When everyone started raving about World After by Susan Ee last year, I realized I'd never read the first book in the series, Angelfall. I suppose this book is what you'd get if you mixed Hush Hush with The Hunger Games or Divergent. It's dystopic, alright, but that's because of the angel apocalypse so I assume it's end of days or thereabouts. Of course that's no reason not to have a gorgeous conflicted good-guy type angel hero (Raffe) as a counterpoint to plucky survivor heroine Penryn. I'm seriously not meaning to be tongue-in-cheek (well maybe just a little), because I enjoyed the book. It's a quick read - less than 300 pages in hard copy and easy to fly through (no pun intended, well maybe just a little).
Author Ee also gives us a new take on the heroine's family by having a mother with all sorts of psychoses who may just know more than anyone else, or know how to survive better than anyone else. Penryn is trained in all manner of self-defense so she's pretty bad-ass and unflappable (okay - another angel pun; promise I'll stop now).
Her sister is in peril (shades of Hunger Games, but this is SO much worse). Her sister is in REAL gory gross peril at the hands of the angels. And the hero is gorgeous, and concealing the truth about himself and not even all that broody - just tall, godlike an cocky. And good at hiding his feelings. If I had one criticism about the book it's that the pacing is a tad uneven. Penryn and Raffe spend a lot of time tromping through the woods, getting captured, escaping and getting captured again. And then the real revelations and interesting stuff are crammed into the last 40-50 pages of the book. I would have liked to spend more time with the reveals toward the end because they came at me so fast it was difficult to process everything. So now I'm all primed to read the second book, although I understand that our hero and heroine don't spend much time together in that book and I really like the way they spark against each other, so I guess I'll miss that aspect of the first book. But I also hear the mother and sister characters are ramped up a few notches in book two so that will hopefully make up for it. This is a good read with action, romance, dystopia, and angels. What more could you ask for?
Author Ee also gives us a new take on the heroine's family by having a mother with all sorts of psychoses who may just know more than anyone else, or know how to survive better than anyone else. Penryn is trained in all manner of self-defense so she's pretty bad-ass and unflappable (okay - another angel pun; promise I'll stop now).
Her sister is in peril (shades of Hunger Games, but this is SO much worse). Her sister is in REAL gory gross peril at the hands of the angels. And the hero is gorgeous, and concealing the truth about himself and not even all that broody - just tall, godlike an cocky. And good at hiding his feelings. If I had one criticism about the book it's that the pacing is a tad uneven. Penryn and Raffe spend a lot of time tromping through the woods, getting captured, escaping and getting captured again. And then the real revelations and interesting stuff are crammed into the last 40-50 pages of the book. I would have liked to spend more time with the reveals toward the end because they came at me so fast it was difficult to process everything. So now I'm all primed to read the second book, although I understand that our hero and heroine don't spend much time together in that book and I really like the way they spark against each other, so I guess I'll miss that aspect of the first book. But I also hear the mother and sister characters are ramped up a few notches in book two so that will hopefully make up for it. This is a good read with action, romance, dystopia, and angels. What more could you ask for?
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