Angel-Seeker (Samaria, Book 5)

published	February 22nd 2005 by Ace
binding	Paperback
isbn	0441012604 (isbn13: 9780441012602)
ebook
pages	512
description	The award-winning author returns to Samaria in this richly romantic tale that begins where Archangel left off. In that time, the women who craved the ...more [close] The award-winning author returns to Samaria in this richly romantic tale that begins where Archangel left off. In that time, the women who craved the attention of angels were known as angel-seekers, a term used with awe by some--and scorn by others. [close]
date added	02-18-07 edit book

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Shannon rated it:

07/29/08

bookshelves: 2007, fantasy

Read in September, 2007

This novel was written much later but follows-on about 2 years after the events of Archangel. The angels and people of Samaria are picking up the pieces after the god destroyed Mount Galo when the Gloria was not sung and Gabriel destroyed Windy Point where Raphael had ruled from. A new hold for the southern province of Jordana must be built to take its place. Gabriel appoints his half-brother Nathan to the post and a new city rises at Cedar Hills.

Where there are angels there are alway...more This novel was written much later but follows-on about 2 years after the events of Archangel. The angels and people of Samaria are picking up the pieces after the god destroyed Mount Galo when the Gloria was not sung and Gabriel destroyed Windy Point where Raphael had ruled from. A new hold for the southern province of Jordana must be built to take its place. Gabriel appoints his half-brother Nathan to the post and a new city rises at Cedar Hills.

Where there are angels there are always angel-seekers, mostly women who's ambition is to give birth to an angel baby and thus forever secure a place in the hold. Angel babies are rare, and most mortal babies produced from these unions are abandoned. Giving birth to one can kill a woman, mortal or angel.

Elizabeth's wealthy parents are dead and she is forced to work in the kitchen at her cousin's farm. Her dream is to be someone of consequence again, so it's only a matter of time before she gets up the courage to leave the farm and go to Cedar Hills to seduce an angel. Which is easily enough done, since the angels are quite promiscuous and, having lost fifty or more angels because of Raphael, they have been encouraged to repopulate.

The angel Obadiah, a friend of Rachel and Gabriel, has also relocated to Cedar Hills. Gabriel wants Obadiah to use his charm with the new leader of the Jansai, the incredibly patriarchal travelling merchants and angel-haters, angry now that the enslavement of the Edori has been outlawed. On his way home from his first meeting with Urial, he is struck by a firey missile and crashes into the desert. He manages to drag himself to the oasis, where he is later found by a young Jansai woman, Rebekah, sent to fetch water. She tends for him until he is well enough to fly on. He gives her one of his bracelets as a gift; she lets him see her face.

Angel-Seeker follows Elizabeth as she learns to be a healer and discovers how misguided she has been, and Obadiah and Rebekah as they embark on an illicit affair that has disastrous repercussions. Jansai women are like the Taliban's women, completely covered up and kept inside windowless rooms where they sew and gossip and treat each other badly. My heart was in my mouth watching Rebekah disguise herself as a boy and slip out of the house for secret meetings with Obadiah. The ominous atmosphere to the Jansai city of Breven did not help.

I especially liked Shinn's treatment of the Jansai and the Jansia women in particular. When escape is offered to Rebekah she does not snatch at it; she loves her family, her home, her life is all that she knows and even her approachng wedding is something she accepts as her duty. It is only when she falls pregnant that she truly wakes. But even though we are on the side of the angels in despising the Jansai, especially the men who are really horrible and basically mysoginistic, their beliefs are not dismissed lightly. Again Shinn does not moralise or lecture. She lets her characters feel their way through the minefield without judging them, making them seem very real and the hand of the author virtually invisible, like I'm there on Samaria with them.

I've read a few fantasy books that feature winged people, but the matter-of-fact way they are dealt with here makes them so much more plausible. The awe is there, but also the acceptance. And, the people of Samaria, all of them, including the angels, just seem so innocent and naive, while we are already thinking outside the land to what is really going on, and what the god really is....less

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Angel-Seeker (Samaria, Book 5)

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