On a basic language level, I found her writing too flowery for my taste. But wanting to delete nearly one unnecessary word per page makes for a poor reading experience. She did things (like overusing adverbs and saying things in a long, archaic kind of way) that any one of my writing workshops would have immediately jumped all over. I felt like her language could use some heavy editing, though I realize this is more of my personal preference for reading and writing.
The plot was intriguing but a little clunky. For about 100 pages (once we are already 150 in) she changes tack to follow a different character around in the past. I found this sustained excerpt jarring, initially confusing, and at the end kind of unnecessary. (We only needed to know the details of what happened in the last 35 pages of the section.) To add to my dislike of this section, we were following around this annoying and semi-stupid girl. She was naive to the point of stupidity, and since it was always brought up what a good student she was, I was annoyed by her simplicity.
Then we get back to the main character, a young pretty satisfied-with-her-life nun named Evangeline. Umm, really? Okay, we take that as it is. Fine. Then later we find out she saw an angel when she was a little girl and never demanded her dad to know what the hell he was doing with a captive angel? REALLY? She is also kind of simple-minded as a character. Which I've found, as I read books with stupid characters, annoys me.
Oh, and the boy that shows up at the convent, and gets tangled into the messy web of the angelologists lives and the angels' ruthless plans, falls for the pretty nun. And after a few tense situations, Evangeline starts to realize she IS capable of sexual feelings. And they are directed towards the only man her age she's seen in... how many years? at least 5. Uh-huh.
Well, needless to say really, when two of the pivotal characters kick it at the end (in fact both are murdered) I can't say I cared. I didn't feel an emotional conniption to any of them (well, the boy was decent, he didn't annoy me and he had appropriate and intelligent insight sometimes). But the rest? Didn't really care for, wasn't rooting for them, and when the angelic lyre (which the book is spent looking for) is found and assembled I was kind of left wanting more.
I could tell you in detail about the end (which I had huge problems with) but I will hold off in case any of you want to take the dive yourselves. I will say this: there is a pretty big plot twist, and I was not engaged enough at the end to really care about how it affected Evangeline.
Oh, and this is only the first in a series. I had no idea about this when I picked up the book. Well, I doubt I'll continue reading the series. This just goes to show you, all the wonderful and intricate fantasy in the world can't save lackluster characters.
