rafael nicolás

Angels Before Man

clau☁️

2.5 - first of all i’m gonna say that i don’t think this book is bad, i was just expecting something else completely from what i heard and had too high expectations. even if this book was not for me, i get why people enjoy it so much, i don’t want to discourage anyone from reading it because a lot of people seem to love it

what didn’t do it for me i think was that there was too little plot and too many descriptions that prevented me from fully getting into the story. i don’t know, i think it was my fault for expecting something similar to tsoa but “biblical”.

personally i would’ve liked to have more of a romance and to see more of lucifer’s self-image discussions. i also was a bit confused with the pov’s at some points, i think i would’ve enjoyed it better if it was written in first person from lucifer’s pov.

envee

** spoiler alert **
           amazing premisse, mediocre execution.

hearing that there's a queer retelling of the fall of satan made me so excited! i was ready for angst & conflict á la song of achilles. unfortunately, the book didn't really give what i wanted it to give.

lucifer/satan is an incredibly complex figure, which is why authors have to be very careful when fictionalizing him. the book was definetly way to short. i would've loved if it was just 200 pages longer to at least have a better picture of Lucifer as a character.
 there was barely any (reasonable) character development. not to mention that the 1st half of the book was quite boring? i didn't feel connected to Lucifer as a character nor to anyone he interacted with. all of the angels were quite shallow and, as a character-driven reader, it made my reading experience quite exhausting. 

i feel like, overall, the book would've benefited from more editing (idk if it is self-published, though i'm very certain that it is the case). the writing style was okay but MY BIGGEST PET PEEVE was the dialogues; it kind of read like the author was only writing them in their head without trying to speak them out loud? i mean, sure it is set in a heavenly realm, meaning language/tone/style inherently differs from books set in a contemporary metropole, but everything anyone said felt quite awkward (and sometimes even forced). 
there was no real/ barely any exposition to the world; how does heaven work? how is it organized? what are the rules? i'm not really sure.
it really felt as if the author hasn't fully fleshed out the world building, just took this basic idea and ran with it.

on a more positive note; 
there were quite some passages i really adored. they mostly concearned Lucifer's struggles with self-doubt and/or angst. these were written really well and made me feel quite some emotions. my favourite part of the whole book was probably the 'interlude' between part 1 & part 2 - it was so good!

aleksandra

3.5/5

Queer retelling of Satan’s Fall? Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Even though I expected more madness, rage and chaos from this story, I still very much enjoyed it. I was a bit bored at times, but overall I can highly recommend it.

Dani

I don’t think I can be coherent about this just yet but the beauty, the terror. It changed me

Angels Before Man

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