Angelfall by Susan Ee is a dystopian/ post-apocalyptic fantasy novel unlike any I’ve read. Of course, there are the genre basics common to dystopian novels: the breakdown of society as we know it, a teenage girl who is somehow special as the main character. Comparisons can always be made and with a genre as pervasive as the Young Adult dystopian genre in science fiction and fantasy, Angelfall is bound to have similarities to other books in the genre. What separates Angelfall from the rest of the genre is that it is not humans who have destroyed the world, though we did have our hands in it, but rather angels.
The angels in Angelfall are straight out of the Old Testament. Sure, they’re exceedingly beautiful, but they are also terrifying. These are not the cherubs we are comfortable with, but harbingers of the apocalypse. Trying to find a balance between their human-like appearance and their clearly inhumane behaviour proves challenging to the main character Penryn, who constantly has to remind herself that her angelic companion, Raffe, is not human.
Whilst reading Angelfall I kept wishing that I were more familiar with the hierarchy of angels in Judeo-Christian mythology. Without this background knowledge however, plot twists were much more surprising (including the angel Raffe’s true identity…)
Angelfall is the first in the Penryn and the End of Days trilogy and I cannot wait to see what Ee has in store in the other two books.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
-Laura
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