I struggled to like this book. It certainly was no Alchemy Wars, which was my first foray into Tregillis' work. It was a bit of a mess, and way too in love with the physics of Heaven to the point that it repeatedly intruded on narrative flow. I'm sure the science is sound, but it got painful.

The book until page 144 to get interesting. After that, we finally got into the swing of things -- possibly because we finally got some more personas to working with that weren't just constructs of the Plemora, heavenly domain of the Angels. After that, it slowly began to accelerate up until we finally hit the dime drop. The conclusion came too fast, with too much exposition, and I was left a little reeling by it.

The good: some of this stuff is amazing. Some of the rules are interesting. Molly is a bitchin' lesbian protagonist, which we don't really get much, and she don't take no shit. Her agency -- which is a huge crux of the plot -- is great, and Tregillis never disappoints with amazing, dynamic women. The near future the story is only hinted at. The penitente, as a concept, is amazing, especially once you know what's at the root of the movement.

The bad: The adherence to crime noir slang and tropes -- to the point where a librarian can piece this shit together with a single literary reference is beyond silly. We never understand why our inevitable con man chooses that mode, why that type of story is the sort of story that must play in, and why.

The middling: That is one hell of an unreliable narrator, and I felt indignant, having been lied to for nearly 300 pages.

So: Did like bits of, super frustrated by other bits, but it definitely ranks a 3 out of 5. Think I'm going to take a break with another author for my next book, though. I've read a lot of Tregillis over the last couple of months, and I need to have a palette cleanser before I take on Milkweed. ( )

Much like the character of Bayliss and Ian Tregillis' explanation of the Christian angelic hierarchy (what Tregillis calls the "ninefold celestial hierarchy"), the novel begins and ends with a clever conceit but falls short of soul and substance.

Great literature is defined by characters you come to know and love. You rejoice with their joys, you weep at their sorrows, you mourn their death. There are no loveable characters in Tregillis' novel, only the conceit of a fallen angel playing to the script of a gumshoe detective and allusions to Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe.

The novel was didactic more often than it was enjoyable, going to great lengths to explain the angelic hierarchy described by Pseudo-Dionysius (On the Celestial Hierarchy) and Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica). Unlike Aquinas, Tregillis is no intellectual, philosopher or theologian, but content to rehash and repeat descriptions without interpretation. Mistaking Tregillis for Chandler would be like mistaking smoke for the cigar... wholly unsatisfying compared to the source.

In the end, "Something More than Night" is an interesting conceit devoid of a soul. It lacks the philosophy of Aquinas. It lacks the heart of Chandler. It's an interesting novel that is more gristle than meat. ( )

Much like the character of Bayliss and Ian Tregillis' explanation of the Christian angelic hierarchy (what Tregillis calls the "ninefold celestial hierarchy"), the novel begins and ends with a clever conceit but falls short of soul and substance.

Great literature is defined by characters you come to know and love. You rejoice with their joys, you weep at their sorrows, you mourn their death. There are no loveable characters in Tregillis' novel, only the conceit of a fallen angel playing to the script of a gumshoe detective and allusions to Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe.

The novel was didactic more often than it was enjoyable, going to great lengths to explain the angelic hierarchy described by Pseudo-Dionysius (On the Celestial Hierarchy) and Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica). Unlike Aquinas, Tregillis is no intellectual, philosopher or theologian, but content to rehash and repeat descriptions without interpretation. Mistaking Tregillis for Chandler would be like mistaking smoke for the cigar... wholly unsatisfying compared to the source.

In the end, "Something More than Night" is an interesting conceit devoid of a soul. It lacks the philosophy of Aquinas. It lacks the heart of Chandler. It's an interesting novel that is more gristle than meat. ( )

The most imaginative take on what if heaven was real I've seen, although in the end it boils down to an evil female lesbian Jesus toying with the universe. Despite the disappointing sudden ending really fun whilst it lasted and with multiple plot twists as required by the code of noir crime novels. ( )

I gotta like a book with a queer lady protagonist. Even if the other protagonist is a sexist dude. And I'm not entirely sure why he had to be sexist other than that he (he's an angel, by the way) decided to build his human identity around 40's mystery novels for some reason. Seems pretty pointless, to be honest, unless that was done so the author could get away with using 40's mystery novel slang...which, to be honest, I actually kind of loved. But no need to carry the sexism with it.

I liked this fantasy world. I liked the old-timey mystery overlying Christian mythology and being real sassy about it. Dogma-esque, I'd say. There is one thing I didn't particularly like: the whole unreliable narrator bit where Bayliss was basically just lying to the reader about everything so we'd get strung along just like Molly was. I guess we needed him for the slang. But even that didn't really bother me as much as it normally would have because I didn't take this book very seriously. The slang and mobster angels made it clear that I was not supposed to! All in all, entertaining, would recommend, unless that thing I said in the spoilers would make you too angry/annoyed to be entertained. ( )