal was happening to hold my attention.
During the second half once Penryn and Raffe reached the aerie, it all started to kick off. A little gruesome at times and in tremendous detail- something that I love and keeps my imagination humming.
I loved the revelation from this book that not all angels are good, I wanted a little more explanation as to why this is and how come they're not just regarded as demons or they're cast to the "other side" so to speak.
There was some chemistry between Penryn and Raffe not a huge amount, I found it quite difficult to connect to either character. For me Penryn wasn't the badass heroine that everyone has told me she is, fair play to her she's brave in not giving up to find her sister and battling against angels, but there was just something missing that I expected of her and I can't quite put my finger on it.
What I found most enjoyable was the sense of angels being just as badass as vampires, I love vampire books and I enjoyed putting myself into the world of angel's and demons for a change that gave off this kind of underworld clang feel to it- kind of reminded me of True Blood if I had to compare.
I think this book could have had a lot more potential, some of it seemed a little bit too easy on the characters at times. However, the detail of the battles and finding flesh eating humans was pretty exciting and messed up for me! If the series carries on being a kind of horror, fantasy type of vibe then I'm definitely looking forward to reading the next book. For once I'm uninterested in the romantic relations regarding this book, I'm quite happy learning more about bad angels I just hope the plot is a lot more nail biting and keeps me guessing the outcome.
