This is a review of Angelfall, a self-published YA paranormal romance (I guess) by Susan Ee. It's also going to be an exploration of how Ee has managed to completely outclass most of the traditionally-published authors writing in her genre simply by expending the tiniest bit of effort when it comes to characterisation, worldbuilding and plot. Which isn't to say the book is any good (I gave it two stars, after all), just that it's a hell of a lot better than most of its peers.

Take that as you will.

The Breakdown, because I'm too lazy to string this together into a proper review.

Plot
Angels have destroyed civilization as we know it. Penryn, our protagonist, managed to survive the six weeks since the initial attack despite being burdened (as she sees it) with the responsibilities of looking after her wheelchair-using sister and her schizophrenic mother. She contends with roaming gangs of humans, none of whom we ever see, the threat of angel attacks, of which we see exactly one, and the usual post-apocalyptic horrors of starvation, disease and natural disaster.

It's boring.

I mean, stuff happens, and it happens at the kind of pace that prompts hack reviewers to bust out phrases like 'high octane' or 'will keep you on the edge of your seat', but I never really cared about any of it. I think the problem is that Penryn's goal of finding her kidnapped sister almost looms too large over the rest of the plot. Of course Penryn is going to make it to the Aerie, home of the angels, which means Raffe, her reluctant angel guide, is going to survive any dangers that befall them and isn't going to abandon her and obviously they're not going to hang around with the ragtag group of human resistance fighters rather than push ahead to San Francisco. The book's stubborn focus on limp action scenes means that I never found myself caring about any of the misadventures that befall Penryn and Raffe on the way to their ultimate goal, particularly when most of those misadventures involve Penryn punching things.

Apart from a few twists near the end (and more on those later, so consider yourself spoiler-warned), Angelfall's plot plays out exactly the way you'd expect it to.

Why Susan Ee still does it better: Because, as I mentioned not two paragraphs ago, stuff actually happens. There is no endless faffing about with scenes of everyday monotony. There's no coy 'Could Hotty McBeefcake really be...a vampire?!?!', when he's obviously a bloody vampire because it says he's a vampire on the back cover and, oh yes, the book is called The Vampire Chronicles: BLOOD DESIRE. I might not have enjoyed the plot of Angelfall all that much, but at least it had one, which is more than I can say of certain other books.

Worldbuilding
Hoo boy. This one's going to be rough.

SO, angels have descended from on high and are wreaking havoc on the human world. The Archangel Gabriel has been gunned down amid the ruins of Jerusalem, and it seems that nobody is being spared the angel's wrath.

Quiz time: what major human institution would this have a profound effect upon? You may have heard of it, possibly on the news? Most people consider it kind of a big deal?

That's right, religion! And what topic is almost never brought up throughout most of Angelfall? Religion!

The number of missed opportunities here is mind-boggling. How are members of the Abrahamic religions reacting to what could only be interpreted as unambiguous evidence that their faith was the right one all along? More importantly, how are people who aren't members of the Abrahamic religions taking it? What happened when angels descended on societies that previously viewed them only as mythological beings or pop-culture characters? Are the faithful coming up with excuses as to why the angels are killing indiscriminately rather than only targeting evil people? Or is there a rising tide of dystheism, the belief that God is real (because angels) but evil (because they're killing everyone)?

Hell if I know. The book doesn't seem to care about any of this. The angels are treated almost as a natural disaster or an invasion from an aggressive human force; yes, people rage against them and decide to fight back and all the rest of it, but the fact that these are angels we're talking about barely even registers for them. The angels' background is only brought up towards the end of the novel, when we learn that they're more or less similar to the figures in the Bible*. There's a heaven, apparently, and a Hell ('the Pit'), and demons, but then they also have multi-coloured wings (including one with a tiger-stripe pattern) and eat human food and have to have their wings surgically re-attached if they're cut off and build nightclubs where everyone dresses up in zoot suits.

No, really. Zoot suits. Yeah, I don't know either.

*(Actually, Biblical angels come in a huge variety of weird and wonderful forms, depending on which arbitrary Church interpretation you decide to go with. The Cherubim, for example, have four heads, only one of which is human, while the Orphanim are many-eyed wheels. The most powerful of the angels are said to shine with such glory that not even other angels can bear to look at them. By comparison, the winged male models of books like Angelfall are pretty pedestrian.)

Why Susan Ee still does it better: See above. Yes, the worlbuilding in Angelfall might be pretty terrible in places, but at least it has a world to...er, build, as opposed to some flimsy nonsense about supernatural lovers destined to find each other throughout history and if they ever bump uglies the world will end and oh look I've slipped into a boredom-induced coma.

Characters, or the Whedonite Curses of Kickass and Witty
So, Joss Whedon. He came along and made some shows that everybody loves, in the process introducing the internet to the idea that female characters must be both 'witty' and 'kickass'. (Also waif-like and, if at all possible, completely off their rockers, but that's another issue.) Unfortunately, most people can't write witty dialogue to save their lives...and that includes Joss Whedon, ironically enough.

In Angelfall, the Curse manifests itself most potently in the character of Raffe, who is easily the worst thing about the novel. Because Wittiness Is King, Ee has made sure to load his dialogue with things like this:

"I never kid about my warrior demigod status."

"“Leaking sacks of mutated maggots?" He raises his perfectly arched eyebrow as though I'd just failed my verbal insult exam.

"That's a pretty intimate demand in the angel world. It usually takes dinner, some wine, and sparkling conversation for me to give up my feet."

And, worst of all:

"My friends call me Wrath," says Raffe. "My enemies call me Please Have Mercy. What's your name, soldier boy?"

No, really, he actually says that, and he says it to someone who doesn't realise he's an angel. Quiz time: if someone said this around you, would you 1) Roll your eyes harder than they've ever been rolled before 2) Make some excuse and leave the room in fear of being overwhelmed by dangerous levels of jackass-fumes 3) Start slapping Raffe around in hopes of knocking the stupid out of him? Whatever you just chose, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't just ignore it as though this was a perfectly ordinary thing to say.

(I mean, 'My friends call me Wrath'? Blegh.)

Raffe is supposed to be this super-badass angel warrior, but to me, he read like a teenage boy with a severely overinflated ego. Thanks, Joss Whedon!

Penryn isn't nearly as bad, but she still seems to consider being 'witty' a virtue above all others. She actually worries about whether her comebacks to Raffe's idiocy are witty enough (spoiler: they aren't), usually in situations where this would be the absolute last thing on any sane person's mind.

On the kickass side of things...eh, Angelfall is pretty standard here. Raffe has a few fight scenes, but Penryn is the one doing most of the nose-breaking and groin-punching. It gets nice and visceral, too, which is a welcome change from reading about protagonists whose authors seem to be afraid of visiting any harm whatsoever upon their special snowflake heads.

But before we leave character-land, I have to comment on the book's bizarre and pervasive misogyny. Throughout the course of the novel, Penryn and Raffe end up crossing paths with three minor female characters: one a member of the burgeoning resistance movement, one some random woman in the zoot-suit angel nightclub, and one a scientist or surgeon or something. Every one of them paws Raffe incessantly, glares at Penryn, and generally acts like a man-stealing harpy stereotype. The Resistance-movement girl's physical attractiveness is lingered upon in a way that makes it seem like a moral failing; how dare she have blonde hair and beautiful legs! It's like Ee decided to import the whole cheerleader-hating thing from YA novels with high school settings.

(Speaking of which, why the hell does everyone hate cheerleaders so much? I never went to an American high school, but from what I've read about them, you'd think they were all populated by platinum-blonde cheerleader succubi who feed on virgin testicles.)

Why Susan Eee still does it better: Raffe is never abusive or creepy. I wish that didn't count for so much, but it does.

I won't do a breakdown of the writing, which is pretty standard fare. (Well, apart from the first 10 chapters or so, which are reeeeally rocky. Penryn runs around with her mother and sister for a good four chapters, and none of them say a single word to each other. It's bizarre.) It gets better in the second half, but there's still way too much 'I do this, and then this, and then I do this' for my liking.

Suffice to say, Angelfall didn't appeal to me. But it might appeal to you! And for only 99c, it's undeniably good value for money. Ee should be applauded for managing to meet or even surpass the standards of her genre without the aid of a major publishing house behind her. What gets me about Angelfall, though, is the sense of wasted potential. This could have been really interesting - groundbreaking, even, if Ee had decided to really commit to the inherent complexity of her premise. I almost wish it had been written ten years ago, before the PNR craze took off. Instead of something fresh and different, though, we get supernatural Bad-Boy #5409 and lots of 'witty' dialogue.

Dammit, Joss Whedon. You've got a lot to answer for.

(UPDATE: My good friend Phoebe North just told me that this review came across almost like an endorsement of the book, which...uh, wasn't really my intention. To get a good idea of my more visceral reactions to it (yes, that's a nice way of putting it), scroll down and look at the many status updates I made while reading it.)