Beads of water cling to him like in a dream. The combined effect of the soft light behind him from the bathroom and steam curling around his muscles gives the impression of a mythological water god visiting our world.
This is not a mythological water god, rather it is Raffe, an agnostic angel created by Susan Ee in her post-apocalyptic self-published novel, Angelfall.
Penryn or Pen, whose world has turned into a nightmare of gangs of roaming scoundrels, witnesses the brutality of celestial beings de-winging the handsome angel Raffe who becomes her ally in working to regain the world she once knew. She wraps his wings in a bundle to protect them from more damage. They’re carried with him as he navigates with Pen this frightening new world.
Without wings, Raffe is vulnerable. With them he is nearly invincible. Pen’s theory is that they can be reattached like a human’s thumb. Together they search for an angel-surgeon to perform the feat.
Angelfall kept my interest with its fast-paced action and unusual characters.
Raffe (the wingless agnostic angel) plays a central role in the story. Angels have swept the earth creating an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it shattered existence. Food, shelter and safety are only memories. Broken lives along with literal debris from a once a thriving world litter the pages like dominoes scattered across a playroom floor.
Pen, from whose eyes and mind the first-person story evolves, struggles as she always has to hold her family together. She’s a teenager who’s versatile, strong, savvy and determined. Her mother’s mental instability and paranoid insanity means that monsters and demons have been her constant companions for years, therefore this new world’s not new to her.
Paige, Pen’s sweet and dearly loved sister, at eight years of age is confined to a wheelchair. Pushing Paige through the debris strewn streets and all the while keeping her mother under some semblance of control is not an easy task. Then, Paige is ferreted away by angels who do not have much use for humans while her paranoid mother wanders off on her own path.