Hi readers,
I fancied something different to read and though I had lots of books to choose from, when I was out shopping with my best friend two Fridays ago, she spotted this book and recommended it to me. She is a massive reader like myself and we both have almost the same taste in books. I was little worried it being a YA dystopia novel that I wouldn't like it that much as every other book at the moment seems to be that!
I really enjoyed it though and have gotten the other two books -as it's a trilogy- and now plan to read and review those for the last two Mondays of February. Angelfall is set in the aftermath of an apocalypse by angels and tells the story of Penryn trying to find her disabled seven year old sister and her crazy mother. She ends up saving an angel from death and getting him to help her. Raffe has dark secrets of his own though and things really don't look great for him at the end of the book. Nor for Penryn, her sister or mother either.
The pace of this novel is really fast and that's the real reason why I got into it quickly and struggled to put it down. There is no real slow/stopping points and there is always 'something is going to go wrong' moments that just keep you on your toes. Even though it was one thing after another or very goal/obstacle/goal patternized, it was written very well and with nice little details. I can only hope the other two books are the same because they look bigger and I now have a time scale to keep! Also, and typical of YA novels aimed at girls, Penryn is the narrator, so everything comes from her point of view.
The characters are well written and do seem realistic. Though Penryn is too well set up to fight to my liking. Her mother made her take fighting/self-defensive lessons, which then do come in use for Penryn escaping and rescuing people, though she does struggle to hold her own sometimes. There was also a scene at the end of the book where I did question how much Penryn could actually see from her line of sight, because it seemed a lot more then she should have been able too.
Raffe - without spoiling anything- I found to be fascinating character and I always wondered if he was like a different/special angel just because of his behavior. The twists with him are really good and I didn't see those coming really. Be interesting to see where his story goes in the next book. I didn't feel that the angels came across as being like new or different, they just felt typical. Perhaps, things will be explored more in the other books, but for me I'm just happy that they are what I'm use to really.
Penryn's mother is a schizophrenic. She has visions and believes in demons ect and comes across as being out of her mind most of the time. However, she still has strong motherly instincts towards her daughters and does try to help throughout the novel. I found her to be a very different character from what I was expecting and I image that she might have been a challenge to write. I like the idea that she had issues before the apocalypse and that having to survive in a dystopia world has made her worse.
The settings in this novel come across really well even though we don't spend a lot of time in one place. The description of the destruction worked well for me and I was able to picture a great deal in my mind. Also, I guess because of my fascination with abandoned places these destroyed- semi-abandon settings really appeal to me. I also liked the fact that the timeline was like 6 months after the angels invaded and everything was still in the aftershock of it. So, unlike some other dystopia novels people haven't had time to set up new societies and leaders yet, meaning that everyone is slipping back to a caveman like life style, which is interesting.
Overall, I'd so recommend this book to everyone because I do think it's very good. Of course, if you are a fan of The Hungry Games then you might like it, but it doesn't really flow in that same vein and I actually found it better and more to my liking. On to the next one!
Image from: Goodreads
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