book review: strange angels

second book of the year! i have chosen another young adult fantasy novel which forms the first of a 5-book series. this book made me ask so many questions.

as usual, see under the cut at your own discretion!

book: strange angels
author: lili st. crow / lilith saintcrow
genre(s): fantasy, romance, horror
year published: 2009

In Strange Angels, Dru Anderson has what her grandmother called “the touch.” (Comes in handy when you’re traveling from town to town with your dad, hunting ghosts, suckers, wulfen, and the occasional zombie.) Then her dad turns up dead—but still walking—and Dru knows she’s next. Even worse, she’s got two guys hungry for her affections, and they’re not about to let the fiercely independent Dru go it alone. Will Dru discover just how special she really is before coming face-to-fang with whatever—or whoever— is hunting her?

one of my thoughts reading this book was “gee, it’s really detailed”. but sometimes the details were unnecessary. i find that typically when people list examples in their writing, they never exceed 3 items, but here, there was a paragraph with maybe double that number of things that were synonymous for a certain feeling the protagonist was feeling. might be something overly technical but i felt these things didn’t really lend themselves to improving the imagery, and were often obscure to the point where i completely lost the bigger picture. the biggest part that really reduced my enjoyment was that missing imagery. it made me feel as though i was being left behind, like the main characters were in on a secret. then, when the secret was revealed maybe 5-10 pages later, the moment would have passed and the revelation was just… underwhelming… which is a shame because the author absolutely had the ability to paint a vivid image in my head, what with her descriptive vocabulary, just there were so many things missing and i was so lost.

on the other side of that, sometimes i felt that the choice of words wasn’t quite right. i didn’t feel that it was necessary to input some obscure thesaurus alternative for simple words like “eyelid” or “cool”. i found that really awkward and hard to read. and whatever jokes the characters had between them? when the narrator claimed she understood the subtle cues that the male support had shot her way? they really were inside jokes because i had no idea what was going on.

and the title takes the cake. “strange angels” was a really interesting title!! too bad it wasn’t relevant…

dru was really mysterious. even though strange angels was written in first person, i felt so distant to her. like an outsider! i felt like she was keeping secrets from me, and it left me feeling neglected and confused. i didn’t know her enough to even  begin trying to relate to her. she didn’t really seem to have a very distinct personality either. nothing really stood out. i hope that in the following books, she develops and becomes a strong character with value from things other than the blood that ruins through her veins.

i couldn’t really find myself really liking graves nor christophe either. it was great graves was around for dru, good that she had a companion. his little “first one’s free” tagline made me smile. christophe was also very mysterious. his character was good to help fill in some details.

a discrepancy i noticed was that in the synopsis/blurb, it’s said that “she’s got two guys hungry for her affections, and they’re not about to let the fiercely independent Dru go it alone” yet neither of them really appear to be tripping over themselves to win her over, the romance is there if you squint really, really hard, and dru is not particularly adamant on leaving by herself – in fact, she insists that graves be along for the journey ahead and even seems like she can’t bear the idea of leaving him behind. somewhat misleading!

i liked the concept of the normal world versus the Real World. the fact that there was another realm of beings! there has clearly been some thought into dynamics within this paranormal world and it will be good to see it be further hashed out, which i’m sure it is in the following books!

“Things can go very, very wrong. They go wrong all the time in the normal world, and the Real World just means they go wrong with teeth and claws, quicker than your average bear.” – Strange Angels

this story moved so slowly and it took a while to get to the first significant event in the story. it progressed from there at a similar speed too. perhaps it’s the faith i have in “what happens later” in the series that makes me not as against a slow build, but when the pace is so slow that by the end of book 1, it’s not looking too exciting, it becomes pretty tedious and i feel deterred from reading onwards!

i did really enjoy the first fight scene though! it was exciting, i knew what was happening, i experience it as if i were the protagonist myself! i saw what she saw. heard what she heard. smelled what she smelled. unfortunately, i felt that it spiraled downhill from here. by the time we reached the climax, certain things were flying from here and there and details were missing and suddenly christophe was there and the pieces were just not fitting together.

overall, this book raised so many questions for me. moreover, having just skimmed some of the top comments on goodreads, it seems that many of these questions aren’t answered even upon the close of the series. this is something that bothers me a lot!

strange angels also had potential to explore in more detail themes like family and identity which really could have driven depth into the characters and story. i felt that it unfortunately really missed the mark! i wasn’t really feeling the characters but i do hope there are improvements and further developments in the subsequent books and that a key theme surfaces, rather than just having the book as a mishmash of crazy events. adventure is great but in my experiences, the underlying messages let help connect and help the readers relate, which is in my opinion one of the most important things in any story!

“When you’re wrecked, that’s the only thing to do, right? Hold on to whatever you can.

Hold on hard.” – Strange Angels

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