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Danielle Trussoni – Angelology

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The Bible speaks briefly of the Nephilim, but what if they deserved a lot more words than they were given?

Publisher: Michael Joseph (Penguin)
Pages: 452
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-718-15558-2
First Published: 2010
Date Reviewed: 19th April 2011
Rating: 3/5

Evangeline has always led a routine existence; as a nun she looks after the mail and devotes her time to prayer. But all that changes when a man arrives seeking information about a past Mother Superior. Verlaine is working for a tall blond who surpasses human averages by far, someone who isn’t about to let him do his job alone.

Angelology is the first book in a new trilogy written by Trussoni that examines the possibility of evil angels walking the earth. In it she links historic events to these human-angel hybrids and creates a whole educational system for the suppression of them.

Something that I feel is important to impart to the potential reader is the amount of background information included, indeed a large chunk of the book is dedicated to an event that happened over fifty years before. In this Trussoni blends fact with fiction and some sections are extremely interesting but one can feel bogged down especially as you can’t exactly take much of the information away with you for use in everyday life.

The way in which Trussoni goes about telling her tale is at once brilliant and ridiculous. The brilliance comes in the form of such things as drawing a subtle link between the physic of the Nephilim and the dictate of the Nazis on the perfect Aryan. The ridiculous comes in the form of such things as human agents in a secret society working against Nephilim, who want to kill them, having “angel1”, and “angel2” as their car number plates.

Unfortunately it is this second element that dominates the book, and it’s not until the end that things pick up. One character obviously sees a Nephilim, sees their wings, but it isn’t until someone else tells her much later on that she realises it was a Nephilim she saw. Add to this the fact that Trussoni constantly tells us that this character is the brightest student and, well, you can see where this is going.

The characters are not particularly developed, and the sort-of main character, Evangeline, supposedly the heroine, only gets things done because she has people telling her what to do. That she is a major factor in the Angelology circle is peculiar.

There is an issue with language and the book in relation to international audiences. Trussoni talks often of Verlaine’s “wing-tips”. On doing research, I discovered that this is the American phrase for a type of shoe, but even so, it’s really not the best way she could have described them when her book is about winged creatures.

The saving grace of the story is the ending, where Trussoni finally takes the plunge and delivers some top-notch plot ideas. The pacing and variation do make up a lot for the prior 300 or so pages, but unless you are happy to stick with a very average book until the end you are likely to deem it not worth it and that would be entirely understandable.

If you want to read Angelology proceed with caution, and I would recommend having a second book to hand for times when things get silly.

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Jackie (Farm Lane Books)

May 19, 2011, 5:44 pm

I wasn’t a big fan of this book either. I agree that the characters weren’t very well developed and I found the plot a bit silly at times. I won’t be reading the second in the trilogy.

Charlie: It’s a series I won’t be following any longer. It’s a pity because the beginning of the book and it’s potential were great.

lisa (the little reader)

May 26, 2011, 8:06 pm

i have this book on my bookshelf at home and i keep seeing these so-so reviews for it, which has made me keep putting it off. who has time for meh books these days?

Charlie: You’re right, average books take time from good ones.

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