Kevin's Reviews > Angelology

Honestly, if I could give it 3.5 stars, I would. Since I can't, I'm rounding up, as a gesture towards giving the author the benefit of the doubt, expecting that the next book will be better.

Angelology is a mixed bag. Personally, I find angel lore, and other mythologies, fascinating, and I thoroughly enjoyed the mix of Judeo-Christian and Greek myth, Talmudic scholarship and discussion of the Book of Enoch (a personal favorite). The subject of the Nephilim has intrigued me since I first read Madeline L'Engle as a kid. So . . . A+ on an interesting new take on very intriguing subject matter.

I understand this is the Ms. Trussoni's first novel, her first book being a solidly non-fiction memoir. I believe that this is apparent in her writing style. Frankly, I found the narrative voice to be rather dry for a work of fiction, especially one of the fantastic variety, but perfectly in keeping, however, with the expected tone of a diarist. It is also quite telling that the most compelling part of the book was the section detailing the personal memories of a young woman's life and education in WWII-era France. It was written in the first person, and the character, Celestine, was by far the most well-developed, and most distinctive voice in the entire novel. Clearly Ms. Trussoni is more comfortable, at least at the moment, with this style of narration.

The other characters in the book suffered somewhat from a lack of differentiation of voice; they all ran together and "read" quite similarly, from evil Nephilim to nuns, to aged angelologists. This was something of an unfortunate impediment when trying to identify with the various characters, and I hope that further work in fiction will help Ms. Trussoni better develop individual character voice.


The author is, however, quite skilled in description and her world was very easy to visualize, often vividly so. Unfortunately, her adeptness in this area overbalanced her lesser abilities in characterization and resulted in large sections of the book feeling overly expository, which was surprising, because the book had some truly exciting action bits.

Despite the book's flaws, however, Ms. Trussoni really did succeed in drawing me in, particularly after the aforementioned very engaging second section of the book, and left me looking forward to the next novel in the series. She is clearly a skilled and talented author, and I expect that she will quickly develop better fictional narrative skills. While I don't believe the book is quite worth the hype, it is still well worth reading.