Book Review - Angelfall

Angelfall
Author: Susan Ee
Series: Penryn & the End of Days #1
Genres: Urban Fantasy, Dystopian | Young Adult
Release Date: 23rd May 2013
Publishers: Hodder and Stroughton
No. Pages: 326
Source: Gifted
Rating: 
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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.

If I could describe Angelfall in a handful of words, they'd be something along the lines or mesmorising, enthralling, encaptulating, gruesome, grotesque and completely and utterly surprising, yet I cannot help but feel like these words aren't enough, Angelfall is without a doubt one of my biggest regrets.. I regret that I didn't read it sooner.

Where on earth do you start with a book like Angelfall? The beginning sounds logical and it was the first moment when I new that I would be thoroughly enjoying this book, the moment when, testing the first page as to whether it would be my next read, I instinctively turned to the next - that my reads, is when you know you have a great book in your hands. Penryn's voice and her attitude was exactly the pick me up I needed from my previous read, and with her, she brought a fantastic, realistic heroine take with her, her humanity and loyalty towards people, her honesty towards favours, her logical thought process that sometimes overrode her emotions, or her emotions that took over her logic, she was very much the perfect human heroine, with bags of courage, strength and personality that just leapt off the page. She helped bring Angelfall to live, but without the wonderfully fast paced story within it all, there's no way Angelfall would have been as good as it was.

Ee's writing style is very much a unique one, she's fast and she's blunt, but she doesn't forget to add detail to her every scene, making it feel crisp and clean in your mind, yet never takes over from the actual plot taking place. Its clean and simple, its refreshing and enthralling, with every page I just wanted to read more, with every fast action scene I wanted to be there with the characters, with every grotesque, [and I do mean grotesque] well described, stomach churning scene, I was constantly absorbed within the story and I didn't for one second want to leave. The world that Ee has created in this book and in the series to come is just enlightening, it's as everyone has already said before, a completely different take on Angels, meddling in their politics and their beliefs, in their faith and their grasp on humanity, there, in some cases, want to be more human, it was really something I'd never read before and will probably never read again, and Ee should be extremely proud of herself for creating such a niche premise in such a saturated genre, I know I am.

Yet there's nothing that brings a novel together like it's characters, and Penryn and Raffe were definitely fantastic characters, in fact, stratch that, there were so many brilliant characters in this novel that it'd be completely unfair and immoral to not mention them. Dee-Dum were just brilliant, their light-heartedness bought a nice family aspect to the novel alongside Penryn's passion for her own family, for Paige and her Mother, and her Mother especially was really quite the characters, and I'm surprised I warmed to her like I did, but I cannot deny that Penryn and Raffe were brilliant. There was so much about them that I enjoyed, whether it be their connection with one another, [and I don't just mean that slow burn like for one another which was seriously just too much] their developed friendship and loyalty towards one another, the amount they cared for one another and how they supported and had each other's back was just wonderful. To see how Penryn was still quite a domineering characters with passion and skills of her own, [which were seriously amazing, you just don't get these kinds of characters enough] but showed her softer and more snarky side with Raffe was really enjoyable, and seeing Raffe relax and loosen up tension wise and be a little more, human-like, was really quite the development. I seriously cannot wait to see where Ee takes these characters and Penryn and Raffes new found development for one another, and I really cannot wait get some serious tension burning.

Angelfall was a brilliant read, it was a read I'd considered for a while and avoided because of the hype, knowing fine well that it'd probably be a winner of a read and boy was it so much more. The mystery element behind everything was absolutely brilliant and the world building was amazing, but it was the gruesome and creepy aspects of this novel that seriously enthralled me, alongside it's cast of characters. I cannot deny that I was seriously surprised by what this book had up it's sleaves, it had me questioning everything I thought I knew about it at near every turn, it had the dark and gritty, gruesome aspects that a good thriller or horror read has, but it had Angels and Demons, and freaky-hyrbid creatures that will seriously be hovering around my nightmares in days to come, and it had some of the best character connections I've read in a long time - whether it be between Penryn and Paige and their unyielding sister-bond between one another, no matter what came and changed between them, or whether it be the relationship between Penryn and her Mother which is definitely a relationship I enjoyed learning the ins and outs of, or Penryn and Raffe's relationship with one another, which I seriously cannot wait to see develop and grow. I regret how long it took me to start this series, but I don't regret how quickly I'll be buying myself World After, there's not a chance I can put off buying it for long.