Bad End

Good Angel #2

by A.M. Blaushild

Archangel Michael's death at the hands of Iofiel may have prevented him from forcing the apocalypse, but it's hardly brought peace. The new Archangel Michael is relentless in his quest for revenge, believing Iofiel is still out there- and shirking his duties to prove it.

Afraid of his connection to the traitor, Maalik has fled to Hell, also looking for Iofiel- but what he finds instead is an oddly amicable Morningstar with shocking plans that Maalik may be unable to stop. And Archie and Salem, abducted and now working as assistants for the devil, struggle to define their place in what is about to unfold.

On Earth, Santiago and Damien have found refuge in a small American town, comfortably leading a coven of witches. But when magic begins to crop up among ordinary humans, their disguises can only last so long.

And what ever happened to Iofiel, The Saintkiller, the Second Traitor?

The apocalypse may have been averted, but something is clearly going wrong.

Genres: Fantasy, Asexual

Paperback

Published January 1, 2018

About the author

A.M. writes, usually about angels.

Also on Youtube as Crow Caller. Inexplicably.

Reviews

[Claudie Arseneault · Rating 4 out of 5]

** I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review **

It took me a while to find my footing again in the universe of the GOOD ANGEL duology--the first one ended with a blast, and transported a few months in the future, I had to set my brain back into remembering how everything had fallen apart. It was worth it, though! GOOD ANGEL's strength had been its cast of characters--eminently likeable, quirky at times, profoundly human (despite being mostly angels and demons, but that's kind of the point!!)--and its sort of light and ironic sense of humour, and that much hasn't changed. What had thrown me off in the first book, however, is gone from this one, and I finally got my dose of demons and angels working together, with all the awkwardness and fun that brings.

It's hard to describe BAD END's reading experience. It's kind of wonderfully unique in that sense, the plot snaking its way through characters' lives as they try to make sense of it themselves, and while the flow is uneven, it feels so in an sort of purposeful, inviting way? This is a story that was never meant to send you careening forward at a high pace, all breathless action and plot twists. For all its world-changing events, it's much more gentle and mundane, much more humane and hopeful, focused on its lovely cast, and I really appreciated that.

BAD END very much treats its queerness the same: it's very present, not always clearly defined, but always inviting openness and experimentation.

Book has tw for eye lost, blood rituals, murder, body horror (some demons&angels are pretty gruesome)

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genuinely excellent read. Entertaining and well-paced, consistently surprising, and often moving. And very, very unique.

Note: if you haven't read the book yet and are planning to, or even considering it, don't click the spoilers link below! Lots of spoilers in my review. And you'll want to read this one spoiler-free.



Jeez, where do I even start? There's a lot I love about this book. It's actually been quite difficult to type a review up.

I'll start with the beginning, and at the same time, the end. In the first couple pages we're introduced to the new Archangel Michael, who's written in present tense. At first I figured this stylistic choice was just made to differentiate the character, give us a different feel for his pages. If that's all it'd been, that alone would've been effective. But of course, there's more to it than that. This whole book is written a bit like a puzzle box (as most of my favorite books are).

Note: I don't know how to share images on GoodReads, or if this will show up, but this basically summarized my experience reading Bad End:

View post on imgur.com

My favorite sub-plot, surprisingly, was Santiago and Damien and the coven. I say surprisingly, because they're two characters that kind of slipped by me in Good Angel. Bad End finds these two laying low with a coven of human hedge-witches, passing the time by playing pranks on them. (Their opening scene has them discussing whether they can convince the hedge-witches to try out mac-and-cheese spells.) The end of their first chapter hits us with a left hook. One of the humans has actual, real magic... and they're not supposed to, of course. Well, well, well. Consider me intrigued. By the time the author writes "Something was wrong, very wrong in the town of Brattleboro, Vermont," I was full-on invested.

Other parts of the story are great, too. The first chapters give us a long-awaited description of hell, and man, is it interesting. Hell is a giant cup thingy, and out beyond it there's darkness with clouds of red, flashes of "errant lightning." Lots of lovely writing in this, but we're quickly given one of my favorites:

Like all the cogs that made the world turn were hidden past a thin, velvet cloth.

It's a sentence that grabs you, and clearly the author knows this because it reappears later, along with some other vivid descriptions. Hell's a sloping cup shape, Heaven's a cosmic frisbee... when it's revealed how it fits together, it all makes too much sense.

Random segue into some other small things I liked:
- The building anticipation for Iofiel. We know she's going to show up at some point, and when she does. !!!!!!! I put the book down for a second. Solid twist.
- Theapple is a baller name and I loved this character.
- So many lovely turns of phrase. I've dropped like eight in this review and it's only scratching the surface. Here's one of my favorites:

He dances through the ritual-space, he spins with wind and light. The sound is that of dead leaves made solid; it is that of a fireplace compressed into brittle stone: he cuts them and burns them and kills them all, one two three demons dead.

When the apocalypse begins is when this book really gets good. Normal prose shifts into a relay of tweets and texts, similar to something out of web fiction, and it does so in the best way. This just works for me; the relentless, flashbang internet response accentuates the catharsis of the moment. Angels are falling out of the sky, the world is ending, and you're livestreaming.

I'll cop to not being entirely clear on the implications of the ending. We know Heaven and Hell are right next to each other, opposite towers on a disk, like a spinning top; we're given the lovely phrase "the Sun is too kind to let anyone really suffer." The main thing that struck me is how wonderfully subversive it all seems. Dante climbs upward to Paradiso in the Divine Comedy, but A.M. Blaushild's geography of the divine isn't so straightforward. "Hell lies below Heaven," "or maybe Heaven is below Hell." And behind it all, the "soft, velvet backdrop." What a beautiful image.

I'll probably have to come back to the book and think some more on everything it's saying. I suspect this one has a lot hiding between the pages. Even skimming over it again to write this review I noticed new things. (A chapter that starts with someone knock-knock-knocking on someone's door... Dylan reference?)

Complaints? Minor. Some passive voice descriptions I think might be stronger if written more actively. E.g., "At the top of the steps was a flimsy, translucent barrier" and such.

Well, this review is a mess, but I've always found it difficult to succinctly summarize things I really enjoyed. If you're reading this, you're probably a fan of the author's work too. As-of writing, this is like the fifth or sixth review on Goodreads, and it's the second book in the series. Why isn't this bigger? Sad to say I only found these books because YouTube recommended me a video by the author.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. This is, in my opinion, the author's strongest work. So far, that is. I've reached the end of A.M. Blaushild's catalog, but I'm hoping to see more in the future. (If you happen to read this, author, please write more. Write more, and shout it from the rooftops! Parachute books from the sky! Liquefy it and inject it into my veins!)

I don't normally rate books, because I don't really have a methodology. There's no consistent way of ranking I could stick to. Is a perfect score supposed to reflect a perfect book? That seems unattainable. I don't know that this is a perfect book, but it's probably the book I've enjoyed most this year, and I think I'll come back to it often.

It's bold, challenging, unapologetic, well-written, and also... it's compassionate. This is a book in which people (beings) are deeply compassionate to one another. In this book even the devil is just someone who cares for broken things.

Five stars, Angel, five stars.

[Lara Mori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh man. Oh man, where do I even start? It's a delightful contrast to the first book! Where the first one is so exciting and full of life, the second takes a more soft tone. Reapperances of beloved characters and how they're coping with the events of the first book, new characters with fascinating perspectives, it has it all. It was a lovely journey, and the way it deals with facing the consequences of your actions is thoughtful and considerate. It shows that life is full of "bad ends", because not all solutions are easy and neat, not all problems need solutions, and in many ways you're the one who chooses what is and what isn't a problem.
Wonderful through and through, I can't recommend it enough.

[Fernanda F. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe I hadn't written a review yet!!
I LOVE this book. I like it better than Good Angel, the first one, which is usually something hard to accomplish (mind flashes back to several sucky sequels). It's... less busy than GA, in a way? It feels softer, more emotional; it delivers on the cliffhanger at the end of the first book but doesn't fall into the "raise the stakes even more! create even more powerful problems and villains!" trap that sequels usually fall to. It deals with everything that happens in book 1 while having its own narrative, its own issues, and ties it all together in the end in a way that has me crying every time. I definitely recommend!!!! Go read this!!!!

[aspeccharactersoftheday]

https://aspeccharactersoftheday.tumbl...

https://aspeccharactersoftheday.tumbl...

[Edie Walls · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this sequel! I think not being saddled to Iofiel really allowed the narrative to breath. The ending was great.