TLR Fan Feature (21): Angelfire and Wings of the Wicked Reviews

For this fifth week, I have some super duper awesome posts brought to you by Riv Re from Riv Reads to share with all of you Little Reapers!

About Riv Re:

Riv Re has been blogging about books for over two year, but she's been cracking lame jokes for a lifetime, which, if you ask anyone who's ever met her, is a lifetime too long. She enjoys avoiding her mounds of homework by writing, daydreaming faeries (she's convinced she is one), and pretending she's a real New Yorker with a Newsies accent. She passes her free time looking at pictures of Pomeranian puppies, staring into space, and researching ancient weaponry. Riv tries to be angsty, but she's just an eccentric younger teen.

Find Riv Re Online: Blog

Riv Re's Angelfire Review:

First there are nightmares.
Every night Ellie is haunted by terrifying dreams of monstrous creatures that are hunting her, killing her.

Then come the memories.
When Ellie meets Will, she feels on the verge of remembering something just beyond her grasp. His attention is intense and romantic, and Ellie feels like her soul has known him for centuries. On her seventeenth birthday, on a dark street at midnight, Will awakens Ellie's power, and she knows that she can fight the creatures that stalk her in the grim darkness. Only Will holds the key to Ellie's memories, whole lifetimes of them, and when she looks at him, she can no longer pretend anything was just a dream.

Now she must hunt.
Ellie has power that no one can match, and her role is to hunt and kill the reapers that prey on human souls. But in order to survive the dangerous and ancient battle of the angels and the Fallen, she must also hunt for the secrets of her past lives and truths that may be too frightening to remember.

My Thoughts:

This is going to be a weird review. I really liked the book, but I was a bit...disappointed. I expected so much more. I've heard these fantastic, raving reviews, about the awesome action and romance and humor and, of course, Root Beer Float Kisses (as well as peopleburgers). But I wasn't seeing it. And the religiosity towards the end...Wait. Let me back up a bit.

The Characters: Ellie-she was awesome. Absolutely hysterical, strong, with the perfect amount of resistance when she originally finds out who she is. I've read books in which the main character takes this new outlook on life in stride, but not Ellie. She completely refuses to believe it at first, but is finally convinced in a normal span of time. She's such a strong main character, a go-getter not afraid to stand up for what she believes in.

Will-I've always hated the tragic main male characters, coming into the picture with a killer smile and baggage. Now, Will's got these awesome green eyes, which I love, and funky tattoos, but you'll have to read the book to know more about them. I ain't telling. But Will...well, he wasn't that swoonworthy. I'm glad he didn't seem to have as much baggage as I expected, and as much as everyone loves in YA, but he just didn't work for me. Angsty and all, but...meh. He did everything he thought was right, very noble, and he really connected with Ellie, but <3Puck<3 still has my heart. But... Cadan-On the other hand, Cadan, an evil reaper who you only meet for a few minutes, I found more interesting. He seems pretty deep, and I have some other suspicions about him, which I won't share for fear of spoileryness. One thing I loved-hated was the thing with Ellie's dad. He was verbally abusive, and I hated the drastic change from what Ellie said he used to be. And I absolutely love the way Ellie reacts to his abuse. Instead of taking it, she fights back. What did bother me about it, though, was the way his personality changes. Ellie's getting ready for a party, and she sees her father on the way to the bathroom, but instead of avoiding each other, they actually speak. Not deep, or friendly, but more than I expected.

The Fighting: It was pretty impressive, though I really expected more. I love fight scenes, especially well-written ones. And they were well-written, but I didn't feel like they were that good. Maybe I'm just taking them for granted, it's possible CAM spent hours writing and rewriting those scenes, and it's only because they come so naturally to me that I'm being too harsh.

The Writing Style: It was interesting, and took some getting used to. I felt like there wasn't a whole lot of description in the beginning, and everything happened. Don't get me wrong, I love how we were thrown straight into the action, and it's an interesting writing style, but not a favorite.

The Humor: Peopleburgers, root beer float kisses, biffles, and all. They're all so sweet and cute and funny. I mean, come on, Ellie actually said Biffles! And Will likes Root Beer Floats! So cute! And, my favorite, peopleburgers! I'm seriously considering buying a peopleburgers t-shirt (pictured). And she named her car Marshmallow!

The Ending: I felt, in one of the final scenes, it got a bit too religious for me. The same thing happened at the end of Fallen by Lauren Kate. I have no problem with fallen angels, and I love how the fallen aren't the center of this book, but it got iffy for me, personally. But, as self-centered as I am, I know CAM didn't write this for me. ;)

I feel like this whole review is coming across negative, and I really don't want it too, because I really liked this book, and I advise you to go find some more reviews, because they'll all show you just how wrong I am. Because this book is awesomeness, it just...disappointed me a bit.

Overall rating: 4*

Riv Re's Wings of the Wicked Review:

Life as the Preliator is harder than Ellie ever imagined.
Balancing real life with the responsibility of being Heaven’s warrior is a challenge for Ellie. Her relationship with Will has become all business, though they both long for each other. And now that the secret of who she really is has come out, so have Hell’s strongest reapers. Grown bold and more vicious, the demonic threaten her in the light of day and stalk her in the night.

She’s been warned.
Cadan, a demonic reaper, comes to her with information about Bastian’s new plan to destroy Ellie’s soul and use an ancient relic to wake all the souls of the damned and unleash them upon humanity. As she fights to stay ahead of Bastian’s schemes , the revelations about those closest to her awaken a dark power within Ellie that threatens to destroy everything—including herself.

She’ll be betrayed.
Treachery comes even from those whom she loves, and Ellie is broken by the deaths of those who stood beside her in this Heavenly war. Still, she must find a way to save the world, herself, and her love for Will. If she fails, there will be hell to pay.

My Thoughts:

Hi y'all,

So I already have an Angelfire review over on my blog, but my Wings review was miniaturized, and I can't confine my love to this book is 200-ish words. So you guys are stuck me with me. (Oh, and by the way, I use the word "epic" in this post way more times than I should.)

Wings of the Wicked was absolutely phenomenal. Mind=blown.

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CHARACTERS

By this time, we've gotten much more familiar with the characters, and much more attached to them. They're all just amazing and adorable (in Will and Cadan's cases). I'm a total "Wellie" shipper. They're there for each other through thick and thin, balancing each other out perfectly. When tragedy strikes, they present a united front. When Ellie screams and cries, Will holds her. He doesn't let go, even when she gets so mad she tries to hurt him. Their love is, pun intended, undying. And absolutely adorable and sweet. The Wellie scenes are absolutely amazing.

Of course, you can't talk about epic characters in this book without talking about Cadan. He's just...epic. In so many ways. He's witty, charming, devoted, and a smooth-talker that just makes you swoon. He almost makes me Team Callie (yes, I just made that up on the spot), but I'm too firmly stuck in a dream world, where Team Rivdan exists. Just like Lenny Kravitz, as Cinna, had instantly chemistry with every character he shared a scene with (I dare you to watch that movie and not ship Cinniss at least a little bit), Cadan connects deeply to Ellie. Almost enough to make me want a them. Almost.

There are a lot of side characters, like the adorable Nathaniel, the dark Ava, and Marcus who's just...Marcus. I could go on and on, but I loved them all.

OTHER STUFF

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The plot was insane. The fight scenes were epic. They were decent in the first book, but Courtney has really stepped it up since Angelfire. They're thrilling, nail-biting. The entire book moved so fast, if this was a movie, I would have missed major things each time I blinked. (But on the topic, Angelfire would make a pretty epic movie.) This book is also much more mature than Angelfire. A lot of the characters deal with capital-i Issues, and these are, for the most part, dealt with very well.

My only critique I can make is that when Ellie suffered, I didn't feel her pain. Some really bad...stuff...hit the fan, and it practically destroyed Ellie (emotionally. just emotionally), but there was a disconnect, and I didn't feel her agony as much as I wanted to.
The book ends on a killer cliff-hanger.

In summary, I was blown away. And I need book 3, Shadows in the Silence, STAT.

Rating: 8 out of 5 stars
Song I connect to this book: Guardian Angel by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus (CAM has a Youtube playlist of all of her WotW songs)