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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review of Angels of the Deep, June 20, 2009
Angels of the Deep
Angels of the Deep
by Kirby Crow
ISBN 13: 978-1-60820-026-9 (print)
978-1-60820-027-6 (ebook)
Published by mlrbooks, April 2009
Cover Artist: Analise Dubner
Genre: Paranormal/Horror
Kirby Crow claims to write homoerotic romance. At least that's what her last four books purport to be. Angels of the Deep is not one of these. While it does contain homoerotic romance, this book is, in no uncertain terms, a horror novel.
Becket Merriday is chief of police of a small town in the state of New York. He gave up a career as a top-rate FBI profiler and moved to Irenic in an effort to save his marriage. It didn't work. Now, he's headed for divorce, is infatuated with his male lieutenant Sean Logan and has a serial killer on the loose. Someone or something is killing young men, slicing their heads off and cutting out their hearts, and it's up to he and Sean to solve the case.
But that's just the framework of this dark, dark story. Kirby Crow has penned a brutal study of what God, angels and the nephilim (angel/human offspring) might be like if they were anything akin to the alien warriors history hints at rather than the watered-down, kindly God and angels we think of today.
Some have called this a love story. And while I've mentioned there is such a component, I call Angels of the Deep an apocalyptic, terrifying look at why we humans can't and don't want to peer across the Veil. God and the angels he created are not like us. We might be made in his image, but we are fundamentally different. Crow shows us this in many uncomfortable ways: from how the angels and nephilim might love to how they might treat humans.
A read you'll not soon forget, Angels of the Deep is well-crafted and impeccably written. My one complaint is that it's just too damn intense. I felt bludgeoned by the time I finished. I also have to warn readers that the book contains a lot of eroticism, multiple and graphic rape and sex scenes, and a few references to past instances of pedophilia. This is not a book for the weak of heart.
I recommend it!
Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2009
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterful, brutal, and compelling, April 15, 2009
The term 'rollercoaster ride' is so frequently over-used in reference to emotional events that it has become something of a cliché, trotted out like a knackered old nag every time an author pens a turbulent book.
In the case of 'Angels of the Deep', however, there simply is no better term than 'rollercoaster ride'. The initial pages of the book, dealing with the terror of a small boy at the hands of a twisted priest ratchet the car higher and higher up the first incline. Approaching the hundredth page, as Chief Becket Merriday's already-complicated life is further convoluted by one brutal discovery after another, the car is poised at the very zenith of the ride; nothing ahead but limitless frightening space. It's when the reader hits page 127 (don't you DARE skip ahead!) that the car hurtles down into the first deep ravine, your stomach is exploring crevices in your body that you never knew existed, and Ms Crow -hithertofore manning the brakes- has just leapt out of the car. You're on your own, for the gut-wrenching ride of your life.
Forget the damp nose of the dog, nudging you for his evening walk. Forget your best beloved imploring you to go to bed. Forget that you have to get up early for work tomorrow. There is no place to stop, no pull-over on the road once you're past that page, no map-reading and nip-behind-the-bushes-for-a-loo-break moment.
Every person you will meet along this wild ride, no matter how minor their role, is a loving study in characterisation. Every place, too, is a character, with Ms Crow's lush descriptive prose pouring subtle visuals into your retinas until you can taste the darkness that envelops this entire book.
You will learn more sand-pitted ancient history than you ever thought you needed to know, and Ms Crow ties it all neatly with a bloody, vengeful bow. Shot through with anger, blood, vengeance and desire, this story delivers everything you could want, reverberating with subtle and clever semiotics, and the shocking revelation that you are reading the most unexpected and intense study in love.
Revelations. Ah. This is the rub: I can't deliver a detailed review of this book without diving into spoilers. But revelations you will have aplenty, and when they come they are shocking, intense, and delicious. This is a beautifully-crafted book that demands a second reading, just to see if it really happened.
Like leaving the cinema after an immersive movie, 'Angels of the Deep' finally disgorges its reader onto the streets of reality, as bewildered and blinking as a newborn. 'Mangled' was the first word that came to mind (still is the most apt word) when I tried to describe how I felt once finished. This story is exhausting for the reader, yet rewarding. It's almost as good as revenge, but this book is a dish best served bloody and still-warm.
This deserves to be a hardcover. Quite why Ms Crow is writing for small presses is beyond me. 'Angels of the Deep' has the chops to butt heads with Stephen King and, while it may not win against such a master of his genre, it would acquit itself damn well.
While heading into work the day after reading this book, I noticed the moon was a rare bloody orange, as if she knew what words I'd been devouring the night before. The random lipsalve I'd grabbed from the drawer and stuffed in my bag that morning had been one scented with apples (read the book; you'll know why that gave me such a start when I uncapped and used it). This is a book that makes you question reality just a little and look over your shoulder, just to make sure.
The silver screen would adore 'Angels of the Deep'. Somebody needs to tell Ridley Scott that his next opus awaits between these covers.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Angels of the Deep by Kirby Crow, April 14, 2009
The best word to describe Angels of the Deep is "dark"; it started in the dark, both literally than figuratively, to continue always in the dark. Even when it's daylight, the darkness is there, and sincerely I always had the feel, reading this book, that there was like a cloud covering the sun, and even if the events take place during the day, no real sunlight was allowed in the story. The only light I perceived was the artificial one of neon, a light that was cold, in this way reinforcing the darkness and also the coldness. No sunlight means no natural warm. All in this book was dark and icy.
I realized that I concentrated more on the feeling it left me than on the story, but it's also hard to give you a short summary of the story without giving up the end, but I will try. At the beginning of the book Beck is an orphan, a ward in the hand of a priest; unfortunately Beck is suffering an unspeakable hell living with the priest, a pedophiles who calls Beck his Angel. As expected in this situation, Beck is escaping reality building a world of his own, till the day an ancient woman appears and "frees" Beck from his hell. Jump ahead in time, Beck is now an adult, married man and soon-to-be divorced. It seems that he loves his wife, Cat, but not in the way he should love her; Cat is a good woman, but when Beck is near her, I feel more friendship than love passing between them. On the other hand, Beck is feeling something strong for someone he should not, Sean, his partner in the police facility they both work for.
Also Sean is aware of the feelings between them, and he would be willing to try, but Beck is unwilling. He finds all the right excuse, he is married, he can't do that to Cat, Sean is a co-worker... strange enough one of the excuse is not that he is not gay, as if the gender of them is not important... Anyway I had the feeling that the real reason was that Beck is still traumatized by what happened to him when he was a child. Beck is the exactly profile of an abused child, unable to tighten real bond with a lover, reluctant to speak of his problem, ready to lie to therapists when they near the real problem. The only thing that I will not add to the other typical thing is Beck being gay, since, first of all it seems not to be one of his "trouble", and second, as I said before, his relationship with Sean is strange, and being both men seem not to be the real problem between them.
All right, telling you these things, I more or less 50 pages of the more than 300 pages of the book, and I can't say more, since from this moment on the reader is plunged inside the story right in the middle of the event and will resurface only in the end. The author don't prolong the broth with water to make it last, but serve the main course and let the reader to deal with it in full play mode. The story takes is direction and goes straight to the end without hesitation and not leaving to the reader neither the time to breath. I was turning the page hoping to find a moment to stop, and instead there wasn't neither one. The book is 300 pages long, but no one of these pages is an embellishment, they are all center stage events.
Kirby Crow is not famous for being sexy, she is more famous to be a teaser (she will never be free of that title after letting me suffer for one very long book, Scarlet and the White Wold 1, for a kiss, and for another even more long book, the second in the series, for a sex scene...), and Angels of the Deep confirms it; even if, truth be told, there is sex in the book (and not only in the last chapter) and there is also a continuous running of eroticism in all the pages, all the characters, not only Beck and Sean, are all very physical, and their body reactions are pretty clear and described. So the only moment that the icy cloak I felt on the story is raised, is when that sexy running surfaces here and there.
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