When anyone disses self-publishing, this will be one of the books I present as Exhibit A against them.
Yes, too many books are published thanks to the ease of self-publishing.
Yes, and more importantly, too much crap is published thanks to the ease of self-publishing.
But often enough a really good, well-written read such as this comes along to make it all worthwhile.
Oh, here comes the “but if it’s good enough, it will be published by the mainstream” argument.
No. Publishing houses have only so many new authors and new titles they will take on, marketing departments have too much clout, the mid-list has become the holy grail, and too few bookshops have too little shelf space. And in Children’s Lit and YA there are too many damned gatekeepers who “think of the children(!)”.
Susan Ee digitally self-published Angelfall, and it’s fabulous. Sure, it’s not a literary masterpiece that will become the next Black Beauty or The Outsiders, but it’s certainly up there with Tomorrow When the War Began.
Seventeen year old Penryn has a mentally deranged mother who sees demons around every corner (only sometimes real) and a paraplegic sister ten years younger. Her dad has shot through, leaving her the only feasible adult to take charge when the apocalypse hits.
The back-cover blurb sums up said apocalypse:
It has been six weeks since the angels returned to earth and destroyed the world as we know it.
Yes angels. Ee has chosen to eschew the modern concept of guardian angels and to once again portray them as the destroyers and creatures of doom they initially were. You know, in the Bible. It feels almost blasphemous, and I can see many of those aforementioned gatekeepers reeling in horror.
Penryn’s little family ventures out under the cover of darkness to leave their condo in San Fransisco and literally head for the hills to try and increase their chance of survival. She thinks their main danger will come from the street gangs that maraud the streets at night, but instead they land themselves in the middle of an angel fight.
This is something they have not heard about on the news (while they still had news reports). It seems it’s not just angels against humans (or ‘monkeys’ as the angels refer to us) – it’s sometimes angel against angel. In this case, five angels against one.
Penryn helps the lone angel, Raffe, in order to save herself and her family but her sister is taken as revenge by the leader of the five.
She and Raffe team up to help each other.
Being the first in the series, there are a lot of big unanswered questions by the end. Are all angels bad? Why are they destroying humankind? How exactly do the politics of angledom work?
And, of course, will Penryn ever see Raffe again?
This novel is part dystopian, part YA, and definitely part paranormal romance. But the romance is not the high note of the story. It’s only one aspect of Pernyn’s heroic journey, which starts with looking out for her mother and sister but develops into so much more as she starts to see the bigger picture of what’s happening in and to her world.
It’s a great read and I enjoyed every second of the ride. The action is always at hand, being told from Penryn’s first-person present-tense narration, and the surprises keep coming, cranking up the tension at every turn.
Ee doesn’t shy away from the gruesome, so I wouldn’t recommend this those under fifteen years old, but the gruesomeness is necessary to push Penryn to her limits, physically and psychologically.
Now I’m off to buy Book 2!