Review: “Angelology” by Danielle Trussoni

ANGELOLOGY by DANIELLE TRUSSONI

Buy It Now: via Amazon

Description: Sister Evangeline was just a girl when her father entrusted her to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. Now, at twenty-three, her discovery of a 1943 letter from the famous philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller to the late mother superior of Saint Rose Convent plunges Evangeline into a secret history that stretches back a thousand years: an ancient conflict between the Society of Angelologists and the monstrously beautiful descendants of angels and humans, the Nephilim.

For the secrets these letters guard are desperately coveted by the once-powerful Nephilim, who aim to perpetuate war, subvert the good in humanity, and dominate mankind. Generations of angelologists have devoted their lives to stopping them, and their shared mission, which Evangeline has long been destined to join, reaches from her bucolic abbey on the Hudson to the apex of insular wealth in New York, to the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris and the mountains of Bulgaria.

This review is based on copy I bought myself.

LamoreVincera’s Review:

A little while ago, I read excerpts from a novel by Danielle Trussoni called Angelology on NPR.com. The concept was very interesting; it dealt with a Nephilim (human-angel hybrid) who had come down with a mysterious affliction. His wings, once glorious, had all but died away, and all the doctors in the world could not tell him why.

Before I get to the major problem in this novel, I need to give you a little background. Ever heard the word “nephilim”? They are found within the pages of the Torah. The story goes that a certain type of angel, right before Noah’s ark, went down and found human women beautiful. They had children with these women, and the half-angel, half-human children grew to become “the heroes of old, men of renown”.

Now comes the main dissonance with the overarching plot. Based on the excerpt and the fact that the angels’ only crime was that they married human women, you would assume that this novel’s focus would be on curing the Nephilim of the disease they’ve been so cruelly struck down with. Their ancestors’ only crime was disobeying Dad once, and it was for love, right?

When I discovered that they are the villains of this piece, I had a definite “what the hell?” moment. Ms.Trussoni introduces the Nephilim as dying, sickly angels, and makes you feel for them. She then spends the rest of the novel trying to convince you that these are the worst of the worst, and that the human resistance (“angelologists”, an awkward word that I didn’t initially believe was real) are the ones who need to win.

The central plot involves the race between the Nephilim and the angelologists to find the archangel Gabriel’s lyre. When the original fallen angels, the ones who married humans and started the hybrid race were discovered, God locked them up inside a mountain range. Gabriel felt pity and left his lyre there to soothe them with its music. The angelologists are after the lyre to destroy it; they believe that it has healing and destructive powers, and that it’s too dangerous. These destructive powers aren’t really listed out. The reader is simply expected to take that at face value.

The Nephilim are after the lyre because they believe it can heal them. Do they go about it in very violent, terrible ways? Yes, but the whole time, you’re wondering why the author chose this path. Do I believe that a human/angel hybrid is going to be a perfect paragon of goodness? No; that would be boring. But I could never – especially when they are introduced as hurt creatures, something to pity – really buy in to what Ms. Trussoni is selling here, that these angels are evil. Why she couldn’t have ended the book with the lyre being used for the good of both groups I will never understand, and it all comes down to this: I could never accept her “bad guys” as truly bad.

I don’t have a problem with the Big Bad treading a fine line; often, reminding the audience of a villain’s humanity can make the contrast between that humanity and their actions that much greater. In this case, though, the villain is not only not human, but for many, a paragon of goodness. Making a grand villain out of an angel is not impossible, but it is hard; and when you start your novel out by making the angels sympathetic, you’ve killed your chances before you set out.

Bottom line? This book is still in hardcover, which means it’ll set you back a pretty penny. Save your money. As for me, I’ll be over here, re-reading the bits of Harry Potter with Dolores Umbridge in it. Now there’s a villain – the author lets you know exactly where she stands.