Hallowed review

Hallowed
by Cynthia Hand
HarperTeen
January 2012

First line: "In the dream, there's sorrow."

Hallowed picks up where Unearthly left off, with Clara, Tucker and Christian ready to enter their senior year of high school in rural Jackson, Oregon. Thanks to Clara's angelic heritage, she's been having visions of a forest fire that she must rescue someone from. Clara's made her choice to be with country boy Tucker, even though it seems to go against the divine visions that are pushing her towards Christian instead. There's still plenty of tension in this love triangle, however. Clara's fulfilled all the requirements of her vision, but she's begun having new visions of a funeral - possibly Tucker's? In the meantime, Christian understands her flight and mind powers in only the way that another part-angel can.

Clara's best friend Angela, who also has angel blood, continues to press on with her research of everything about their angelic heritage. Clara's younger brother Jeffrey continues his very slow slide towards the "dark side."

Again, I disliked the heavy-handed "dark = bad" theme - when angels go against their mysterious and unknowable God, their wings turn darker, and truly evil villains are known as "Blackwings."

Clara starts to make more connections to the angel community and really comes to depend on them as her family is harassed by evil angel Samjeeza. I won't spoil the ending, but Clara is a really sweet person, and it's tough to see some of the emotionally wrenching drama she's put through. There are some big changes and plot twists that will affect the direction of things in the next novel, Boundless.

Compare to:
Angel Burn - L.A. Weatherly
Angelfire - Courtney Allison Moulton
Misfit - Jon Skovron

I borrowed this book from the library.

Angel Burn review

Angel Burn

by L.A. Weatherly

Candlewick

May 2011

In this paranormal YA romance, angels are an evil invading force. Their most devastating power is their ability to suck the life force from humans, mesmerizing them all the while, and making them feel enraptured. Disastrously for the human race, this means that those with the most up-close and personal experience of angels are actually the least likely to sound the alarm bells. Despite the cancer and debilitating illnesses that most humans seem to contract from contact with the angels, they remain obsessively devoted, building huge cathedrals dedicated to the new "Church of the Angels"

16 year-old Willow, who struggles with unwanted psychic powers, does a reading for her friend Beth who is thinking of joining the cult and Willow immediately guesses the angels' evil intent. In the meantime, 17 year-old Alex has been living a life on the run, working with an elite group of Angel Killers since he was a young boy. When he's told to assassinate Willow, he's very suspicious, as she has an angel aura, yet clearly is a human girl. With his orders from headquarters growing more erratic all the time, he essentially kidnaps her for a cross-country road trip back to his original base camp to see if he can straighten things out. Along the way, naturally, they begin to develop feelings for each other, despite the fact that Willow is half-angel.

I really enjoyed this book. It's action-packed and the angel mythology is well-thought out. The leader of the angels' invading force, Raziel, is deliciously evil and it's fun to read the scenes where his human secretary, Jonah, slowly starts to put the pieces together from the clues his boss carelessly reveals. The romance between Alex and Willow develops slowly and is very sweet.

The one thing that bothered me about the book was the jarring switches between first-person narration (from Willow's point of view) and third-person narration. On the one hand, I loved the immediacy of hearing Willow's thoughts, especially as she tried to work out her feelings for Alex. If the whole book had been in first-person we would have missed the portions where Alex likes her, but she doesn't know it yet, and of course, I loved all the parts with hapless Jonah. Alex's gruff old mentor, Cully, was also a lot of fun, especially when some shocking twists towards the end of the book are revealed. Overall, switching tenses back and forth gave the writing a very uneven, choppy feel though. I wish the book had been revised so that all of Willow's parts were in third-person. I was concerned at first by the title change and cover change from the British original, but Angel Burn is a more distinctive title than simply, Angel and the new cover design really grew on me.

This is the first in a trilogy, and hopefully the rest of the series will be as thrilling as the first one was.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Unearthly review

Unearthly
by Cynthia Hand 
HarperTeen
January 2011

I must confess that I haven't been a huge fan of the gradual shift in paranormal romances from vampires and werewolves to including angels... so I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy this one. But, the cover was really captivating, and any online images I've seen of the cover simply don't do it justice. I was pleasantly surprised. A lot of angel fiction features a perfect, yet brooding, male angel. This story stars a teen who feels the pressure to be perfect, but knows in her heart she's anything but.

Sixteen-year-old Clara Gardner finds herself whisked off to rural Oregon when a series of visions reveals that she has a purpose... she is a quarter-angel, from her mother's side. It seems that she is meant to rescue a handsome young man from a forest fire. Arriving in town, she soon finds him, a classmate at her new school, named, appropriately enough, Christian. While she's immediately drawn to him, she knows that she's got a lot of work to do if she wants to get to the place she sees in her vision. She needs to improve her flying, and get good enough that she can carry a person to safety, not an easy feat, considering she's only just discovered her ethereal wings, which appear or disappear at need.

Clara's younger brother Jeffrey is none-too-pleased about having his life disrupted, and with burgeoning angelic powers of his own, he finds it impossible to resist using his superhuman strength to nab a spot on the high school wrestling team. Clara finds an unexpected ally in Angela, a half-angel at her school whose drive to discover everything she can about her heritage opens Clara's eyes to some of the intrigues that are going amongst the angelic elite.

Make no mistake, this is a love-triangle book. Clara is pulled between distant, mysterious Christian whom she thinks she's "supposed to be with" and surly, yet loveable, redneck Tucker. I loved how gradually the story revealed various facets of each of the boys, leaving the reader equally torn between Team Christian and Team Tucker.

Most of the angel-lore in this book is original and well-thought out. The Christian god is distant and unknowable, with the angels left to battle amongst themselves for power. Pure angels are male-only, and their offspring by human lovers are almost always female. I hated that the angels wings changed color depending on their allegiance: white for good, black for evil, with many shades of gray in-between. There seemed to be something subtly racist about this. And, I hated that Clara's decision to save lives, which slightly alters the events that she's seen unfolding in her vision is somehow accounted evil, causing her wings to turn ashy gray. There is a real art to writing a book with an ending that is simultaneously satisfying, yet leaves you wanting more. There's a very surprising twist at the end, which I shan't spoil, but it makes you question everything you've read before. And there are so many important questions left unresolved... I can't wait for the sequel, Hallowed, due out sometime in 2012. In the meantime, check out this amazing book trailer.

I borrowed this book from the library.
I read this book for the 2011 Debut Author Challenge.