Six is a fallen angel. She was banished from Heaven to
Hell, for reasons unknown (she blames the bureaucracy). But centuries of
plotting have finally paid off – and she has managed to accumulate the favours
and put into action a plan to get her free.
Now on Earth, she has to learn just what this wonderful,
incredible and sometimes horrifying place actually is, what the rules are and
to find her own place within it while at the same time rejecting god and her
old path – she’s no longer an Angel and will not be one.
But what does she do when she finds she is not the first
to escape? And worse, that not only are the other escapees engaging in horrific
behaviour, but that her friend and ally seems all too willing to join them. And
that’s before the old forces she left in Hell decide they want her to return.
This book was a very short read at only 100 pages, but it
managed to fit in a lot of depth in a little space. Six has escaped from Hell
and is confronted with Earth that makes so little sense to her. The world is
beautiful and amazing and stunning – yet it is so full of cruelty and evil.
Humanity has so much, yet it still engages in the behaviour she sees down in
the pit.
This adds a lot of conflict to her character – as well as
her utter rejection for the god that damned her, symbolised by the removal of
her wings. But now, when she sees people suffer, she is torn – does she feel
compassion for them because of her angelic instincts (which she rejects?)
And when their suffering is just a
sliver of Hell – and they get to go to heaven anyway. Even people she considers
lacking, who shouldn’t get that, which was denied her. She even gets a sense of
anger about it. Yet at the same time there’s her outrage that this suffering,
this predation isn’t confined to Hell, that it happens in this wonderful Earth
as well – she is angry because they are despoiling this amazing world
Then there’s her fellow Angel Aldren; he’s also an
interesting source of conflict. He was, for so long, the only friend and ally
she had, especially in the dangerous times in Hell. And yet, now he is out and
she can’t agree with what he’s doing – his cruelty, is callous evil, his casual
abuse of humanity around him. But to turn on hr only friend is a major step –
especially when she thinks that it is Hell that has done this to him; and can
she judge him on that if she truly got an easier time in Hell?
Diversitywise, we don’t have a huge cast of characters
and most of them are supernatural – but Six is a woman of colour.
My main criticism about this book is its length. There
was a lot that could have been explored here in greater depth. We could have
had Six get used to the real world. We could have had Six’s conflict with
Alden, we could have analysed the claim of her having an easy ride in Hell, we
could have had her explore her morality, her worry about the humans, her anger
against god, her resentment of humanity – we could have explored whether Alden
was justified in his cruelty, whether he was damaged, whether he was hurting,
whether he was redeemable. But we didn’t – we raised them and then moved on.
And it wasn’t for lack of space – at a 100 pages long this book could
definitely have included more. It was over and I felt like I only got a
prologue.
And a lot of it felt short-circuited by boiling it down
to “Lucifer can find me” – it just replaces everything, ending questions before
they’ve been explored, shutting off issues abruptly. It’s also a novella that
acts like a full book – so it’s the first book in a series and ends in a
cliffhanger. Novellas and short stories tend to be self-contained stories; I
don’t think they provide enough foundation for a series and if they end on a
cliffhanger I’m left wondering why you didn’t keep writing.
In general I liked this book. It raised a lot of deep
issues, it had so many wonderful conflicts, the world looked intriguing and a
very different take from the oh-so-usual “fallen angel meets mortal, sexytimes
and angst ensure” we are very used to. But it was short, it lacked depth and it
could have been so much more.
A copy of this book was provided by the author for Review
Alicia
Wright Brewster is a mild-mannered lady of average height and above average
paranormal obsession. By day, she works in an office. At night, she's an
author, an electronics junkie, and a secret superhero. (Please don't ask what
her superpower is. That's not very polite.)
In
her virtually non-existent free time, she loves to read, watch movies, and eat
food. She is particularly fond of the food-eating and makes a point to perform
this task at least three times per day, usually more.