[ARC Review] A Terrible Fall of Angels by Laurell K. Hamilton

Release date: 8/17/2021
Format: eARC
eARC provided by: Berkley Publishing and Netgalley

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Taking her readers into a world full of angels, demons, and magic, bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton introduces a fantastic new series with A Terrible Fall of Angels.

Disillusioned with the life he was living, Angel Speaker Zaniel Havelock left the College of Angels, giving up all he knew and the friends he had. One thing he didn’t give up, though, was his ability to communicate with the angels. Using his talents to serve on the paranormal unit of the police force, Zaniel works beside those of varying faiths and psychic skills in order to keep the peace between Heaven and Hell. But when demons start doing things they shouldn’t be able to do, old friends come back into his life, and age-old secrets are revealed, Zaniel will put his faith to the test and find new inner strength.

I’ve been an avid fan of Hamilton’s Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series for ages, so I was very excited to see a new series featuring a new area of paranormal fantasy. I found A Terrible Fall of Angels very reminiscent of the early Anita Blake novels: heavily on world building and character introduction with plenty of room to fill out both of those aspects in later books. The personal relationships in this book are mostly professional and platonic; the sexy scenes that the Anita Blake novels have become known for are completely missing from Zaniel Havelock’s introduction.

I think Hamilton does a great job at creating these fictional, magical elements within the real world. I did have many questions early on about these unknown fictional elements - background information, characters, abilities - and Hamilton did eventually resolve many of these unknowns. There were definitely characters and hints of Zaniel’s history that were left unexplained, setting up for future character development in the next books. There were a couple of elements of Zaniel’s personality that I didn’t care for, like his inability to call his friend by his friend’s preferred name, but I’m hoping to see Zaniel grow throughout the series and outgrow his smaller worldview.

I loved the interweaving of faiths in A Terrible Fall of Angels. Having followers of God working alongside practicing Wiccans, and not only working with them but being their best self while making each other stronger, was a great message woven throughout the plot. Readers have seen the mixing of faiths to a character’s advantage before in Anita Blake, but A Terrible Fall of Angels takes it to a whole new level.

This was a fantastic launch to a new series from Laurell K. Hamilton. I love the paranormal elements Hamilton chose to use and I am excited to see if Hamilton takes Zaniel down the same sort of path that Anita had to travel or if his story will be so much cleaner giving his closeness to the angels. Zaniel has a lot of fleshing out to go through, and I can’t wait to see what the next step will be on his journey.