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.
