Customer Reviews

Blood Angel

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

So many reviews of Bloodangel have focused on comparing author Musk to other horror talents. I don't read the genre, so I am approaching this book as a work of fiction, without knowing whose words are echoed or which best-selling horror writer Musk can be best compared to. Bloodangel starts with a great hook, an opening scene full of sex, drugs, and blood (the rock n' roll is to come a little later!), which is followed by plenty more action. This book is faced-paced despite the fact that Musk has the challenge of filling the reader in on the centuries-old history and culture of the ancient sorcerer Summoners. The age-old story of the demons and the Summoners is rich with political strife, revenge, feuds, and battles to the death.

The point-of-view in Bloodangel moves seamlessly between two people who are being awakened to their destiny: New York painter Jess Shepard, haunted by images and dreams that don't seem to be tied to tangible memories, and a Minnesotan foster kid, Ramsey Doe, who is the subject of Jess's dreams. Ramsey is a poet and music fan who has always known there is something different about him, about his lack of a past, about his power, but he's never been able to get a handle on it. The third point-of-view we see is that of heroin addict and slacker musician Lucas, who comes under the spell of beautiful demon-woman Asha and forms a new band (here's where the rock n' roll comes in, complete with a demon singer!) as he does her bidding. The lives of these three people gradually converge as the battle between angels and demons is brought to a head again in the modern day.

Musk delivers vivid characterization of her human and otherworldly characters, delivering an action-packed apocalyptic story line full of self-discovery and empowerment. This was a thrill ride of a read, and it comes highly recommended.

Justine Musk, BloodAngel (Roc, 2005)

I'm coming late to this party. What can I say about Justine Musk's first novel that has not yet been said? (Other than that I wish I'd written it.) It is a first novel, and so has a few minor warts-and-all flashes, but is otherwise as solid a novel as just about anything I've read this year.

The story takes place from three different viewpoints. The first concerns an aging, retired rock star, addicted to heroin, who meets a young girl who cures him of his drug addiction, gets him motivated again, and turns him to her own darker ends. The second revolves around and up-and-coming Manhattan artist who is visited by a man she knew as a child, who needs a rather large favor from her. The third starts off in Minnesota, where a foster kid, through a friend on the Internet, is introduced to a new underground rock band. All three stories eventually collide (along with a fourth introduced much, much later in the book-- the main "warts-and-all" wart, actually, is that the fourth storyline doesn't appear until less than an hundred pages are left in the book, thus immediately telegraphing that the characters therein are far more minor than the introduction of a new storyline tells us), and when they do, we get the feeling that things are not going to be all bread and circuses. Or will they?

I started reading BloodAngel on a weekend where I was already reading a number of books, and had a lot of other things to do besides. It was not a wise move, as I became absorbed immediately and let most of my other reading fall by the wayside. It takes a very good author to break me out of my gerbil-on-crack lack of attention span, and Musk did it from the word go. This is a solid debut novel that is almost criminally readable, and deserves your time. *** ½

Justine Musk's "BloodAngel" is a dark fantasy, yes. But it's not just a sugar-coated treat that dissolves on your tongue and is quickly forgotten; it's filled with images and themes that will linger long after you finish the book.

This, in my mind, is what elevates it above many of the dark fantasy novels on the shelves. Most are filled with plenty of sex, violence and supernatural happenings--but don't have anything of real substance to say. The sex, violence and supernatural happenings are mere window dressing, meant to titillate. And granted, that's all some readers want. But again, there's a depth in "BloodAngel" that makes it much more satisfying, giving all these traditional titillations (and a few not-so-traditional ones) more meaning.

You'll find blood pulsing throughout this book in all its literal and metaphorical forms (all the more satisfying, since this is NOT a vampire novel). Literal blood is here, for fans of the horrific. But Musk also explores concepts tied to this central image--blood oaths, blood lines, blood feuds, blood pacts, blood atonement.

The plot revolves around Jess Shepard and, to a lesser degree, Ramsey. But in my mind, the most haunting character is Lucas, a man who embodies the human condition: wanting to do what is honorable and right, yet giving in to base desires, and refusing to pull himself out of his fallen state because he, on some level, feels he deserves to suffer.

And even though the author creates a mix of so many disparate elements (everything from grunge rock to drug culture to ballet), she never lets it overpower the story or the message. Musk is an author in total control of her material. Her style is something to behold: her writing has a rhythm, a cadence, that adds to the story's sense of darkness and foreboding.

In short, "BloodAngel" is a bloody good read.

Painter Jessamy Shepard is having her first showing in a New York City art gallery and seven of her best pictures are of a fifteen-year-old boy that she never has seen; she believes she was inspired by her imagination. She is wrong as the boy in the painting does exist. He is the orphan Ramsey Doe who lives with his foster family in Dearmont, Minnesota. The time has come for both of them to know their destinies.

Kai enters Jess's life quite abruptly and tells her how she is the descendant of one of the world's most powerful Summoners, beings who are the descendants of the mating between humans and angels. He is seven centuries old and has plenty of magic, the same kind that is locked within Jess that he will help her release so she can locate Ramsey who is hunted Bakat Akisa, an evil Summoner who escaped from prison after being locked away for five centuries. She wants revenge, she wants the world to burn and become a hell-world where she and the demons she lets loose will rule and she needs Ramsey to make that happen because hidden inside him is a being who can open the realms of the Dreamlines and let the demons come to earth. Kai and Jess intend to stop her or die trying.

Justine Musk is a great new writer on the horror scene and will appeal to fans of Karen Koehler and Poppy Z. Brite. The characters, especially the Summoners, have an interesting perspective on life as they have walked the earth for centuries. The history and culture of the Summoners is also fascinating and even Akisa elicits reader sympathy having been a sex slave at one time. It is hoped that there will be future books featuring the Summoners.

Harriet Klausner

Every few years a new voice rises from the cavern of horror fiction, and like a sandstorm blasts away the detritus of mimicry and convention. Justine Musk is that voice. Her new novel, BloodAngel, is a gripping tale of beauty, terror, and empowerment. Winged with a vision all her own, she rises above the many writers who have in past years ridden piggyback on the success of Lauryl K. Hamilton and the Buffy the Vampire franchise. Don't let BloodAngel's stylish cover fool you into thinking that this is just another Kim Harrison or Sherrilyn Kenyon novel. This is not another romance dressed up in Goth chic. Do pay attention to the cover blurb by Poppy Brite. BloodAngel is as strikingly original as Brite's "Lost Souls" and as wildly imaginative as the novels of China Mieville. Her characters are fully-fleshed and mesmerizing, you either fall in love with them or love hating them.

The story starts and ends in the blasted desert, the Mojave wasteland held up as a mirror to the urban wasteland of modern day America-the drug culture, the cult of personality, the self-induced anesthesia of a drug-addicted youth culture. In the desert, everyone is looking for the next messiah. And the next messiah is coming in the form of Asha, a blonde femme fatale and literal devourer of hearts. Asha is, a refugee from the war between Heaven and Hell, and she has come to offer not redemption but judgement. The cast down goddess, rejected by her immortal family and degraded as a slave, has had centuries to nurse her rage. She seduces Lucas, a down and out heroin addict from a rock band that never made it, and replaces his addiction for the drug with addiction to her power. She has the voice of a fallen angel, an inhuman voice haunted with the sighs of the abyss, and the music she creates with Lucas possesses legions of fans-- legions that will become host to demons when Asha sings open the doorway to Hell.

Enter Jess Shepard, a gifted painter from Manhattan, who has become obsessed with the image of a beautiful boy, a tragic Kouros that haunts her dreams. Her blood culls his image from the void between the worlds, the Dreamlines. Jess soon discovers that she is the descendent of the Summoners, a race of noble sorcerers with immortal blood in their veins. The boy, like Asha, is an angel in a human husk. He is Asha's ancient enemy, the only one with the power to stop the blood apocalypse. The war will be fought on Tantric grounds, the cosmic annihilation of the masculine joined to the feminine. From destruction comes creation, but if Asha gets her way, the new universe will be an inferno of fire and endless suffering.

In Jess' quest to find the boy, she discovers her own power--the power of creation. Her guardian, Kai, who has secretly protected her from her youth, opens doors within her that lead to magic, ecstacy, and a forbidden love that transcends worlds both mortal and immortal.

No complaints here. These are NOT vampires - it's more reminiscent of the Gilgamesh story or "fallen angels versus demons".

It is common to hear people say the world is going to Hell. But, what if it were? And, what if only you could save it. In BloodAngel, the apocalypse is upon us. There's a new drug on the streets and missing people or people brutally murdered; but, no one thinks the world in on the fast track to Hell. At least, no one but Kia, a Sajae, who has been watching for the return of Bakal Ashika for over 700 years. And the only one who can save us is an artist who all unknowing has a talent for magic. But can Kia convince her magic exists and train her before it's too late...

It's a story of interlinking threads beginning with Lucas Maddox, a musician and song writer down on his lucky and addicted to cocaine. Then there is Jessamy Shepard who has a showing of her latest art pieces--a series of a young boy that she can't get out of her mind or her dreams. Kai can open Jess to a whole new world of power and magic by helping her to harness her dreams and enabling her to walk the Dreamlines. Ramsey Doe is an orphan living in a foster home. He is a poet and has flashes of insight into people that make him a bit of an outcast in school and in previous foster families.

Slowly the lives of these people intersect with each other in strange and mystical ways. To save the world, they must each reach inside and know themselves. They are each tempted with the lives and things they want most. They each must decide whether saving the world or saving themselves means more to them and act on that knowledge.

The book starts slow as the characters are introduced but then picks up the pace and keeps you turning the pages. Choices, destiny, family, and love are at the heart of this story. There are demons, angels, and cruelty and love and the help the characters need in their journey is not always from the sources that you'd expect.

Recommended, if you can take some truly gruesome scenes of cruelty and abuse in the mix.

I search,usually in vain, for books like this. Dark, but not gory.
Fantasy, but good enough that I can suspend disbelief.
This really is the best I've read in a long time.
Smart, but not insolent. Not glib and too clever for it's own good.
The characters, at this point in what I hope and believe to be a new series, could stand some fleshing out. But that will come with the forth-coming books and I can hardly wait to get to know them better.

This is Justine Musk's first novel. That's the thing I found hardest to believe about this book. Her writing is so tight and clean, her iamges are so clear, her ability to summon music into prose is so distinctive that I would have expected her to a have written a string of novels before "Blood Angel".

Her writing skill is matched by her ability to generate an original fantasy story that is closely plotted and fast paced and yet which still finds time to develop the emotional side of her characters.

The cover art seems to pitch the book as yet another maybe-this-one-will-be-better vampire story. That does it an injustice.

"Blood Angel" is a fresh take on demons and magic, that carries with it a convincing sense of history while being firmly located in the modern alternative sub-culture.

This isn't horror and its not quite science fiction. This is speculative fiction with balls.

Read it with an open mind and a fresh eye and it will take you to new and interesting places

This novel is written in a couple of different point of views--kind of. There is Jessamy Sheppard. Kai. Ramsey. And Asha.The chapters are kind of weird, it has the person's name under the chapter number, it will be in that particular character's point of view.

Jess is an artist who just got her first show. Then, Kai shows up and ruins her life. In a way of speaking. Then there is Asha who is a demon in human form who finds Lucas Maddox to bring her humans. How does he bring her hunmans? Music.

It all ends in the desert...

This is a great book. It's one of my favorites.