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199 of 229 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Strangly appealing but very akward and confusing at the same time, March 6, 2010
This review is from: Angelology: A Novel (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
For some reason "Angelology" caught my attention on this vine list. A whole secret sect dedicated to studying and protecting the world from the secret offspring of angels and man? Very cool. Add in some biblical references and ancient mythology and you got your story.
Or you should.
This novel revolves around the premise that there is a long standing organization of angelologists who study the angels and work against their hybrid children the Nephilim, who are constantly struggling to exert their superior place in the world by ruling humanity through any number of schemes. This organization has schools and institutions for teaching new recruits (from every religion and sphere of spiritual and secular life) and they do what they can to learn how to defeat the Nephilim and have been doing so for a long, long time.
Our story begins in 1999 at the New York Convent of St. Rose where Sister Evangeline, the twenty three year old orphaned daughter of two angelologists, has lived since she was twelve. Evangeline has blocked out most of the odd occurrences in her childhood but when a modern art scholar from NYC named Verlaine shows up in the convent archives (which boast a mass library of angelic images and texts) looking for information that the former Abbess of the convent was once in communication with Abigail Rockefeller it sparks her interest.
The letter she finds leads her to one of the eldest sisters in the convent, who tells the tale of her days as a young angelology student in Paris before WW2-and the expedition to the cave where the angels who fathered the Nephilim were cast down from heaven and imprisoned in to find the lyre of Orpheus-which both sides in the conflict believe has great power to aid their cause. This nun also studied with Evangeline's grandmother-who has written a series of letters to Evangeline to be opened when the time is right, explaining the ancient situation she finds herself in the middle of.
Verlaine doesn't know it but the man he's working for, Percival Grigori is a Nephilim-a powerful one searching for the lyre to restore his ailing heath. Verlaine has no idea angels exists at all in fact. But soon he is caught up as the angelologists, with Evangeline race to discover the hidden Lyre before the Nephilim can find it.
That's our story. The "present" parts of it take place over two days. Or less.
This could have been fascinating if anything was ever explained. The origins of angelology for example-never really mentioned. How one finds out or becomes part of this world-nada. Any kind of real history about the main characters is mostly absent too-as is any kind of information to make sense of this novel! There is just so much missing-so much description, so much information! If the concept of angelology was like-I don't know-the KKK maybe (in terms of fame) then the level of explanation might be adequate but as it the plot is barely capable of being followed. And the characters themselves are just shadows with no substance (except for the repeated mentions of Verlaine's snazzy tie and the brand of boxers he prefers.) The author does manage to convey a great sense of urgency but once you reach the end it all falls apart into a big mess. And the end! If this is not part of a planned series then it makes even less sense that I think it does.
This book hits a conundrum. There isn't enough information to explain the basic concepts but in order for there to be enough there would have to be several, much longer, books. Maybe a series that starts at the beginning or has a flashback system that makes more sense than the one big block of past in the middle of the book.
Frankly I'm lost. I enjoyed the overall concept (which I don't understand very well), liked parts of the book (but was incredibly frustrated by their lack of detail and sense of weight) and am stuck with an overall feeling that there are huge sections of this novel floating around in the either which could bring it all together and make it better (not that it wouldn't help the constant clichés when it comes to any kind of relationship involved) and more readable.
I hate giving bad reviews. Especially to first time authors. I didn't like this book but I was absorbed by it. I can see why someone would buy the movie rights to the concept (congrats to the author by the way) but I don't see how this, as is, could be a movie. Overall this book I think, was just too ambitious for it's limitations (especially page length) and that made the whole thing awkward and confusing yet strangely appealing.
Two stars.
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112 of 130 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Gossip Girl for armchair theologians, March 15, 2010
This review is from: Angelology: A Novel (Hardcover)
This was such a great idea. It's a shame that the book is so horribly written. Some suspension of disbelief is required for fiction, but "Angelology" requires the literary equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge. The characters act like they're such unfathomable idiots - a secret organization studying angels uses ANGEL for its cars license plates! they have the most important of meetings in an apartment their opponents know about! someone with a Ph.D. in art history does not know that "ex" is "from" in Latin! - that it is impossible to believe that any plot they engaged in could succeed. The characters also have only emotionally matured to about the level of the average fourteen year old. Their "does s/he like me?" musings are just as boring in this book as they are in real life. Maybe some day someone will write an interesting book about interactions between humans and angels, but this sure isn't it.
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54 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Stop this foolishness, May 1, 2010
This review is from: Angelology: A Novel (Hardcover)
The early reviews of this book - and the critic's reviews here on Amazon made it sound like a great read - an original engaging story, positive comments on the author's writing style, etc.
I expected a far-fetched tale, but hoped for a well-written book full of engaging characters, brisk plot and historical and biblical details that would make the concept of angeology real. Nope. The writing style was clumsy at best. The author tells you how you should think and feel about the characters, which is at odds with the impressions you get of these people based on their words and deeds. As a result, you cannot care about them - not one.
There are just so many things in the book that make no sense. I am not referring to the existence of an evil race of quasi-angel Nephilim who have been enslaving and corrupting humanity since several of God's angels mated with humans before the Flood, nor the existence of a secret academic/action hero society dedicated to fighting the Nephilim. That was the intriquing stuff. The stuff that makes no sense is the real-world details that would make the fantasy believeable.
The main events of the story take place over the course of two days or so right before Christmas in and around NYC. The only references to Christmas -- even in the convent --- are the Christmas cookies the nuns bake and Verlaine's dislike of the holiday. These folks somehow manage to dash around New York City and its environs without ever being hampered by traffic, construction or the like. They find thelselves in a mostly empty subway car late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve - where is everyone?. The main action takes place in 1999. Not a single character has a cell phone. No one seems to have access to the internet. While not as common in 1999 as these modern marvels are now, they certainly existed - Verlaine has a laptop into which his has scanned important documents - he freelances as a researcher - but no internet? No cell phone?
Then there are the interal incnsistencies. The author tells us that humans are inherently good and it is the Nephilim who have corrupted them. Yet in the parts of the book where there are crowds (and the author is a fan of hiding things in crowds) the people comprising those crowds do not react to any of the bad stuff going on around them. The human "good guys" are amoral throughout the book - killing, lying, committing adulery, stealing. Ironic - the premise of angelology is that evil was released into the world when God's will was defied.
As the climax unfolds in the last third of the book, most of the characters' decisions make no sense - without spoling too much - they set themselves a task with no purpose and then go about it blindly, trusting everyone they meet, resulting in a needlessly high body-count. At this point, the whole thing degenerates into a comic book style birth of a super hero ... on Christmas. You have got to be kidding me.
I cannot comprehend the glowing critical reviews of the writing of this book. The written prose, the dialogue and the charcater / plot development were in draft form at best.
The book has been compared to the Da Vinci Code, and it is in that genre, but the author is not able to sustain the pace of the plot as Dan Brown does, nor does she manage to explain the very intriguing concept of angelology withour resorting to long lectures. The concept is more interesting than those Dan Brown comes up with, and is not as overtly anti-religious as Brown, but she is just not the writer that Brown is.
Angelology is anti-religious in its own way. The main character is a nun living in a convent - but she is naive and wasn't given much of a choice about joining, never gives any thought to her faith or spirituality, rather, focuses only on the routine of her existence within the convent. She is the only young nun there - the author explains that vocations to the religious life have fallen off since parents stopped coercing their children. There is more, but that would spoil some of the action if you plan to read the book.
I gave the book 2 stars for it's original concept, but I do not recommend it. Clearly this is heading for sequels - I won't be reading them.
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