I listened to Angelology by Danielle Trussoni by Penguin Audio.
Susan Denaker is the voice actor. She does a fine job with the accents and the flow of the novel. It is just a shame.....
From the book jacket:
Sister Evangeline was just a girl when her father entrusted her to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. Now, at twenty-three, her discovery of a 1943 correspondence between the late mother superior of St. Rose Convent and the famous philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller plunges her into a secret history: an ancient conflict between the Society of Angelologists and the descendants of angels and humans, the Nephilim.
For the secrets these letters guard are desperately coveted by the once-powerful Nephilim, who aim to perpetuate war, subvert the good in humanity, and dominate mankind. Generations of angelologists have devoted their lives to stopping them, and their shared mission, which Evangeline has long been destined to join, reaches from her bucolic abbey on the Hudson to the apex of insular wealth in New York, to the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris and the mountains of Bulgaria.
Rich in history, full of mesmerizing characters, and wondrously conceived, Angelology blends biblical lore, the myth of Orpheus and the Miltonic visions of Paradise Lost into a riveting tale of ordinary people engaged in a battle that will determine the fate of the world.
Despite that description, I decided to download the book.
It was rough.
This book seems to lean toward several genres while owing an allegiance to none. I can try to explain it. It is not a true spy thriller; it is kinda supernatural (there are the angels). There is some detective work and lots of mythology, but mostly this is a boring book.
I read a few reviews before completing the first third of the book. The reviews informed me that the novel had been prematurely or accurately compare to a Dan Brown novel. It depended on whom you believed.
Evangeline's father sent her to St. Rose to learn obedience. She became its youngest nun working in the library. One day she opens a letter from a graduate student, Verlaine, requesting copies of correspondence between A. Rockefeller and the Mother Innocenta from their archives . She quickly types a negative response but she is intrigued. She looks for evidence to prove that there is no evidence and finds evidence - the plot begins. From there she and Verlaine unravel the tangled web linking angelologists, nephilim, the nuns at St. Rose and her family history in the search for the fabled lyre.
The author attempts to explain the urgency and motives for this search, all of the reasons seemed confounding to me. For example, why burn down convents in the search for the lyre?
The book does not explain much more than that. Therefore, I was expected to believe that a secret group of scientists have studied the nephilim for ways to stop their destructive influence on human civilization for thousands of years. I guess that is okay because this scene .....
In the last minutes of his life, his lungs burning for air, [spoiler ] was drawn into the horrifying translucency of his killer's eyes. They were pale and ringed with red, intense as a chemical fire stabilized in a frozen atmosphere.
Made me say aloud, WTF? Where does this book take place, on Mars? Pluto?
Was I supposed to understand that metaphor?
Here is another one:
The air was cold and thick in her lungs, soothing as ice on a wound.
Or was that a simile?
There were a lot of awkward metaphors that did not assist me in understanding the text.
The author writes scenes some with tedious detail and others that require more than a simple BA degree to understand. Many passages reminded me of watching slide shows in my Art history course of KSU. In one scene she takes great care to describe the fit and brand name of a character's boxer shorts and his ties. For several minutes, I wondered why she bothered....
In another she lauds the characteristics of Vermont marble and precisely details the renovations of a sculpture garden before directing the character to reveal the location of a treasure.
I must agree with other reviewers. The novel has a movie imagery quality to it as if the author expected the novel to be seen on screen rather than read or heard (as in my case). I admit, this worked for Dan Brown.....
The novel attempts to convince me that it is a thriller about on-going war between the offspring of angels and humans. If there were such a war, I would assume many things:
- A group of angelologists would have infinite resources after a few thousand years. There should exist resources in the area of espionage, subterfuge, anti-angel weaponry, cryptography, and defensive tactics.
- Maybe that is the North American in me raised on the spy gadgetry of James Bond, the quests of LOTR, detective work of Sherlock Holmes and the religious overtones of C. S. Lewis (did you see the joke I made there?) I have high expectations for plot devices. I cannot comprehend how a long-standing organization would lack serious fortification. I felt that at any time, a nephilium could just walk right into the room.
- If a family of murderous angel spawn had me under constant surveillance, I would not drive a car with the license plate "Angel1." Would you?
- Understanding that angelologists have generations of research on angelic bodies, I would be damn sure to own a weapon or tool that would dissuade them from bothering me.
- I would find the nephilim strategy of waiting until an angelologist gathered enough research to make him/her an expert a particular field of angelic studies in order to torture, murder and steal the body of knowledge unacceptable. These travesties should be anomalies not commonplace.
- Finally, I should be able to recognize friend or foe. Angelologists should have a secret handshake, brand, locket, phrase, or something by which to identify the brothers and the sisters for the cause. Being raised in the culture, Evangeline should have been able to recognize the relationship of her convent to her life with her parents who were angelologists.
The book divides into three parts or spheres. The first sphere sets the plot of the book in New York 1999. Then without much warning, the reader is sent back in time to 1943 into pre-occupied and later occupied France. This second sphere provides some of the backstory. Other than that, it was pointless. The final sphere takes us back to 1999 with only one day having past. The third sphere attempts to bring everything together into a final wrestling match with the nephilim. The books conclusion was well formulated. Sadly, it opened the door for a sequel.
The names of the characters made me giggle. Dr. Seraphina. Dr. Raphael. Percival Grigori. Gabriella. Angela. Celestine. Did the author think that readers are children? I got it, it is a movie, er book, about angels. Most of the book read like a lecture. As a first book in a series, I can permit some lecturing on the part of the author. Unfortunately, the amount of lecturing on the 17 tracks were insanity.
If you are wondering, why did I bother to finish this book. It is because I was waiting for someone to get kissed by an angel.
C-
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