Book Review: A Kiss Before The Apocalypse
Because apparently when I said that I was going to catch up on my reading now that November was over, I was serious...
Title: A Kiss Before The Apocalypse
Author: Thomas E Sniegoski
Genre: Fantasy
Series: First of the Remy Chandler series of books
Summary: (from the back cover) “Boston PI Remy Chandler has a life any man would envy, with friendship, a job he's good at - and love. But Remy is no ordinary man. He's an angel who chose to renounce heaven and live on Earth. So he's able to will himself invisible, hear thoughts, and speak and understand any language - of man or beast. Talents that will become invaluable to him when his angelic past returns to haunt him...
The Angel of Death has gone missing, and Remy's former colleagues have come to him for help. But what at first seems to be about tracing a missing person turns out to involve much more - a conspiracy that has as its goal the destruction of the human race.
And only Remy Chandler can stop it...
How I Found It: It was given to me as part of a large stack of books by a friend of mine with assurances that they're awesome.
Review in Five Words Or Less: Straightforward plot, but awesome characters
Rating: Liked It
Review:
All right, so just right off the bat, I thought this was a really fun book. Which, considering the parts of it that I enjoyed, probably says something about me as a person. I don't know exactly what and I'm not sure I want to... But, yeah. Took me a bit to decide if I wanted to mark it as a “Liked It” or a “Loved It,” actually. Anyway...
A Kiss Before The Apocalypse is a very bittersweet detective novel. With angels. Now, as far as I am concerned, there is nothing that cannot be made infinitely more awesome with the addition of wings, but that's just me. The main character, Remy Chandler, manages to be both very human and very much not at the same time, as you'd expect from an angelic main character. He's also one of a very few characters who actually made the choice to live among humans, which definitely sets him apart from his former brethren - they're trying to make the most of a situation forced upon them while Remy is fighting for something he chose.
Right at the beginning of the novel, the writing style felt a bit off to me, though that could have come from jumping straight from To Reign In Hell to this one. But I really could have used a lot more background information, maybe character development, I don't know. Something other than leaping straight into the main plot. Which, to be fair, was a pretty fun plot, if very much that of a straightforward detective drama. There were “shocking revelations” that really weren't all that shocking (except for one, which I was not at all expecting), but it was engrossing enough that I couldn't seem to put it down. But all it all it was definitely far from a bad plot - just nothing to make me sit up and go “Oh, that was brilliant and clever and I can't believe that just happened!”
Something about the novel that I really did love, however, was the presence of his wife, Madeline. Madeline, whom Remy met in 1945, married, and who now lives in a nursing home. It's heartwrenching and I'm glad that Sniegoski was willing to go there. So many authors play around with mortals and immortals falling in love, but very few of them actually have the nerve to take that story to its natural, bittersweet conclusion. I like that he did.
Marlowe, also, was magnificent. Seriously, Remy's best friend is his black lab, Marlowe, with whom he can communicate. It's awesome - Marlowe continued to be very much a dog despite having an actual speaking role and is both comic relief and occasionally the instigator of more heart-breaking scenes.
The presence of Lazarus (yes, that Lazarus) made me probably happier than it really should have. I don't know, I thought it was kind of an awesome take on the potential ramifications of that particular miracle.
I did have some issues with the actual angelology going on in this novel, though I'm not sure how much of that is genuine issues and how much of that is me being a gigantic theology geek. The big thing that bothered me was the fact that they kept calling Remy “Seraphim.” Which, as any decent student of angelic lore knows, isn't right. Unless, you know, Remy has some sort of multiple personality thing going on that we don't know about. But barring that, one is a Seraph, many are Seraphim. The words are not interchangeable...
Theology-girl struck again when they introduced the Grigori, actually. Led by Sariel. Now, I'm 99.9 percent certain that this particular nitpick is the result of spending the last twelve months completely immersed in the mythology surrounding the Grigori and their story, so make of it what you will. But their leader was Shemyaza (or Shemihazah, or myriad other spellings depending on the translation you use...) not Sariel, and they were imprisoned, not banished to Earth. This bothered me. It probably will bother exactly two other people in the entire universe. Feel free to ignore this concern.
The actual abilities and limitations of angels were too undefined for my liking, though I'm incredibly detail- oriented and so am rarely satisfied with what I'm given when it comes to that sort of thing. But really, he claims in the beginning of the novel to have chosen “to become human” which, at least in my mind, implies, you know, giving up his angelness. Yet then it goes on to mention, “oh, yeah, by the way, he doesn't age, can still reveal his true face, can do this and this and that and so on,” which sounds less like becoming human and more like living as one while still being an angel. And then we find out that he's just limited because he's not in his true form, which is then not explained in the slightest. It's apparently very serious and dramatic and has all sorts of potential ramifications, but that's about all we get. I wanted more.
But keep in mind that, despite my many complaints, I sat down with this book at about four o'clock this afternoon and did not get up again until I had it finished four hours later. It is, as I said, a very fun read. Well, fun for a gritty detective drama.
Anyway, definitely worth the time to read it. Now I have to go get my hands on the next book in the series...
Title: A Kiss Before The Apocalypse
Author: Thomas E Sniegoski
Genre: Fantasy
Series: First of the Remy Chandler series of books
Summary: (from the back cover) “Boston PI Remy Chandler has a life any man would envy, with friendship, a job he's good at - and love. But Remy is no ordinary man. He's an angel who chose to renounce heaven and live on Earth. So he's able to will himself invisible, hear thoughts, and speak and understand any language - of man or beast. Talents that will become invaluable to him when his angelic past returns to haunt him...
The Angel of Death has gone missing, and Remy's former colleagues have come to him for help. But what at first seems to be about tracing a missing person turns out to involve much more - a conspiracy that has as its goal the destruction of the human race.
And only Remy Chandler can stop it...
How I Found It: It was given to me as part of a large stack of books by a friend of mine with assurances that they're awesome.
Review in Five Words Or Less: Straightforward plot, but awesome characters
Rating: Liked It
Review:
All right, so just right off the bat, I thought this was a really fun book. Which, considering the parts of it that I enjoyed, probably says something about me as a person. I don't know exactly what and I'm not sure I want to... But, yeah. Took me a bit to decide if I wanted to mark it as a “Liked It” or a “Loved It,” actually. Anyway...
A Kiss Before The Apocalypse is a very bittersweet detective novel. With angels. Now, as far as I am concerned, there is nothing that cannot be made infinitely more awesome with the addition of wings, but that's just me. The main character, Remy Chandler, manages to be both very human and very much not at the same time, as you'd expect from an angelic main character. He's also one of a very few characters who actually made the choice to live among humans, which definitely sets him apart from his former brethren - they're trying to make the most of a situation forced upon them while Remy is fighting for something he chose.
Right at the beginning of the novel, the writing style felt a bit off to me, though that could have come from jumping straight from To Reign In Hell to this one. But I really could have used a lot more background information, maybe character development, I don't know. Something other than leaping straight into the main plot. Which, to be fair, was a pretty fun plot, if very much that of a straightforward detective drama. There were “shocking revelations” that really weren't all that shocking (except for one, which I was not at all expecting), but it was engrossing enough that I couldn't seem to put it down. But all it all it was definitely far from a bad plot - just nothing to make me sit up and go “Oh, that was brilliant and clever and I can't believe that just happened!”
Something about the novel that I really did love, however, was the presence of his wife, Madeline. Madeline, whom Remy met in 1945, married, and who now lives in a nursing home. It's heartwrenching and I'm glad that Sniegoski was willing to go there. So many authors play around with mortals and immortals falling in love, but very few of them actually have the nerve to take that story to its natural, bittersweet conclusion. I like that he did.
Marlowe, also, was magnificent. Seriously, Remy's best friend is his black lab, Marlowe, with whom he can communicate. It's awesome - Marlowe continued to be very much a dog despite having an actual speaking role and is both comic relief and occasionally the instigator of more heart-breaking scenes.
The presence of Lazarus (yes, that Lazarus) made me probably happier than it really should have. I don't know, I thought it was kind of an awesome take on the potential ramifications of that particular miracle.
I did have some issues with the actual angelology going on in this novel, though I'm not sure how much of that is genuine issues and how much of that is me being a gigantic theology geek. The big thing that bothered me was the fact that they kept calling Remy “Seraphim.” Which, as any decent student of angelic lore knows, isn't right. Unless, you know, Remy has some sort of multiple personality thing going on that we don't know about. But barring that, one is a Seraph, many are Seraphim. The words are not interchangeable...
Theology-girl struck again when they introduced the Grigori, actually. Led by Sariel. Now, I'm 99.9 percent certain that this particular nitpick is the result of spending the last twelve months completely immersed in the mythology surrounding the Grigori and their story, so make of it what you will. But their leader was Shemyaza (or Shemihazah, or myriad other spellings depending on the translation you use...) not Sariel, and they were imprisoned, not banished to Earth. This bothered me. It probably will bother exactly two other people in the entire universe. Feel free to ignore this concern.
The actual abilities and limitations of angels were too undefined for my liking, though I'm incredibly detail- oriented and so am rarely satisfied with what I'm given when it comes to that sort of thing. But really, he claims in the beginning of the novel to have chosen “to become human” which, at least in my mind, implies, you know, giving up his angelness. Yet then it goes on to mention, “oh, yeah, by the way, he doesn't age, can still reveal his true face, can do this and this and that and so on,” which sounds less like becoming human and more like living as one while still being an angel. And then we find out that he's just limited because he's not in his true form, which is then not explained in the slightest. It's apparently very serious and dramatic and has all sorts of potential ramifications, but that's about all we get. I wanted more.
But keep in mind that, despite my many complaints, I sat down with this book at about four o'clock this afternoon and did not get up again until I had it finished four hours later. It is, as I said, a very fun read. Well, fun for a gritty detective drama.
Anyway, definitely worth the time to read it. Now I have to go get my hands on the next book in the series...