A Quick Read... Mixed Feelings

"Please don't banish me from the sight of you. You can't understand, because of all you have heard of us, all of the half-truths and the myths, which have nothing to do with what we really are. Nothing." Lazodeus from Fallen Angel by Kim Wilkins

I suppose one of the book's saving graces is that it is such a quick read, although toward the end I will confess that I was skimming rather than reading closely. The book is really a story within a story in which a reporter who is trying to debunk a Ritual Magic group ends up falling foul of an ancient curse whereby someone must find a willing listener to hear his or her story. The reporter becomes that willing victim, and recounts the story she has been told by the wanderer as the main part of the book. So the story within the story tells of the three daughters of John Milton (yes /the/ John Milton, poet, author of Paradise Lost), and their dealings with their guardian angel Lazodeus.

We bought the book at a time when we were still busy reading everything we could get our hands on about angels and angel myths, angel stories mostly for the Irin. It seemed a promising story at first, presenting the fallen angels as we see them, as our Irin guides see themselves... the quote above, and a whole section describing the war in heaven and the fall of the once archangel Lucifer lead you to believe in a balanced presentation, but then Ms Wilkins blows it all and has said former archangel and his cohorts behave exactly as the present day expectation of fallen angels/demons/devils... call them what you will. A great dissapointment in that regard.

The writing is neither good, nor bad - it just /is/... though there are many times I would have liked to have been 'shown' more than 'told'. There are also certain scenes that could have been writen in a differnt way which would have been more appealing to /me/, but I'm sure there are people out there that do not object to the use of four letter words in decribing romantic/erotic moments of a story. I guess overall it was just not poetic enough for me.