Review by Hillary: Angelfall by Susan Ee

Title: Angelfall 
Series: Penryn & the End of Days #1
Author: Susan Ee
Publishing Company: Skyscape
Genre: YA—Paranormal/Fantasy
Pages: 283
Released: August 28th 2012

It’s been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister, Penryn, will do anything to get her back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own buddies, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they journey toward the angels’ stronghold in San Francisco where Penryn will risk everything to rescue her sister, and Raffe will put himself at the mercy of his greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again.

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Usually when I buy a book it’s because there are so many other readers out there recommending the book that I believe I should read the amazingness for myself as well. In this case, the way I ended up getting my hands on Angelfall changed things for me. I actually saw this book at one of the retail stores I visit often and even after picking it up and reading the synopsis on the back, I just couldn’t make myself buy this one and its sequel despite the voice in my head disagreeing with me. There are rare cases where I’ll see a book, go home and think about it for a few days, and then ultimately decide whether I want to buy it or not. This was one of those rare cases and this is what I ended up finding out for myself; I should start listening to my gut instinct a little more.

I can’t say I wasn’t engrossed in the story from page one because I was. I liked how I felt like I’d been plucked out of my oh so boring life and thrown into a new, scarier world. However, this also provided a few problems and I’ll explain those later. For now though, the action from practically the start is what kept me reading this story rapidly. I just wanted to know what would happen next and I do believe I was caught up in the ‘just one more chapter’ phase most good books provide for readers. I was even more startled to realize that I’d only begun the story during the morning only to finish later on around mid-afternoon. That definitely does not happen often enough and this one time that it did, well I was just amazed at what the author had created in her story to make me finish it so quickly.

The story starts out with Penryn Young who is ready to face on the world to keep her only two family members safe from harm. Penryn was definitely one of the bravest characters I’ve read from in a long time and it felt like a fresh breath of air. I definitely feel that this type of character had been consciously missed and yearned for without my knowing and it could also contribute to my fast reading. There were moments where I was worried, scared, and fascinated for and by Penryn because she definitely couldn’t be called weak. All of her self-defense training before the angels came to her world definitely helped empower Penryn into a strong and awesome character. I was envious at times because of what she could do, but I also couldn’t help but cheer her on.

Penryn was the only one I got to learn about most in the start, what with her sister being taken and her mother missing half the time left all of the personal stuff about them out of the story. Penryn basically explained a little about their personalities, but not very much. This brings me back to what I said I would explain. Since the story started out so quickly, I felt like there wasn’t much character growth to begin with mentally because Penryn was always preoccupied half the time by looking out for herself or Raffe. I also didn’t see much more growth throughout the story except for the moments where I saw Penryn start to confide and depend on Raffe a little more each day they were together. Those were probably the highlighting moments of her character growth. That and the action packed last few chapters that had my heart racing in worry and blood freezing in fear and creeped out-ness. Besides the character growth though, I feel that the pacing was great. There were hardly any freezing moments that had me wishing for something to pop out and make things interesting again because basically there was action-y, interesting moments throughout the book.

Angelfall by Susan Ee was an interesting, new, and greatly written story. I absolutely cannot wait to start World After (which will happen soon I hope) and see what more Penryn and Raffe will contribute to the story. I loved how the first book made the spark between them really subtle and I’m hoping that will only intensify in the sequel. I also hope that I get to learn much more about both their characters in the sequel because I do believe there is much more to be learned about them. I also want to see them bring more inner emotion into the story. I can’t wait to see how much more action the second installment will bring and only hope that it equals or advances to that of the first installment. I hope this book takes more notice because I definitely feel it’s worth it!

 Totally Awesome! I loved it, would read again.