Her mother encourages Penryn to take every possible self-defence class available-which comes in handy when the world ends. Through Penryn’s eyes, Ee shows us a woman who is quite clearly insane, but who also loves her children dearly, and is even aware of how much of a danger she is to them. Mental health is a subject that is not often touched on in fiction, or if it is, it is treated poorly, reducing the people who suffer from it to objects of fear or amusement. “That even though her love often manifests in ways that a mentally healthy person couldn’t understand-might even declare abusive-that doesn’t diminish the fact that she does care.” Penryn also has to deal with worries about her mother, who suffers from schizophrenia. As much as Penryn doesn’t want to be rescuing the enemy, Raffe becomes her only key to finding her wheelchair-bound young sister, who is stolen by the angels that attacked him. This is how Penryn comes to know Raffe, an angel stripped of his wings, whom she saves from the other angels who want to literally rip him apart. Why? Because God apparently wills it, apparently, but as the story goes along, it becomes evident that there is most likely far more chaos within the chaos than there is any order. Asshole angels who are happily destroying our world.
But Ee doesn’t use them merely as crutches, and, more importantly, she goes well beyond.įirst off, there’s the whole reason for the apocalypse: angels. Not that Angelfall doesn’t include some of these elements, which are reasonably logical progressions for when the world as we know it falls apart. The angry roving gangs, the hopelessness, the reliance on (gun) violence, the utter fail of humanity to pull up its boot straps and survive.
When I started reading it, I was embroiled in a lengthy conversation about apocalyptic fiction and its tired tropes.
But I would also recommend this book because, well, it’s fantastic. Susan Ee is officially on my list of authors who achieve the latter, which means this is a young adult book that I would happily recommend to adult and young adult readers alike. But when an author respectfully balances the negative aspects of young adulthood with the caring, determination, maturity, responsibility, and self-awareness I’ve seen in many teens, then I am more likely to enjoy the reading experience.
In other words, they are bloody annoying. Young adult novels are not usually to my taste, mainly because authors tend to forget the “adult” aspect of the equation and give me self-centred protagonists that are far more whiny, stubborn, and petulant than the young adult I was, or the ones I know. Genre: Young Adult, Supernatural, Post-ApocalypticĪuthor Info: Wendy’s Rating ~ 4 of 5 starsĪngelfall is a refreshing and welcome take on the end of the world.
0 kommentar(er)
