Angelology (The Review).........

I really don't know where to begin with this review as there is so much I want to say but I don't want to put out any spoilers.......so, I'll just give a high level overview for now.


Angelology is a discipline of theology which focuses entirely on the study of Angels. There are groups of researchers throughout the world today called Angelologists and because I realised this fact from the beginning, the characters and story set out in Angelology by Danielle Trussoni became immediately more plausible and compelling to me.


As the story begins it becomes apparent that the contest between good and evil is waged not in the heavens but here on Earth between warring factions of biblical scholars, Angelologists and heavenly beings hiding in plain sight at the top of society in the most wealthy and powerful families across the world. These are a race of beings born from the union between a group of angels called The Watchers and their human mothers. The Watchers became fallen angels and were cast down into the earth to suffer for eternity for their transgressions with humans. The prodigy they leave behind, however, are known as the Niphilim and they survive to this day.


The central character in the tale is Sister Evangeline, a young nun living at St. Rose Convent in Hudson River Valley, New York City. As assistant to the librarian, during the course of her work, she stumbles across a mislaid correspondence between philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller and the convent's abbess of the time, Sister Innocenta. This letter has Evangeline intrigued as it alludes to an astonishing discovery in the mountains of Bulgaria in 1943. Simultaneously, the book introduces Percival Grigori, a critically ill member of the Niphilim and son and heir of the Grigori fortune. The Grigori family and others of their kind, have engaged in warfare for generations with the Society of Angelologists, a group that included Evangeline's parents, her grandmother, Gabriella and Sister Celestine who is now an old and sick nun also living at the Convent of St Rose. Evangeline realises that what she has been told of her past is not entirely the whole story and slowly she uncovers her heritage as an Angelologist.


This discovery draws her and Grigori into conflict over control of a powerful artifact, the lyre of the mythical Orpheus. It was said that the Angel Gabriel, so saddened by his command to commit The Watchers to their eternal prison in the earth, threw the lyre into the cave after his brothers to give them the comfort of heavenly music. He realised his mistake in an instant but it was done and the lyre was cast down, giving who ever found it a power equal to God. These are the stakes that Evangeline and Grigori are playing for.


I loved every minute of the battle and found myself staying awake late at night and getting up really early in the morning until I had finished the book......It was, for me, the most enjoyable read I have had in a long time.


There were a couple of things which really annoyed me though. Firstly, Danielle Trussoni takes, what seemed to me, an unnecessary amount of time to describe cars in the story......these descriptions have no bearing on the telling of the tale, that I can see and their inclusion made me ponder whether they had been written on days when the author wanted to complete a 1,000 words for that day. The other thing, which is really the fault of the editors, is that there are two big mistakes in the plot; one relates to the length of time Sr Celestine has been at St Rose Convent (the story says over 70 years when it should have said over 50 years) and the other comes towards the end of the story when the Angelologists set off in pairs; one of the pairings is named incorrectly half way through the telling of their situation (the story says Evangeline and Verlaine when it should have said Evangeline and Bruno). Small things, I know, which say more about me as a reader than they do about the author. It is clear to me, however, that from the outset Danielle Trussoni paid great attention to detail in the writing and she obviously did an amazing amount of research to bring the story into being, so, I felt these trivial things were careless mistakes in an otherwise well written book and should never have escaped the edits.

Having said all of that, it was an amazing book and I couldn't put it down. The storyline has all the ingredients of becomming one of the best, most popular books of the year and having looked over the author's website, it is clear that she has plans to make a series and turn Angelology into epic tale. The film rights to this story have been sold to Columbia and the sequel is currently in the making.


Good luck to her and I cannot wait for the next book to be published.


I'd love to discuss the ending of the book but will not write about it here so if you want to discuss it, then drop me an email.

The Liar - Stephen Fry

Whilst I was on my break from blogging I managed finally to read some of the old timers of my TBR pile, one of them was The Liar by Stephen Fry. I wasn't sure what to make of it at first and became a little confused as the story jumped backwards and forwards through time, but, it didn't take me long to be completely absorbed in this wonderfully witty and amusing tale of people who keep secrets and tell lies.

Adrian Healey is the central character in this story and he is witty, bright, intellectual, snobbish and quite daring. The first time we meet Adrian it is clear he is not like other boys at his school:

"Adrian checked the orchid at his buttonhole, the spats at his feet, gave the lavender gloves a twitch, smoothed down his waistcoat, tucked the ebony Malacca-cane under his arm, swallowed twice and pushed open the changing room doors.

'Ah, my dears,' he cried. Congratulations! Congratulations to you all! A triumph, an absolute triumph!'

'Well, what the fucks he wearing now?' they snorted from the steamy end of the room.

'You're and idiot and an arse, Healey.'

Burkiss threw a flannel onto the shiny top hat. Adrian reached up and took it between his forefinger and thumb.

'If there is the slightest possibility, Burkiss, that this flannel has absorbed any of the juices that leak from within you, that it has mopped up a single droplet of your pubescent greases, that it has tickled and frotted even one of the hideously mired corners of your disgusting body then I shall have a spasm. I'm sorry but I shall.'

In spite of himself, Cartwright smiled............."

And so I was hooked. I had the most vivid picture of the scene and particularly of Adrian Healey in my mind from this moment, and as the story unfolds, the picture becomes more and more colourful.

Adrian proves to be a total liar and looks on the world as his play ground. The book charts Adrian's life through the latter part of public school, during a time when he becomes a runaway and through his university years. He is cool, courageous, rebellious and always in trouble of one kind or another, particularly with the police, various school masters and his parents. Nobody can see through Adrian until he meets Professor Trefusis, who is a master at St Matthew's College, Cambridge where Adrian is reading Philology under his watchful eye. The story turns into a romp of the most extraordinary kind taking in Piccadilly rent-boys, Dicken's lost pornographic novel Peter Flowerbucke and an international espionage conspiracy.

I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a book so thoroughly and laughed out loud so many times. It is an astonishing achievement of comedic writing and now I am on a quest to seek out more of Stephen Fry's books. The only thing I would caution against is that some of the language and some of the descriptions of sexual encounters contained in the story (all of which add to the landscape of the portrait being painted, by the way) might be shocking to more sensitive readers, so, if you are in this group perhaps this is not the book for you.

It was another of those books I did not want to end. It is not the kind of book I would normally choose to read but I do adore Stephen Fry and so when I saw it in the bookshop I picked it up. Then as it been sitting so long on my TBR pile, I thought I should give it a try and I'm so glad I did. Just think, I may not have read it at all, which would have been a terrible loss for me.

Have you read anything by Stephen Fry?

Have you ever picked up a book you would not normally select and loved it so much you follow it's trail?