Honestly, if I could give it 3.5 stars, I would. Since I can't, I'm rounding up, as a gesture towards giving the author the benefit of the doubt, expecting that the next book will be better.

Angelology is a mixed bag. Personally, I find angel lore, and other mythologies, fascinating, and I thoroughly enjoyed the mix of Judeo-Christian and Greek myth, Talmudic scholarship and discussion of the Book of Enoch (a personal favorite). The subject of the Nephilim has intrigued me since I first read Made More...

Over the years, I've received student papers so awful, I'm tempted to just write, "Nice font choice" and move on. For Trussoni's sad book, my comment is "Nice cover." Fetching, isn't it?

However, what a surprise.

Not one of my GR friends has any mention of this book - not a review, not a to-be-read, and definitely not a wishlist pick.

Gee. I wonder why.

Several reasons come to mind. Overall, the book is a half-witted concoction clearly written in the hopes that it would become a movie, or rather t More...

This one kept losing stars as it went. The broad concept was really interesting, excerpting one of those weird bits of the bible and making it the basis for an otherworldly, fantastical story. But the characters are flat and the writing is dull -- most of the first half of the book is scenes of people doing research, and we get to read right along with them as they examine ancient historical texts and first-hand accounts of angelic encounters. This is about as exciting as reading a musty old his More...

"Angelology" is not a Biblical-based novel, it is an adventure in an imaginary world. It combines angels and ancient myths and interweaves them into a contemporary setting.

This novel is a struggle between good and evil, between Nephilim (angels of the earth) and Human beings. It is a story of magic, and struggle, and hope. We watch as Evangeline, who grew up in a convent, encounters a world and a life she never knew existed. We are introduced to that world with her, and find ourselves suspendin More...

When you read as much as I do, it is rare to come across a totally unique story. Angelology is that rare gem.

This book has almost every element a great book should offer: multi-faceted, fascinating characters, an exciting, complex, layered plot, and really excellent writing. The story is a tapestry of interwoven storylines, that includes history, religion, philosophy, art, puzzles, and scavenger hunts.

The story revolves around Sister Evangeline, a young nun, who has been part of the Franciscan S More...

When my friend Deb told me she was reading a book called Angelology, and that I had to read it, too, I was skeptical. I mean, it sounded like some funky new age treatise, and secretly, I was worried about what chemicals might be misfiring in her brain. Then she began to describe the plot, and even before she gave me the book, I was hooked.

Imagine a world where angels walk beside us, not as mystical guardians but as immortal (or as near to it as makes little difference) preter-natural beings with More...

I am so glad I found this on audiobook at the library. It turned out to be a very good medium for this story. I have to say that for a slow starter, I really got drawn into this book, and when it ended, I had separation anxiety!

Two things kept me from giving this a five star rating:

1. The slow, meandering start. I was initially thinking, uh-oh, this might turn out to be a real snoozer. Boy was I wrong!
2. The ending was a cliffie that really got my blood pressure up! I didn't like the way this no More...

Ok, I got to page 100 last night before I gave up. I was reading it during the commercials during Glee, with Beck's "Loser" stuck in my head thanks to the episode, and I just gave up. I can't believe the author could take so little happening and stretch it out to 100 pages of tiny print. I don't need every thought that goes through the character's mind. There is so much telling in this book, so many infodumps. The dialogue was in paragraphs. This could've been so good, too. Ugh.

All 452 pages of it. Yup.

I had issues with this book from the first page. The writing is...not good. I know Trussoni went to Iowa (which is usually a yardstick of some kind) and she wrote an acclaimed memoir before this, and this very book is a NY Times Notable Book of 2010. So you'd think she'd write a good sentence. But no. The book is full to bursting with things like:

"Verlaine stared at her, flabbergasted at what this otherwise rational woman had just said."

and:

"The chaos of people sloggin More...

Her imagination, concepts and overall gratuitous and in-depth descriptions of the world she has created as well as it's history and the origins of the Angels, Nephilim and Angelologists (could have learned a bit more about them though) compensate for Trussoni's flat, unimaginative and completely unrelatable characters.
All the characters are oddly bloodless with little to no fleshing out, acting as plot devices and space-fillers more than anything else and our "heroine" or at least one of our pr More...

Fabulously trashy and yet strangely compelling.

I had truly enjoyed Trussoni's debut, a memoir about growing up the daughter of a war-damaged father, entitled FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH. Her voice was alternately plaintive and brutally honest, even when her story was at its most feverishly dramatic.

By contrast, this story is huge, ambitious, and wildly over-written. If you can get past her ornate sentences and endless exposition, the story of scientists and theologians who hunt the Nephilim is re More...

I wanted this to be good. It started out so promisingly, taking the archetype of "angel" back to its rather ghastly, bloody roots--upending all the new-age, vision-having, aura-sensing "angel" memes that have been floating around--and re-imagining the history of the "fall" of the Nephilim in a really interesting and scholarly way. and then...not. the novel tried to tell the story of Evangeline Caccitore, a young nun whose path crosses that of the art history student Verlaine, whose mysterious em More...

no ja teda na anjelov nie som. podľa mňa existujú 2 základné skupiny ľudí vo vzťahu k anjelom.1. sú tí, ktorí v nich neveria a tá druhá sú prekvapivo tí, ktorí v nich veria. Každá z týchto skupín sa ešte delí na menšie podskupiny. napr. tí, ktorí v anjelov síce neveria, ale dokážu o akceptovať diskusiu na túto tému, prípadne podskupina ľudí, ktorí v anjelov veria, ale tak troška s rezervou.
Ja som asi v tej 1. hlavnej skupine. Knihy o anjeloch bežne nečítam, nemám doma rôzne karty anjelov (len j More...

I'd actually give this 4 1/2 stars. I really enjoyed this one & it kept my interest throughout. I am surprised this got such low ratings because it was really quite good! I guess everyone has different opinions. There are a few books out there that some people gave high ratings to that I didn't care for at all. A few examples are The Gunslinger, Sharp Objects, The Pagan Stone, & The Time Traveler's Wife. In my opinion, these were terrible! Okay, back to Angelology. I have had this book o More...

Angelology by Danielle Trussoni is set in the last weeks of the Twentieth century and in the years up to and during World War Two. A war between the angels and the nephilim is brewing and humanity will be screwed in the process. In the tradition of the religious horror of the 1960s and 1970s, the heros here are religious scholars (angelologists) and nuns. In it's set up, it's most like The Sentinel by Jeffrey Konvitz — except it's about three times as long.

A mysterious and uninvited visitor to a More...

I gave this two stars because that indicates "it was okay". I have mixed feelings about it. The writer is an "outside-the-box" thinker and has a brilliant vocabulary. She created an entire society in this book, fascinating journals and interesting ancient religious artifacts in the story. The story takes place over two days, with a side story of a past event taking up a good chunk of the book. The side story was interesting in and of itself and would have made a good book. The book depticts a wo More...

This book did not live up to the hype. It's Dan Brown with a slightly better editor. The book is split into three sections. The first section was ok. The author did a good job of introducing the families and the specific players. The second section set up the action and gave a history of what the characters were searching for. There were parts of this section that were interesting, specifically the trip to Bulgaria. The third section, was the most similar to a Dan Brown book. It was rushed: new More...

A very well-written, and researched, novel about a centuries old battle between angelologists (scientists, clergy and layman who study angels) and the Nephilim (offspring of human women and angels that "fell" in order to mate with them). Nephilim are found in the Christian Bible as early as Genesis (there are many notations in the novel where such passages can be found) although many theologists in the modern day do not believe in the existence of the Nephilim. It is even believed by some that t More...

Per correttezza devo precisare che il libro non rientra nei miei interessi. Essendo una edizione fuori commercio fornita a suo tempo dalla casa editrice (senza correzioni definitive) potrebbe essere appena diversa da quella distribuita.
Detto questo, il libro si legge agevolmente, non stanca e racconta i "dietro le quinte" dell'umanit��. Si scopre cos�� che la stessa si muove su un teatrino in cui i veri protagonisti occulti sono le gens angeliche (esseri assolutamente fisici). In particolare una More...

Che fetecchia! Mi sono sentita davvero presa in giro: forse l'autrice pensava ad un pubblico di infanti? In parte mi sono anche sentita in imbarazzo per l'autrice, in alcuni punti leggevo coprendomi gli occhi e sbirciando tra le dita.. pensavo 'no, ti prego, ti prego no!!!'.
Se vi dicessi che i protagonisti hanno tutti nomi come Angela, serafina, evangelina, Gabriella e che girano in "incognito" con un macchinone targato ANGEL.. Non vi sentireste presi in giro anche voi?
Ha la pretesa di essere u More...

I got the book from a friend that recommended it. She talked highly about it and since we have similar taste I said "what the heck" so I started reading it. It was... unbelievably boring.

I really was surprized by that book, but not in a good way. How can you have a "angels on earth" or "angels living among us" theme and you fail to deliver? I mean come ON!!! That's impossible for even non believers.

The book failed to impress me because of the slow or no action.
To me it was like reading a histo More...

Angelology begins in Milton, NY at St. Rose Convent. Sister Evangeline is 23; she has been living there since she was 12, and took her vows at age 18. She works in the library, handling the correspondence. Her days have been fairly routine until now, but on the day the book opens, December 23, 1999, she receives a letter from a V.A. Verlaine, inquiring about a possible connection between a prior abbess of the convent and Abigail Aldrich Rockefeller, the famous (real-life) philanthropist of the a More...

My amazon shopping cart that is "saved for later" is pretty much my personal repository of books that I may one day read. Last Friday I trolled through the cart looking for the ideal book to scratch a wintery malaise of restlessness, laziness, and a desire to be entertained. Enter Angelology, one of the few recent thrillers to be written up in the NYT (despite its lurid cover) - and scratch my itch it did. Oh baby.

The premise of the book is fairly simple - god is real, angels are real, original More...

ne of my favorite things, as a both a reader and aspiring writer, is to come across someone who tweaks my theology, my need for order, and turns them both arse -end - to - tea - kettle. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, you can bet your next latte, whoever the author is that managed to do it, will earn a place forever on the shelves of books I will read over and over again.

The folded spine of "Angelology" now rests second shelf, third from the left.

*****

Danielle Trussoni, author of Fall More...

"Angelology" is not a Biblical-based novel, it is an adventure in an imaginary world. It combines angels and ancient myths and interweaves them into a contemporary setting.

This novel is a struggle between good and evil, between Nephilim (angels of the earth) and Human beings. It is a story of magic, and struggle, and hope. We watch as Evangeline, who grew up in a convent, encounters a world and a life she never knew existed. We are introduced to that world with her, and find ourselves suspendin More...

This book is different then most books I have chosen to read, and at first glimpse seems like a book that I would take extreme interest in. The first page had me captivated in the idea of the findings of a dead angel. However, as the pages turned it became increasingly difficult to capture the complexity of the story. MY first descriptions of the book were poorly put together and lacking any real suspense. I just really hoped they wouldn't make this book into a movie. It was hard for me to maint More...

Angelology is Danielle Trussoni’s fiction debut, and to be quite frank, it shows. This contemporary thriller is built around the premise that angels exist (or have existed), and have mingled with us humans. In doing this, they’ve created a human-angel offspring called the Nephilim, who are basically looking to rule the human world through sneaky plotting and conspiracies. A secret society of Angelologists are the only ones aware of this, and desperately try to prevent the dangerous Nephilim from More...

As I read this book I kept hoping for more. More depth in character, more background, more action, more romance, more something. I felt that I was reading an outline and while the outline had some fantastic ideas and a hinted at larger back story the hints were never fulfilled.
I read this book and kept hoping for something to happen. Half way through it I was unimpressed and would have abandon it had it not been the only book I had with me on an eight hour bus trip. Even the climax where we fina More...