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El Angel Perdido (2011)

by Javier Sierra(Favorite Author)

3.24 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

145164146X (ISBN13: 9781451641462)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Atria Books

review 1: BEWARE OF SPOILERS. I DON'T HIDE OR PROMOTE MY REVIEWS. EXERCISE SOME SELF CONTROL.I usually have no truck with book-jacket blurbs written by other authors who've read the book in question. Generally, the comments are all superlatives (nothing wrong with that) but too generic to mean much.However, this time I enthusiastically support the conclusion of Kirkus Reviews: "Sierra is a more sophisticated writer than Dan Brown [of "Da Vinci Code" fame] and he offers fresh perspective on the Renaissance mind."I love the way author Javier Sierra intermingled Old Testament scriptures with medieval alchemists and modern science and, even, bits from American history. In the last case, Sierra took the true little nugget that President Chester Arthur had created the Office of Navy Intel... moreligence, and stretched that for the purposes of his tale into the fiction that Arthur had thereby also created a secret mission for mankind to communicate with God, or at least access a portal to the divine.The plot was far-fetched, but I loved every bit of it. Reminded me of the verve and derring-do of the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" movies.These characters had some depth, though in my view the the protagonista -- art restorer Julia Alvarez -- should have, given her clairvoyance, been able to tell from the beginning that her husband was hiding so much from her.You can tell a book is good when, after you put it down, you immediately want to check the passing references or bits of foundation. That's what I did with this -- had to look up Chester Arthur, John Dee, even the Old Testament passage referring to sons of angels marrying the daughters of man.If those were the fallen angels, though, it's hard for me, theologically, to think their offspring (some characters in this book) would not also be evil.Also, I ended up being unsure which character represented the "lost angel" in the title. Julia's husband, Martin Faber, ends up NOT lost. If Julia is the lost angel, because she's left behind, she didn't seem sad about it. Nor even truly sad about losing her husband.An entertaining, provocative, factually based fair tale of the first order! It was fascinating to hear the author's explication of how early scientists were not divorced from magic, but still commingled the two disciplines. (i.e., Astronomers were astrologists. Chemists were alchemists., etc.)
review 2: In a lot of ways, this book read like a Steve Berry novel. Unfortunately, there were too many characters to develop most of them properly. Also, while I enjoyed the shifting perspectives, I didn't find the sometimes-narrator Julia particularly compelling. For the most part, by the end she made me think of a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. Additionally, I didn't find the mystical aspects of the story particularly believable, and this is one of those novels that requires you to suspend your disbelief to enjoy it fully. less

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