A Terrible Fall of Angels (Hamilton)

A Terrible Fall of Angels
by Laurell K. Hamilton (2009)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a book club pick. It received mixed reviews. I listened to it while walking, and then read the ebook when I was done with the previous one. This made the reading go a little faster. Reading it did clear up one point, a little.

I've previously read a single book in Hamiltion's Anita Blake series, which may or may not be in this blog. (There was a several year gap when I didn't maintain this page.) But I was game to start a new series.

The book started strong and introduced a lot of elements. Then it dropped the ball on most of them. I slogged through the middle to get to the end. If this book had been a ten-episode Netflix series, the beginning would've been two episodes, the ending would've been two episodes and the six episodes in between would've been a lot of world-building and filler.

Don't get me wrong: I liked the world-building, but it seem like much of it was presented for future use. Likewise, many of the characters we're introduced to in the beginning just fade into the background. Others we just wished had do soon. (In particular, no one in the book club liked his estranged wife. While we all appreciated the break in the action to have couples' counseling, the wife didn't come off as a likeable character after that.) Another problem with the worldbuilding (as pointed out but a book club member) is that she retconned the rules in the same book. She didn't wait until, say, book three or four to change the rules.

Personally, I thought it got a bit repetitive, sometimes repeating information within the same chapter. A couple of those chapters, with side characters out of nowhere, just dragged on too long.

One thing, I won't forget that the main character's name is Havelock, because I was reading the Expanse book where a different Det. Havelock made an appearance. (He's in books 1 and 4 of the Expanse, and that's as far as I've gotten there.) I wouldn't say the other characters aren't important enough to list, but I've fallen behind in posting these mini-reviews (it's September, but I'm backdating it to the month I read it in for my own personal records), and if I really needed to know, I'm sure I can find it on that wiki -- you know the one.

Would I read another one? Maybe, but I would hope it's a little tighter than this one was.

The Library of the Unwritten (Hackwith)

The Library of the Unwritten
(A Novel from Hell's Library) by A. J. Hackwith (2019)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This book was one of three that was our book club was to choose from, but it didn't win the vote. After the previous month, where the ebooks were difficult to come by, I placed holds on all three books before we even voted. Since the winning book was short, and since this one seemed to be of interest, I gave it a shot. I'm glad I did. I did have to pause reading this one to read the next month's book, but I immediately came back to it.

There is a library situatied in Hell, but it isn't part of Hell and doesn't serve it. It is filled with books that were never written. It was a librarian, Claire, who used to be human, before she died. And she replaced the previous librarian, Bjorn, who is now in the halls of Valhalla (which will get visited).

Sometimes books get restless, and characters step out of them. They usually have to be sent back. Luckily, characters can't stray to far from their books, but they can take their books with them if they sneak off.

When the novel starts, a book is missing and it's made its way to Seattle. The character, who later takes the name Hero, meets his author and tries to persuade her to finish the book. This works against him because that writer started to fall from him, since she wrote him to an ideal, and when he leaves here (to go back to Hell), he leaves some pages from the manuscript. She burns them. He doesn't feel well after this. Claire attemps to repair the book with fresh pages, hoping that the story will mend/rewrite itself. In the meantime, the book rejects Hero and doesn't let him back in.

Just before they go to Seattle, a man dies but somehow manages to bring a piece of a book to Heaven. Waiting outside of the gates of Heaven, reviewing all of the souls, is the angel Ramiel, who fell with Lucifer. He's tried to redeem himself ever since, but he's been denied Heaven. He recognizes what the fragment is and brings it to an Archangel, in this case, Uriel. Uriel is portrayed as female and somewhat overwrought with emotion because the Creator has gone away (voluntarily, it would seem). The pages are from a codex written by Satan. Uriel sends Ramiel to find the rest of it, believing that the magic encased in such a book would be powerful enough to summon back the Creator to Heaven.

When Ramiel gets to Earth, he crosses paths with the Librarian, who assumes is part of the conspiracy, and depends the book. Claire, Hero, and Leto (a demon in the guise of a human on Earth) are perplexed what the fallen Watcher would want with some romance book. Before they quickly depart, Leto snatches the fragment Ramiel has, and they're back to Hell.

And now the chase is on to find the rest of the codex before its magic can be used to upset the balance of power in the afterlife.

It was an enjoyable read, with only a couple of nitpicks, but they're ones that will always bother me, like a Geometry classmate poking me in the back of the neck with the point of a metal compass.

First, every chapter starts with a journal entry, written by some librarian from present day, going back over two thousand years. Each chapter has a POV character in the title, most of whom, don't author journal excerpts. It's a little bit of a disconnect. The annoying part, for me, is that the entries are dated BCE and CE. I guess Hell has a problem with B.C. and A.D., the latter one being understandable, but the substitituion is silly. It would be just as to use After the Fall or some other metric. Otherwise, why even use Christian dating in the first place.

Moreover, rather than create their own Heaven and Hell, the author simulates a Christian version of it. Ramiel and Uriel appear in apochryphal text, and Ramiel is a fallen Watcher. Uriel can be identified as a cherub or an archangel, usually an angel of repetance, and can be shown to be as pitiless as any demon. Archangels tend to be shown as males=, so switching the gender of one (particularly when maybe they shouldn't have gender) is reasonable. I didn't envy the choice: the Betrayer, or the pitiless, emotion boss lady who seems on the verge of running afoul of a Deadly Sin or two.

Nope, the thing that bothered me, for all the re-creation, was that the "Creator", whom I don't recall ever being mentioned as "God" with a capital "g", is referred times as "she", generally by Uriel. The only God references are the titles of the two archangels who are "______ of God". But not "God" "herself".

Again, that's my nit to pick and many others wouldn't be bothered by it. If I come across this entry at the end of the year, I might think about looking for the next book in the series.

Note: the above was written on May 11. I don't know why I didn't publish it sooner.

Envy of Angels

Envy of Angels, Matt Wallace (2015)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This book was a freebie from the Tor dot com reading club.

For the record, my first mention online of "The Sin Cafe" came in a closed writing blog, which was open at that time, back in 2011. It had its origins in a trip to Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic, several years before that. I mention this because "Sin du Jour" appears to be a series. However, I will continue to write Hell's Diner stories as the moods strike. I have at least two more in mind for whenever I work them out.

I started it a couple months ago. It had my attention but I wasn't sure I wanted to go where it was going. But I went back to it. It was actually a quick read and a short book. (It's actually a novella.)

Lena and Darren are out-of-work chefs in NYC and can't get a job. They get to try-out as substitutes at Sin-du-Jour (which along with the cover should be a massive hint). They are given a hands-on interview by someone who could make Gordon Ramsey cry, but they manage to pass while creating things they've never made before using the hottest of spices and ingredients that they've never tasted before. It's a bit exotic. And there's a forbidden food pantry. If you need something, ask the person authorized to go in there.

Well, they go in there, and all Hell breaks loose. Sort of. A creature is released from a jar that instantly starts growing in size and wreaking havoc.

Rather than fire them, the Chef tells them that their exclusive clientele is rivals groups of demons, and that these get-togethers are funded by the U.S. government, which mediates and helps keep the peace between the factions.

They it starts getting interesting when demons arrive with a special dish that they want prepared -- it's an angel, a spellbound, living angel, although more akin to one of ancient writings than of popular paintings. The crew is split on this because they don't want to slaughter an angel. But they can't refuse, so the best that they can do is fake what an angel tastes like. The crew discovers that angel tastes like Chicken Nuggies from Henley's (a fictional food chain). This leads to some industrial espionage, which leads to something else fantastical. It gets crazy from there.

One thing that doesn't make sense in the resolution is this: [SPOILER] Although the Nuggies have been created through fantastical methods for decades, the magicked Nuggies were based on an actual original recipe. How did those turn out to taste like angel? I guess I would've had an easier time believing that angels taste like "magic chicken" more than that they taste enough like chicken to form a demon.