Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Review of Angelolopolis



Book #9. Angelolopolis, by Danielle Trussoni. Unabridged audio.

This is the follow-up to Trussoni’s prior novel, Angelology (reviewed here), taking place a decade after the prior book. The long-lasting battle between the Nephilim and the Society of Angelologists continues.

At the end of prior novel, Sister Evangeline recognized that she was in fact an angel. In this book, her surprise appearance in Paris attracts angelologist Verlaine and other angel-hunters across the globe. Her sudden abduction by a creature who has been the angelologists’ most-wanted list for hundreds of years. The search for Evangeline takes the characters from the Eiffel Tower to the palaces of St. Petersburg and into the darkness of Siberia and the Black Sea coast.

As dramatic and exciting as the plot is at times, the strength of Trussoni’s novels is the world-building. The notion that Russian Faberge eggs represents the desire of Russian royalty for a Nephilistic birth is interesting, as is the idea that the presence of chocolate eggs at Easter speaks to this desire. The story includes modern science and angelic genetics, right alongside divine warfare. And once again, the fate of humanity is at stake. 

The first novel had long chunks of explanations, sometimes in the form of actual lectures. This book has fewer of those sections, and is able to integrate new information more smoothly into the action. But again, the actual technical aspects of the writing are not this novel’s strengths. The strength of the novel is the audacity of the “big idea,” along with the fascinating world that Trussoni has created.

Source: public library

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