First comes my confession that I am as addicted to this series as much as your basic heroin addict is to poppies. Then comes the warning that there is way too long a gap between the publication of the volumes, none of which are "stand alone." It is difficult to get into a new installment without re-reading the previous--which fortunately for me is no sacrifice. I wished I wouldn't have discovered this series until all seven of the promised novels were finished and I could read them straight through--but at my age I doubt if I'll live that long. I do have several criticisms, but still give this book 5-stars just because I love this series so much. (1) There is, for me, far too much detail about the government and science of Heaven and Hell. I would hope God has a better way of doing things, less like our human institutions--plus, the heavenly segments tended to interrupt earthly action that I was anxious to get back to. (Actually, I must confess I didn't really mind the detail-stuff about Hell as much and generally found the Fallen much more interesting. Satan and Co. spent a lot of time analyzing loopholes in Eternal Law in order to work their evil without invoking further Divine punishment, but I personally enjoyed those parts--others might not.) The parts of the angelic story that I do love are those involving Michael and Gabriel, and there just wasn't enough of my beloved Michael and Gabriel in this volume. If more of the angelic part of the story was about the three "brothers" and less about the heavenly bureaucrats, I would have been much happier. (2) Some details of the story were just too similar to the Omen. There was also a lot of similarity to LaHaye/Jenkins's The Rising, but that didn't bother me as much since those similarities were logical extensions of scripture. With an Apocalyptic novel there is only so much license to mess with the basic story without ruining it, so some similarity is not only expected, but required. (3) All the books alternate between several subplots and then go back and forth through time telling the character's stories as flashbacks. This can make the stories difficult to follow if you prefer a more linear narration. However, I felt Ms. Alec did a pretty good job of gradually filling in the details and left no egregious holes when all was said and done. Her style served to whet my appetite to keep reading to fill in the missing pieces. (4) This book is even less stand-alone than the previous volumes. The previous books all had a logical stopping point, but this book left me banging my head against the wall and screaming "aaargh" since I will have to wait for seemingly forever to get my next fix.