First, thanks to David Estes for giving me a free copy of his book to read and review.

I really liked the idea of this different version of Angels and Demons. David created a new mythology on how they were created, and toyed with the reader’s minds on which one is helping, or out to hurt humans, very clever.

Now on to the spoilers and some thoughts about how the book was written.


Taylor is the main character in this book. She’s a college student, which I liked, instead of the typical high school student in most young adult books. Gabriel is the Angel who she falls in love with. Where I had trouble with Taylor, is that she often reminds herself in the book that her mother didn’t raise a dummy, to trust her gut instincts and that Taylor didn’t need a guy to complete her as a person. Taylor repeats this over and over to herself like a mantra, yet never listens. Her gut tells her not to trust Gabriel over and over, but she does. She doesn’t need a man to complete her, but falls in love with Gabriel after only four days. Gabriel lies to her over and over and even after he promised not to lie to her again, he does, and she believes him. I understand that love can make a person ‘blind,’ but Taylor verges on being stupid. It was very frustrating reading about her choices, I wanted to smack her and shout, “Wake up!” Taylor starts out as a clear-thinking, independent female, but once she falls for Gabriel, she turns into a mound of goo that bases her decisions on what her boyfriend tells her to believe. Not my image of a strong female character or role model for a young girl reading this book.

I found the secondary characters, Samantha, Taylor’s best friend, and Christopher, Sam’s boyfriend who’s a Demon, much more interesting and entertaining. Samantha remained spunky and independent throughout the book even though she fell in love with Christopher.

“The Plan,” was genius and horrifying at the same time. What was amusing was that everyone seemed to have a “plan’ of some kind in the book. Dionysus, the leader of the Angel Council, had the ultimate ‘PLAN’ of enslaving humans. Gabriel had a plan for Taylor to fall in love with him, then later a plan to ‘protect her and escape from the demons at the college,’ and still another plan to rescue her from the battlefield. The demon Jonas, had a plan to scare Taylor and Gabriel into not to try anything funny and escape. The Angel army had a plan to destroy the Demons, and the Demons had a plan to save Taylor. Finally at the end, there’s a plan to save Gabriel from prison. There are so many plans flying around in this book it reminds me of the show ‘Black Adder’ where Baldric is fond of saying, ‘I have a cunning plan.’ And we all know how his cunning plans turned out. I think it would be a good idea to cut down on the number of ‘plans’ because the idea of a plan, lost its ability to create tension since there were so many of them scattered throughout the book.

I noticed that my mind seemed to wander while reading the story and I asked myself why. I realized that there was a lot of ‘telling’ going on instead of ‘showing.’ There was too much internal dialogue and talk about what was happening on campus, where they were walking to and other insignificant things, etc. It was unnecessary padding to the story that didn’t move it along. The extra information only slowed the story down. I think that much of the description could have been cut out and not have been missed. In fact it would have sped up the tempo of the story, and if the rest of the story was tightened up, the book would have been much more exciting. The chapters where we first met Gabriel were very short and precise. I felt the tension in those chapters, wondering, is Gabriel lying, or is he telling the truth to Taylor? Those short chapters were much more intense for me and drew me into the book, more than the other chapters with all the extra description.

Oh, and I can't forget the ending, that was a terrific cliff-hanger!

In the end, even though I found quite a few things wanting in this book, I really like the way the author created the war between Angels and Demons, the legend of how Angels and Demons were created, and also created the villain in Dionysus, who reminds me of Voldemort, in his desire to achieve immortality at any cost.

I enjoyed this story and am very curious on where the author will take this in his next books. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a different take on Angels and Demons.




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definitely not as amazingly awesome as the Dwellers Series, or as nicely written, but it was still a good read.
although I will not be reading the rest of the series. ( )

Okay, so I've just finished this book and I'm sorry the review is a bit late but that's because school decided to make us start next year's work early so they were working us really hard right up till the last day and I had no time to read :( Anyway, I've rated this book 3 stars because I quite liked it but it was nothing special.

I'm going to start with the thing that has been bugging me most throughout the book: all the explanations. It seemed like the author thought he was writing this book for 7 year old incompetent readers who need every little detail explaining. Almost every sarcastic phrase in the book has been explained as if we readers are stupid and it really got on my nerves. David Estes – This book is aimed at young adults, it it not? It is not aimed at children but at teens who can understand more or less everything an adult can. I've only got one quote to show what I mean but if I had time I'm sure I could find countless more, many of which are probably worse than this but it'll have to do for now:
“Gabriel pretended like his heart was broken by clutching both hands to the left side of his chest.“That hurts, Tay, it really hurts.” ”
See? Most readers over the age of ten would not need to have it explained that Gabriel was only pretending to be upset. It is obvious without the explanation and honestly, I think that sort of ruined the whole mood of the scene. It made me feel as if I was just reading a book instead of being there with the characters in the book. I'm a huge fan of sarcasm in books but only if we have to figure it out for ourselves, like in the real world.

Anyway, let's go on to happier matters. I loved the idea for the story. I loved how the author took something classic and completely changed it into something modern and interesting. It shows real creativity to do that and a bit of bravery to risk doing something that might be ridiculed by countless readers who believe that all the rules set be legends should be stuck to and only altered in the smallest of ways. So yeah, high five on that. It made the story worth reading and very unique without being too weird.

Okay so that's all for now but I might edit it it later when I'm not busy :) ( )

I enjoyed this story with the good vs. evil and it's many twists throughout between angels and demons. The characters are a very satisfying part however there were times that a little more development would have gone long way and occasionally it felt as though the words spoken by these new adults were not 100% convincing, still this does not discredit the overall plot and engaging storyline. In the endless sea of paranormal books this is one that is worth reading.

3.5 stars ( )

Was not as fond of this book, as I was of his other series. ( )