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Ascendant
For hundreds of years, war has raged across the realm of Guardian Angels. White-Wing against Black-Wing. Grace is the Saboteur, daughter of the White-Wing Spy Master, destined to end the war once and for all. But all of that is snatched away when she is captured by the Black-Wings. Trapped in their secret city, Grace finds herself questioning everything she's ever been told. About her enemies, and about herself.
225 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 10, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 12, 2019
Ascendant is a delightful read for when you want to just lay back and relax with a book in hand.
First of all, the characters are well developed and don’t just stumble into stereotypes of most up-and-coming war hero stories. The angels are very human in their outlooks and actions, not the high and mighty beings one might be used to seeing them as, which makes this for an interesting world, one which hints at other races and plots for a future series.
Grace, as the main narrator, is delightful to follow, to see as her preconceptions twist and change and as her understanding of her world at war shifts from what had been ingrained in her since childhood. Those doubts are exactly what make her a winning protagonist, as I, as a reader, could see where the mistakes in her views lay, yet could perfectly understand and justify them, which only made me want to follow her more to see her grow out of those preconceptions. It also delighted me that this book, instead of following the romance route, decided to go for the found family sibling bond instead, though I won’t elaborate as not to risk spoilers.
On another hand, the worldbuilding is also not lacking: the environments are diverse, and the wings all characters have aren’t treated as just an aesthetic choice, but also change and influence society and fighting styles, as well as the way the characters think and act.
I would maybe take off half a star from the review for the writing style, which in my opinion maybe could have included more descriptions and imagery, which I’m a sucker for. However since the book was that nice of a read, I’m rounding the score up with no regrets.
I received an ARC in return for an honest review
First of all, the characters are well developed and don’t just stumble into stereotypes of most up-and-coming war hero stories. The angels are very human in their outlooks and actions, not the high and mighty beings one might be used to seeing them as, which makes this for an interesting world, one which hints at other races and plots for a future series.
Grace, as the main narrator, is delightful to follow, to see as her preconceptions twist and change and as her understanding of her world at war shifts from what had been ingrained in her since childhood. Those doubts are exactly what make her a winning protagonist, as I, as a reader, could see where the mistakes in her views lay, yet could perfectly understand and justify them, which only made me want to follow her more to see her grow out of those preconceptions. It also delighted me that this book, instead of following the romance route, decided to go for the found family sibling bond instead, though I won’t elaborate as not to risk spoilers.
On another hand, the worldbuilding is also not lacking: the environments are diverse, and the wings all characters have aren’t treated as just an aesthetic choice, but also change and influence society and fighting styles, as well as the way the characters think and act.
I would maybe take off half a star from the review for the writing style, which in my opinion maybe could have included more descriptions and imagery, which I’m a sucker for. However since the book was that nice of a read, I’m rounding the score up with no regrets.
I received an ARC in return for an honest review
June 22, 2019
One of my favorite books on this planet! It is difficult to leave a spoiler-free review as I would love to go over all of the amazing parts of this book but I did that, we'd be here forever. So in short, Ascendant is a great story with an immersive world, memorable characters and a plot that hits the ground running. It's a book that I plan on reading many times!
Miss Grey is an amazing writer and I look forward to the possibility of future books.
Thank you for publishing Ascendant - it's one of the greats.
- Night
Miss Grey is an amazing writer and I look forward to the possibility of future books.
Thank you for publishing Ascendant - it's one of the greats.
- Night
October 2, 2021
I am a huge fan of Kimberly’s works, and when I found out she published an original YA novel, I RUSHED to Amazon to buy a copy of the e-book. As always, Kimberly masterfully weaves together an engaging and memorable story with endearing characters. The world-building is highly detailed yet never dull like some other books under the YA umbrella. Overall, Ascendant is a fantastic and fun read, and I look forward to whatever our angelic (pun intended) author has in store for us next!
June 1, 2019
Ascendant takes place in an alternate world inhabited by angelic Guardians. For centuries their world has been split by a war between the White-Wings and the Black-Wings. Grace, a White-Wing girl, has trained since childhood to be the perfect assassin. When she’s sent out on her first mission, she’s ready to fight without hesitation against the cruel and depraved Black-Wings. Except that disaster strikes, her mission is sabotaged, and the Black-Wings capture her. It quickly turns out that from the very beginning, the war has been an entirely different story from what Grace knows.
This is a quick read which ends with a lead-in to a series. There are tantalizing hints of other species and worlds waiting out there, as well as plotlines that have yet to unfold.
The characters physically resemble classical angels, but they’re very human in their outlooks and foibles. There are a lot of them to keep track of, and some of the minor characters’ names get perhaps overly similar at times (everyone is named after virtues). There also are a couple of separate things that make Grace special and unique; that’s a trope I dislike when it’s overdone, but it works.
Grace and her new friend, the Black-Wing healer named Honor, are winning protagonists, and I love Solace the cat. There’s a particular point in the plot where I think most books would have turned to romance, but Ascendant refreshingly takes a different direction. Family and sibling relationships are the driving force here.
My favorite element was the worldbuilding for a race of people with wings. Their ability to fly is incredibly important to their culture. Some characters have the ability to control the wind, and this has a huge effect on how they travel and fight. Even wing shapes and flight styles are taken into account.
I would have picked it up for the winged characters alone, but Grace and Honor are adorable and make the world and plot worthwhile.
I received an ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review.
This is a quick read which ends with a lead-in to a series. There are tantalizing hints of other species and worlds waiting out there, as well as plotlines that have yet to unfold.
The characters physically resemble classical angels, but they’re very human in their outlooks and foibles. There are a lot of them to keep track of, and some of the minor characters’ names get perhaps overly similar at times (everyone is named after virtues). There also are a couple of separate things that make Grace special and unique; that’s a trope I dislike when it’s overdone, but it works.
Grace and her new friend, the Black-Wing healer named Honor, are winning protagonists, and I love Solace the cat. There’s a particular point in the plot where I think most books would have turned to romance, but Ascendant refreshingly takes a different direction. Family and sibling relationships are the driving force here.
My favorite element was the worldbuilding for a race of people with wings. Their ability to fly is incredibly important to their culture. Some characters have the ability to control the wind, and this has a huge effect on how they travel and fight. Even wing shapes and flight styles are taken into account.
I would have picked it up for the winged characters alone, but Grace and Honor are adorable and make the world and plot worthwhile.
I received an ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review.
May 13, 2020
★★★★☆
(3.5 stars)
(Ascendant, Kimberly Grey)
Every feel like alternate universe theory is not only plausible but very real, and crossing over with reality? I don't usually, but the more I think about this book the more it sincerely feels like something I wrote in another timeline. That's a compliment and a good sign for me: I'm basically trying to say this book contains a whole bunch of elements you never see in mainstream fiction (it's indie), and also is all about angels (we all know I love those suckers.
Was it a good book? We run into a few troubles there. Not helping my assessment is the fact I spent the last X amount of time extremely depressed, triggering about midway through my read, so my memories are not as concise as I like them to be.
This book succeeds in being a story. The worldbuilding is both great (angels!) and not so (where and when are we? Is this Earth?). The characters are strong (our leads) with a found family theme and no romance, but the cast is also too large at times, involving many names and people we either meet once or never directly see. The writing is strong throughout though, but the rather simple plot has spots of muddle. It's this sort of a stew of a book.
Plot
There's war among the angels, but not how you'd think. Spread across a large world, white winged and black winged angels have been at war for hundreds of years. The cause too is not quite how you'd expect: rather than some sort of godly smite, the black wings assassinated a queen a while back, prompting the realization they were all evil and fallen.
Our main character is Grace, the daughter of the Spymaster Concord. Early on she is captured on a mission outside the White-Wing city and taken prisoner, brought to the secret Black-Wing city. It's clear shortly into her stay here that she has the wrong history: the White-Wings are the evil ones! If it's not clear I'll be talking about a couple spoilers from this book, but this is the first 'plot twist' which happens early on and doesn't count.
The backstory of the White-Black Wing war is probably the most confusing aspect of this, seconded by the history of Grace's blood father which I still don't understand. We're given the backstory through some journal entries and inexplicable visions Grace gets, but I pretty quickly got lost in the exact order of events, and who some of the characters were. It's nice world-building, but it also doesn't help every character in this book has the same theme for their name: a virtue. This gets complicated when you have Justice, Honor, Glory, Charity, Clarity (those two messed me up big), Temperance, Endurance, and more to keep track of.
As I get it, White Wings and Black Wings used to live together happily. One important guy got quite paranoid and framed a Black Wing for murder, and then consolidated power by blaming ALL Black Wings for this crime. Something like that. All Black Wings got persecuted and kicked out of the city, and propaganda got to work until they had a bloody, always-tied war going on.
Grace meets Honor in the Black-Wing city, who slowly becomes her friend. Grace and Honor's friendship is wonderful: it's sincere, it's pure, it's kind, and by the end they think of each other as siblings and are full of familial love. I appreciate it so much. Honor is the one who shows Grace an old journal explaining the White-Black Wing War and how it started, and Grace quite quickly believes it entirely and changes sides. I suppose it helps she is getting visions from the point of view of one of the people in the journal. I believe those are sent by God (yes, christian god, we'll get there), but are still pretty convenient.
Grace, sides switched and Honor (the Black-Wing prince, or "ascendant") befriended, Grace is trusted enough that she has an escape opportunity. Though she is now fond of the Black-Wings, she steals a copy of the journal to try and show her father, Concord, and hope he switches sides when he realizes the White-Wings are evil. You can guess this does not go well.
I'll seize my plot summary from here (that happens about 65% through, and is only included because it's quite predictable Concord is evil), but I do want to talk about Concord and Grace. It's probably the best done aspect of the book. I liked the writing style throughout- very solid, not overly descriptive but with moments of lyricism, easy to follow in combat and clear on what mattered. But Concord and Grace are special.
Concord is an abusive father. He's the Spymaster, and he's raised Grace strictly to follow his orders, perfect her training, and accept the idea she is punished when she fails. When we first open the book there doesn't seem to be anything that off about their relationship: he's stern but has moments of caring, he takes his job seriously and she's very determined to impress him. The longer Grace stays away from him, and sees Honor and his mother's healthy relationship, the more Grace can play with the idea something isn't right about Concord. Still, she holds on.
It's really hard to write this sort of story-line well. It is one of those things that if you haven't seen it done badly or aren't a writer yourself, you probably would assume is not that big a deal: just write a bad dad who yells, right? Except emotional abusive (and physical) is a lot more complex than that for the victim. Grace steals the journal and desperately flies back to Concord despite everything because she remembers all the things she loves about him- and she does love him. She's known him her whole life, and to recognize he's a horrible father and extremely abusive would be admitting she was a victim, and she was being abused. That is something that is very very hard to do. You don't want to let anyone know what horrible things happened to you, because some part of you is going to blame yourself for not knowing earlier.
Even when Concord refuses to accept the journal and proves he's evil- Grace finally accepting this- she still has a very hard time doing anything about it. She freezes in place when she sees him. She wants things to work out, somehow. She still hears his voice and what he taught her, even as she lets go of her image of him being her father.
It's really well done.
Angels (and taglines)
Come on up and perch on a chair: it's angel time.
The angels in this book are weird. The world is... weird.
The angels come in several varieties, linked back to old 'clans' that mixed hundreds of years ago- the forest clan, the desert clan, the mountain clan. Each has, like you'd expect of nationalities/ethnic groups, certain prominent features that set them apart, mostly in their wings. Angels themselves, though they almost certainly didn't evolve like natural beings, reproduce sexually and have families, generations, and full societies- full of history and legends. They're like people! They're actually called 'guardians' in this book (the word angel is never used).
Except... Well, are they angels? It's very easy to think this is a fantasy book about people with wings. The geography is decisively not Earth like (at one point a gigantic forest simply ends in a desert), and there are even fantasy beasts, like tree-dwelling forest cats. There's some degree of magic (just one, in that some angels can manipulate the wind) and a unique religion called 'The Trinity'.
Or... is it a unique religion? You can probably tell by the fact it's just called The Trinity, but these guys do follow Christianity. Disrupting the high fantasy illusion is also the existence of humans... somewhere. On Earth, we know, wherever that is. There's direct reference to Cain and Abel, and we know humans live on Earth while angels have their realm, where I guess they just hang out and don't do anything angel or guardian like. Inexplicably they do at one point have a book of human legends, implying someone out there has met one.
Further mysteries include reference to 'a poem about the Great Dragon's reign' (great dragon... the devil? Hey, does Satan exist in this world?) and even stranger, 'the history of the Fae Empire'. I suppose my question is more if this world of christian angels and the distant realm of Earth is Our Earth of a fantasy version of it.
I did know the Christian stuff would come up when I first got the book: it's listed in some postings I've seen, labeling the story 'a Christian story'. I think I end up expressing this every time religion comes up in my angel fiction books, but while I'm decisively not a christian, I'm fine with it being in books as long as its not preaching. And hey! This book is a perfect example of that done right, and it's even labeled Christian- Halo doesn't even warn you it's about to shame your entire existence for not being conservative Christian, and this book is just like 'yeah the holy Trinity is cool and probably some morals are christian themed'.
Though on the subject of taglines, the tagline for this book: "The Lines of Battle Are Drawn in Black and White". Typing this out made me realize it isn't actually 'aren't drawn', but I think the message is meant to be that way around- that not everything is black and white. The problem is that this is still a very black and white book. For a war between White Wings and Black Wings, it's... well, it's black and white! The big White Wings got together to evilly steal power and blame the Black Wings, who are innocent of everything the White Wings claim. Grey morality would be both sides being in the wrong somehow, but this book just tells us 'White Wings good' and then switches that a bit in to 'White Wings bad'. There's nothing objectively wrong with having very simple good/evil lines in your book, but it feels contrary to the theme of Grace as a 'grey wing'.
On I think my last note, I'm very frustrated by the cover. It's the wrong size on amazon and goodreads, and the graphic designer in me wants to... give it, god, a much better cover than it has. The fonts are just way too wonky, and makes the book look clearly unprofessional and less appealing.
Conclusion
For all of its faults, I did like Ascendant. It left me wishing for a little more in places, and somehow less in others, but the strong writing kept me going, even when it turned into a multi-chapter wilderness survival story. The world is creative, but more than that the super strong characters and their relationships to one another drive this book up.
(3.5 stars)
(Ascendant, Kimberly Grey)
Every feel like alternate universe theory is not only plausible but very real, and crossing over with reality? I don't usually, but the more I think about this book the more it sincerely feels like something I wrote in another timeline. That's a compliment and a good sign for me: I'm basically trying to say this book contains a whole bunch of elements you never see in mainstream fiction (it's indie), and also is all about angels (we all know I love those suckers.
Was it a good book? We run into a few troubles there. Not helping my assessment is the fact I spent the last X amount of time extremely depressed, triggering about midway through my read, so my memories are not as concise as I like them to be.
This book succeeds in being a story. The worldbuilding is both great (angels!) and not so (where and when are we? Is this Earth?). The characters are strong (our leads) with a found family theme and no romance, but the cast is also too large at times, involving many names and people we either meet once or never directly see. The writing is strong throughout though, but the rather simple plot has spots of muddle. It's this sort of a stew of a book.
Plot
There's war among the angels, but not how you'd think. Spread across a large world, white winged and black winged angels have been at war for hundreds of years. The cause too is not quite how you'd expect: rather than some sort of godly smite, the black wings assassinated a queen a while back, prompting the realization they were all evil and fallen.
Our main character is Grace, the daughter of the Spymaster Concord. Early on she is captured on a mission outside the White-Wing city and taken prisoner, brought to the secret Black-Wing city. It's clear shortly into her stay here that she has the wrong history: the White-Wings are the evil ones! If it's not clear I'll be talking about a couple spoilers from this book, but this is the first 'plot twist' which happens early on and doesn't count.
The backstory of the White-Black Wing war is probably the most confusing aspect of this, seconded by the history of Grace's blood father which I still don't understand. We're given the backstory through some journal entries and inexplicable visions Grace gets, but I pretty quickly got lost in the exact order of events, and who some of the characters were. It's nice world-building, but it also doesn't help every character in this book has the same theme for their name: a virtue. This gets complicated when you have Justice, Honor, Glory, Charity, Clarity (those two messed me up big), Temperance, Endurance, and more to keep track of.
As I get it, White Wings and Black Wings used to live together happily. One important guy got quite paranoid and framed a Black Wing for murder, and then consolidated power by blaming ALL Black Wings for this crime. Something like that. All Black Wings got persecuted and kicked out of the city, and propaganda got to work until they had a bloody, always-tied war going on.
Grace meets Honor in the Black-Wing city, who slowly becomes her friend. Grace and Honor's friendship is wonderful: it's sincere, it's pure, it's kind, and by the end they think of each other as siblings and are full of familial love. I appreciate it so much. Honor is the one who shows Grace an old journal explaining the White-Black Wing War and how it started, and Grace quite quickly believes it entirely and changes sides. I suppose it helps she is getting visions from the point of view of one of the people in the journal. I believe those are sent by God (yes, christian god, we'll get there), but are still pretty convenient.
Grace, sides switched and Honor (the Black-Wing prince, or "ascendant") befriended, Grace is trusted enough that she has an escape opportunity. Though she is now fond of the Black-Wings, she steals a copy of the journal to try and show her father, Concord, and hope he switches sides when he realizes the White-Wings are evil. You can guess this does not go well.
I'll seize my plot summary from here (that happens about 65% through, and is only included because it's quite predictable Concord is evil), but I do want to talk about Concord and Grace. It's probably the best done aspect of the book. I liked the writing style throughout- very solid, not overly descriptive but with moments of lyricism, easy to follow in combat and clear on what mattered. But Concord and Grace are special.
Concord is an abusive father. He's the Spymaster, and he's raised Grace strictly to follow his orders, perfect her training, and accept the idea she is punished when she fails. When we first open the book there doesn't seem to be anything that off about their relationship: he's stern but has moments of caring, he takes his job seriously and she's very determined to impress him. The longer Grace stays away from him, and sees Honor and his mother's healthy relationship, the more Grace can play with the idea something isn't right about Concord. Still, she holds on.
It's really hard to write this sort of story-line well. It is one of those things that if you haven't seen it done badly or aren't a writer yourself, you probably would assume is not that big a deal: just write a bad dad who yells, right? Except emotional abusive (and physical) is a lot more complex than that for the victim. Grace steals the journal and desperately flies back to Concord despite everything because she remembers all the things she loves about him- and she does love him. She's known him her whole life, and to recognize he's a horrible father and extremely abusive would be admitting she was a victim, and she was being abused. That is something that is very very hard to do. You don't want to let anyone know what horrible things happened to you, because some part of you is going to blame yourself for not knowing earlier.
Even when Concord refuses to accept the journal and proves he's evil- Grace finally accepting this- she still has a very hard time doing anything about it. She freezes in place when she sees him. She wants things to work out, somehow. She still hears his voice and what he taught her, even as she lets go of her image of him being her father.
It's really well done.
Angels (and taglines)
Come on up and perch on a chair: it's angel time.
The angels in this book are weird. The world is... weird.
The angels come in several varieties, linked back to old 'clans' that mixed hundreds of years ago- the forest clan, the desert clan, the mountain clan. Each has, like you'd expect of nationalities/ethnic groups, certain prominent features that set them apart, mostly in their wings. Angels themselves, though they almost certainly didn't evolve like natural beings, reproduce sexually and have families, generations, and full societies- full of history and legends. They're like people! They're actually called 'guardians' in this book (the word angel is never used).
Except... Well, are they angels? It's very easy to think this is a fantasy book about people with wings. The geography is decisively not Earth like (at one point a gigantic forest simply ends in a desert), and there are even fantasy beasts, like tree-dwelling forest cats. There's some degree of magic (just one, in that some angels can manipulate the wind) and a unique religion called 'The Trinity'.
Or... is it a unique religion? You can probably tell by the fact it's just called The Trinity, but these guys do follow Christianity. Disrupting the high fantasy illusion is also the existence of humans... somewhere. On Earth, we know, wherever that is. There's direct reference to Cain and Abel, and we know humans live on Earth while angels have their realm, where I guess they just hang out and don't do anything angel or guardian like. Inexplicably they do at one point have a book of human legends, implying someone out there has met one.
Further mysteries include reference to 'a poem about the Great Dragon's reign' (great dragon... the devil? Hey, does Satan exist in this world?) and even stranger, 'the history of the Fae Empire'. I suppose my question is more if this world of christian angels and the distant realm of Earth is Our Earth of a fantasy version of it.
I did know the Christian stuff would come up when I first got the book: it's listed in some postings I've seen, labeling the story 'a Christian story'. I think I end up expressing this every time religion comes up in my angel fiction books, but while I'm decisively not a christian, I'm fine with it being in books as long as its not preaching. And hey! This book is a perfect example of that done right, and it's even labeled Christian- Halo doesn't even warn you it's about to shame your entire existence for not being conservative Christian, and this book is just like 'yeah the holy Trinity is cool and probably some morals are christian themed'.
Though on the subject of taglines, the tagline for this book: "The Lines of Battle Are Drawn in Black and White". Typing this out made me realize it isn't actually 'aren't drawn', but I think the message is meant to be that way around- that not everything is black and white. The problem is that this is still a very black and white book. For a war between White Wings and Black Wings, it's... well, it's black and white! The big White Wings got together to evilly steal power and blame the Black Wings, who are innocent of everything the White Wings claim. Grey morality would be both sides being in the wrong somehow, but this book just tells us 'White Wings good' and then switches that a bit in to 'White Wings bad'. There's nothing objectively wrong with having very simple good/evil lines in your book, but it feels contrary to the theme of Grace as a 'grey wing'.
On I think my last note, I'm very frustrated by the cover. It's the wrong size on amazon and goodreads, and the graphic designer in me wants to... give it, god, a much better cover than it has. The fonts are just way too wonky, and makes the book look clearly unprofessional and less appealing.
Conclusion
For all of its faults, I did like Ascendant. It left me wishing for a little more in places, and somehow less in others, but the strong writing kept me going, even when it turned into a multi-chapter wilderness survival story. The world is creative, but more than that the super strong characters and their relationships to one another drive this book up.
July 21, 2023
tldr; 0 stars. painfully mediocre. badly written and badly edited. needs a few more years of planning, writing, and polishing before this could come anywhere near being something publishable. very, very white and christian, with mildly problematic worldbuilding if you care about that.
1. Let’s start with the actual writing. Not the plot or the characters, but just the way it’s written.
When reading this book, grammatical and punctuation errors jump out at you immediately. “The Black-Wing’s” with the apostrophe before the s when the term is being used to refer to more than one character. Missing commas. Commas where they don’t fit.
Earth, the planet and the world, not capitalized. Bad grammar overall. Inconsistencies in capitalization, leading to cases where it’s straight up wrong. Paragraphs that should be split apart put into long, winding ones. Uncapitalized beginnings of sentences. Sentences that should have been cut off a few commas ago.
I can hardly believe this book was edited, what, two times. “When father replies, his voice is low and smooth, his voice low and smooth.” “She had all but forgotten that the was there.” “He is standing beside a pack “Your rations.” ”.
I read this book on Scribd. I’m sure that the actual paperback versions of this book are edited better than how it is on that platform; which is to say, the beginning of each chapter is utterly broken. It begins with “chapter”, the page is empty besides it and so is the next page, and then the page after that states the number and immediately below that line begins the chapter. Half the page is empty on the page that the chapter begins for real. Sometimes this isn’t the case! Sometimes it looks even worse.
This is just sloppy and amateurish. If you’re not willing to put in the work to make it even look a normal book where each chapter begins on a single page marked “chapter 12”, where instead halfway down the page the chapter begins instead of “chapter” being on page 203 and “12” being on chapter 205 and the chapter beginning at the top of page 207 with the bottom half the page empty… You start to wonder, how much work went into this book, anyway? Definitely not enough to make it actually good.
Somehow this has gone on for at least four years without being fixed, since this book was published in 2019. Does the author not care enough about her book? Does no one care about this work? If a book made it to self-publishing a not insignificant amount of work must have had to have gone into it, but the way it’s remained disappointingly edited and formatted for years on end feels as if this book was simply self-published and then abandoned.
The style of narrative writing varies between formal and informal. I guess that for the audience this is supposed to be targeting—a middle school or younger one—this could read as intriguing, but it mostly just reads as the author being confused on what she’s trying to write.
Are we following the 3rd person limited PoV of a young character whose internal voice is the narration, or are we following a more sophisticated voice of the 3rd person omniscient narrator? A more skilled author could balance the two voices and use it to their advantage, but this novel just feels confused on what it wants to be, and inconsistent about it to boot.
The dialogue is shallow and not a single character has a distinct or strong voice. The dialogue—and this whole book, as well—reads as having been written by someone who has not encountered a wide variety of distinct voices in any kind of media. The “formal” dialogue feels pretentious, a child’s idea of what important meetings between powerful people might feel like. The dialogue of adult characters—characters who are clearly meant to be read as powerful, accomplished, intelligent adults with long careers behind them—read as, again, a child’s idea of how a fancy businessman or a politician might talk.
This doesn’t just feel like I’m looking at the world through the eyes of a 14 year old, but that I’m looking at the fiction writing of a 14 year old who is decidedly bad at punctuation.
About halfway through the book, we start to read journal entries. It’s certainly a choice of method to get information across. Not a good one, in my opinion, but I digress. The journal entries and the rest of the writing is not distinguished in any way. It’s not in italics. It’s not separated from the rest of the text with any lines or special marks. It mingles with the actual text of the book, and it’s confusing to read. When does it stop being the journal and start being Grace’s 3rd person limited PoV again? Oh, you just have to read it several times to figure it out. This is a bad formatting decision.
2. Moving on to worldbuilding.
The worldbuilding is flimsy and weak. It’s contrived and unappealing.
The concept of this book is angels but they’re more human-like. They have names based on what I know are Christian virtues; Grace, Concord, Justice, Noble, Allegiance, Haven. These are certainly not real angel names from Bible canon (which feels mildly blasphemous, honestly), and they do not read as being angelic but rather just Christian.
They are not siblings under God, but rather people who can get married and can have offspring between the union of a man and a woman. That is decidedly not angelic and is honestly disappointing, because I thought this could be an interesting take on using angels in fantasy fiction.
The author honestly could’ve just named these characters normally and made this a book about winged people, and it would’ve worked just as well; or, honestly, even better? The only way these characters are angel-like in any way is that… They have wings and they have fallen counterparts with dark wings? I mean, that’s a pretty angelic thing, but it’s also the ONLY angelic thing. This book could literally just be about bird people and it would’ve been better for it.
Well, alright then. Does the book spend a lot of time taking advantage of the fact that every character has wings, or mentioning the wings at all? Honestly, no! I forgot multiple times that these characters had wings until they were mentioned again for the first time in the chapter. It’s a worldbuilding point that white-wings have white wings with three black feathers and black-wings have the reverse. Sometimes characters’ wings are described the way a character’s actions are described to demonstrate what they’re feeling, but that’s very scarce and few in between.
The angel “races”. Oh, boy. Well. Knowing the author was white did explain some of these things.
There are three angel races. The Mountain Clan angels have pale skin and hair with sleek and narrow wings built for speed. The Forest Clan angels have coppery skin, dark hair, and short statures with rounded wings made for maneuverability. The Desert Clan angels have dark skin and strong, long and broad wings.
Oh yeah, that covers the base of every single skin tone in existence. Pale skin and hair, coppery skin and dark hair, and dark skin. We’re not missing anything at all.
Hey, where are the pale Asians and the brown Asians? The Indigenous Americans, the Indigenous Oceanians? Apparently they all don’t exist within the perfect winged angelic races. Great worldbuilding from a white person.
And, of course, making your darkest-skinned angels your “strongest winged” ones is definitely not bad stereotyping. No, not at all. Don’t think about the history behind cultural stereotypes against black people. Don’t think about the actual real harm that comes from the belief that black people are physically stronger brutes compared to paler people. Let’s not think too hard about all of that, shall we?
95% of the worldbuilding comes in infodumps. Not a single natural progression of worldbuilding, but rather it’s all infodumping that feels unnatural. Let’s take a few paragraphs for this girl to suddenly and randomly reminisce about the history of her world, for no reason whatsoever. Let’s suddenly think about the rules of this society. It’s out of place and it reads as amateurish rather than purposeful. Let’s stare at a weapon and think about the history of this world as well as the process of how metal-like weapons are made. Let’s suddenly think about how twin angels work in this world, instead of talking about it or having a character learn about it with us. This is why you use younger characters or characters who don’t know much about this new world, by the way; so that the audience can naturally learn about the world with this character.
3. The characters.
Grace is boring and difficult to relate to. I mean, she’s a mentally 14 year old protagonist. Of course a grown adult is going to have difficulty relating to a character written to be so young. But no, I honestly feel no sympathy for her or interest in her as a character. She feels like a self-insert, a blank canvas for anyone to relate themselves into. She’s not a bad character, or an annoying one.
She’s just not interesting at all. There’s no character beyond “poor abused 14 year old child soldier spy”. It’s boring. She’s not fleshed out at all. What does she like? What are her values? What are her conflicts? Uh… I guess she feels a strong duty to her abusive adoptive father. That’s it. Nothing defines her. She has no traits I can pick out whatsoever. This is not how you make a compelling or likable character.
This character is nothing. No substance, no richness, no complexity. She’s just nothing.
Grace “tries to manipulate” the Black-wings by “pretending to be scared”. This is such a boring choice. I can’t express to you how much I wished things went differently at the point that Grace straight up goes “hey, sorry I tried to manipulate you by pretending I was scared”. This is not how normal characters are written, and it does not feel like this was a characterization choice. This just feels like bad writing.
What about the other characters? Well, every character is boring. None of them are compelling, or feel like real people. None of them are fleshed out at all. We have flat, simple characters that represent roles in the story rather than interesting, complex people. They’re just roles; that’s all they are. The Spymaster and Father. The King. The Rival Politician (to her father). The Other Soldiers. The Kind Healer who’s Also the Ascendant.
How was I supposed to feel anything at all when the soldiers were betrayed? I didn’t know the traitor, and I didn’t know any of the characters being betrayed. No time whatsoever was spent detailing them or building up the dynamic between them and the main character, and so the readers feel nothing whatsoever when anything at all happens. This happens. That happens. That’s it.
Glory dies saving Grace and I didn’t feel anything because I barely even remember who that character was. None of these characters are distinct.
4. The plot.
Grace is the adopted daughter of the Spymaster and she’s been trained to be a Saboteur, which is some cool spy thing, for decades. The King is paranoid about traitors and when she uncovers a spy, he decides that sending her on a mission is a good way to trust her loyalty.
Alright, I’m sure that angel maturity is different from human maturity and that they grow up at different speeds. However, the 140 year old protagonist reads very, very much as a 14 year old in maturity, the way she thinks, the way she acts, the way she is written. So. Yeah, let’s just send a 14 year old on a military mission into enemy territory during a war. She’s not a soldier, by the way. She’s told to commit murder if she can’t capture someone. She has the maturity of a 14 year old and is written to be 14. And she’s sent on a military mission. Into enemy territory. During an ongoing war.
Yes, that’s what the plot hinges on. Excellent logic. I mean, yes, as a grown adult reading fiction clearly written for middle school audiences (by possibly someone of that age? unsure) I should not be complaining about logic like this. Suspension of disbelief and such. But I do remember being 14 and thinking scenarios like this were unrealistic unless they were shoved into it via prophecy or something.
Anyway, she’s betrayed by an angel that literally doesn’t matter because there’s no time spent detailing any relationship whatsoever or building upon interesting dynamics, their whole team is captured or killed or one escapes or something, Grace murders someone but then gets captured, she’s a prisoner of war and a healer takes care of her. And then it turns out that the healer, Honor, is the prince aka the Ascendant.
Grace goes from feeling betrayed by Honor because he didn’t tell her the whole truth, to immediately feeling like he’s her brother just because he gave her proof that she’s been lied to her entire life. This is not good writing. She literally reads a journal and goes “wow, everything i’ve been told for a hundred and forty years is just lies and I trust the people who I’ve considered my evil mortal enemies to be eradicated my entire life!” This is not good writing. She just suddenly considers him to be a brother to her now. This is not good writing.
“And just like that, they are on even footing. No lies or guilt between them. No hatred and wariness.” Literally. And just like that, they’re completely fine. It’s not a natural progression of the relationship and it makes everything that happened before it feel shallow. Not that it felt that deep at all in the first place.
“No. I will not serve him. His goals are evil. He is evil.” What? And just like that, just because you were shown a journal entry, you’re on this side now? 140 years of indoctrination, just gone? This is not how people act. But of course, a skilled writer can use abnormal reactions to show something unique or significant about this character and or the state they are in. That’s not the case! This is just bad writing.
One thing that I did consider natural (as well as a natural progression of the story) is that Grace decides to go back to the Citadel to show her father proof of what’s actually happened.
Anyway Grace spends like a fifth of the book just being chased around and it’s boring and at the end she just gets chosen by God Himself, a 14 year old, and she just gets gray wings and is supposed to end the war somehow, OK, great.
5. Conclusion.
I never want to read anything by this author ever again unless something drastically changes in the way that she writes. This book was genuinely painful to read before I even hit the halfway point. I’m writing this part having read 69% (ha) of the book and I do not want to go even further. The sunk cost fallacy is the only thing that’s keeping me reading this book.
The pacing is nonsensical and just bad.
Finishing this book was like swallowing staplers. I have more to say but I genuinely ran out of character count. I hate myself for finishing this book and if every self-published book is like this I never want to pick one up again. Bye.
1. Let’s start with the actual writing. Not the plot or the characters, but just the way it’s written.
When reading this book, grammatical and punctuation errors jump out at you immediately. “The Black-Wing’s” with the apostrophe before the s when the term is being used to refer to more than one character. Missing commas. Commas where they don’t fit.
Earth, the planet and the world, not capitalized. Bad grammar overall. Inconsistencies in capitalization, leading to cases where it’s straight up wrong. Paragraphs that should be split apart put into long, winding ones. Uncapitalized beginnings of sentences. Sentences that should have been cut off a few commas ago.
I can hardly believe this book was edited, what, two times. “When father replies, his voice is low and smooth, his voice low and smooth.” “She had all but forgotten that the was there.” “He is standing beside a pack “Your rations.” ”.
I read this book on Scribd. I’m sure that the actual paperback versions of this book are edited better than how it is on that platform; which is to say, the beginning of each chapter is utterly broken. It begins with “chapter”, the page is empty besides it and so is the next page, and then the page after that states the number and immediately below that line begins the chapter. Half the page is empty on the page that the chapter begins for real. Sometimes this isn’t the case! Sometimes it looks even worse.
This is just sloppy and amateurish. If you’re not willing to put in the work to make it even look a normal book where each chapter begins on a single page marked “chapter 12”, where instead halfway down the page the chapter begins instead of “chapter” being on page 203 and “12” being on chapter 205 and the chapter beginning at the top of page 207 with the bottom half the page empty… You start to wonder, how much work went into this book, anyway? Definitely not enough to make it actually good.
Somehow this has gone on for at least four years without being fixed, since this book was published in 2019. Does the author not care enough about her book? Does no one care about this work? If a book made it to self-publishing a not insignificant amount of work must have had to have gone into it, but the way it’s remained disappointingly edited and formatted for years on end feels as if this book was simply self-published and then abandoned.
The style of narrative writing varies between formal and informal. I guess that for the audience this is supposed to be targeting—a middle school or younger one—this could read as intriguing, but it mostly just reads as the author being confused on what she’s trying to write.
Are we following the 3rd person limited PoV of a young character whose internal voice is the narration, or are we following a more sophisticated voice of the 3rd person omniscient narrator? A more skilled author could balance the two voices and use it to their advantage, but this novel just feels confused on what it wants to be, and inconsistent about it to boot.
The dialogue is shallow and not a single character has a distinct or strong voice. The dialogue—and this whole book, as well—reads as having been written by someone who has not encountered a wide variety of distinct voices in any kind of media. The “formal” dialogue feels pretentious, a child’s idea of what important meetings between powerful people might feel like. The dialogue of adult characters—characters who are clearly meant to be read as powerful, accomplished, intelligent adults with long careers behind them—read as, again, a child’s idea of how a fancy businessman or a politician might talk.
This doesn’t just feel like I’m looking at the world through the eyes of a 14 year old, but that I’m looking at the fiction writing of a 14 year old who is decidedly bad at punctuation.
About halfway through the book, we start to read journal entries. It’s certainly a choice of method to get information across. Not a good one, in my opinion, but I digress. The journal entries and the rest of the writing is not distinguished in any way. It’s not in italics. It’s not separated from the rest of the text with any lines or special marks. It mingles with the actual text of the book, and it’s confusing to read. When does it stop being the journal and start being Grace’s 3rd person limited PoV again? Oh, you just have to read it several times to figure it out. This is a bad formatting decision.
2. Moving on to worldbuilding.
The worldbuilding is flimsy and weak. It’s contrived and unappealing.
The concept of this book is angels but they’re more human-like. They have names based on what I know are Christian virtues; Grace, Concord, Justice, Noble, Allegiance, Haven. These are certainly not real angel names from Bible canon (which feels mildly blasphemous, honestly), and they do not read as being angelic but rather just Christian.
They are not siblings under God, but rather people who can get married and can have offspring between the union of a man and a woman. That is decidedly not angelic and is honestly disappointing, because I thought this could be an interesting take on using angels in fantasy fiction.
The author honestly could’ve just named these characters normally and made this a book about winged people, and it would’ve worked just as well; or, honestly, even better? The only way these characters are angel-like in any way is that… They have wings and they have fallen counterparts with dark wings? I mean, that’s a pretty angelic thing, but it’s also the ONLY angelic thing. This book could literally just be about bird people and it would’ve been better for it.
Well, alright then. Does the book spend a lot of time taking advantage of the fact that every character has wings, or mentioning the wings at all? Honestly, no! I forgot multiple times that these characters had wings until they were mentioned again for the first time in the chapter. It’s a worldbuilding point that white-wings have white wings with three black feathers and black-wings have the reverse. Sometimes characters’ wings are described the way a character’s actions are described to demonstrate what they’re feeling, but that’s very scarce and few in between.
The angel “races”. Oh, boy. Well. Knowing the author was white did explain some of these things.
There are three angel races. The Mountain Clan angels have pale skin and hair with sleek and narrow wings built for speed. The Forest Clan angels have coppery skin, dark hair, and short statures with rounded wings made for maneuverability. The Desert Clan angels have dark skin and strong, long and broad wings.
Oh yeah, that covers the base of every single skin tone in existence. Pale skin and hair, coppery skin and dark hair, and dark skin. We’re not missing anything at all.
Hey, where are the pale Asians and the brown Asians? The Indigenous Americans, the Indigenous Oceanians? Apparently they all don’t exist within the perfect winged angelic races. Great worldbuilding from a white person.
And, of course, making your darkest-skinned angels your “strongest winged” ones is definitely not bad stereotyping. No, not at all. Don’t think about the history behind cultural stereotypes against black people. Don’t think about the actual real harm that comes from the belief that black people are physically stronger brutes compared to paler people. Let’s not think too hard about all of that, shall we?
95% of the worldbuilding comes in infodumps. Not a single natural progression of worldbuilding, but rather it’s all infodumping that feels unnatural. Let’s take a few paragraphs for this girl to suddenly and randomly reminisce about the history of her world, for no reason whatsoever. Let’s suddenly think about the rules of this society. It’s out of place and it reads as amateurish rather than purposeful. Let’s stare at a weapon and think about the history of this world as well as the process of how metal-like weapons are made. Let’s suddenly think about how twin angels work in this world, instead of talking about it or having a character learn about it with us. This is why you use younger characters or characters who don’t know much about this new world, by the way; so that the audience can naturally learn about the world with this character.
3. The characters.
Grace is boring and difficult to relate to. I mean, she’s a mentally 14 year old protagonist. Of course a grown adult is going to have difficulty relating to a character written to be so young. But no, I honestly feel no sympathy for her or interest in her as a character. She feels like a self-insert, a blank canvas for anyone to relate themselves into. She’s not a bad character, or an annoying one.
She’s just not interesting at all. There’s no character beyond “poor abused 14 year old child soldier spy”. It’s boring. She’s not fleshed out at all. What does she like? What are her values? What are her conflicts? Uh… I guess she feels a strong duty to her abusive adoptive father. That’s it. Nothing defines her. She has no traits I can pick out whatsoever. This is not how you make a compelling or likable character.
This character is nothing. No substance, no richness, no complexity. She’s just nothing.
Grace “tries to manipulate” the Black-wings by “pretending to be scared”. This is such a boring choice. I can’t express to you how much I wished things went differently at the point that Grace straight up goes “hey, sorry I tried to manipulate you by pretending I was scared”. This is not how normal characters are written, and it does not feel like this was a characterization choice. This just feels like bad writing.
What about the other characters? Well, every character is boring. None of them are compelling, or feel like real people. None of them are fleshed out at all. We have flat, simple characters that represent roles in the story rather than interesting, complex people. They’re just roles; that’s all they are. The Spymaster and Father. The King. The Rival Politician (to her father). The Other Soldiers. The Kind Healer who’s Also the Ascendant.
How was I supposed to feel anything at all when the soldiers were betrayed? I didn’t know the traitor, and I didn’t know any of the characters being betrayed. No time whatsoever was spent detailing them or building up the dynamic between them and the main character, and so the readers feel nothing whatsoever when anything at all happens. This happens. That happens. That’s it.
Glory dies saving Grace and I didn’t feel anything because I barely even remember who that character was. None of these characters are distinct.
4. The plot.
Grace is the adopted daughter of the Spymaster and she’s been trained to be a Saboteur, which is some cool spy thing, for decades. The King is paranoid about traitors and when she uncovers a spy, he decides that sending her on a mission is a good way to trust her loyalty.
Alright, I’m sure that angel maturity is different from human maturity and that they grow up at different speeds. However, the 140 year old protagonist reads very, very much as a 14 year old in maturity, the way she thinks, the way she acts, the way she is written. So. Yeah, let’s just send a 14 year old on a military mission into enemy territory during a war. She’s not a soldier, by the way. She’s told to commit murder if she can’t capture someone. She has the maturity of a 14 year old and is written to be 14. And she’s sent on a military mission. Into enemy territory. During an ongoing war.
Yes, that’s what the plot hinges on. Excellent logic. I mean, yes, as a grown adult reading fiction clearly written for middle school audiences (by possibly someone of that age? unsure) I should not be complaining about logic like this. Suspension of disbelief and such. But I do remember being 14 and thinking scenarios like this were unrealistic unless they were shoved into it via prophecy or something.
Anyway, she’s betrayed by an angel that literally doesn’t matter because there’s no time spent detailing any relationship whatsoever or building upon interesting dynamics, their whole team is captured or killed or one escapes or something, Grace murders someone but then gets captured, she’s a prisoner of war and a healer takes care of her. And then it turns out that the healer, Honor, is the prince aka the Ascendant.
Grace goes from feeling betrayed by Honor because he didn’t tell her the whole truth, to immediately feeling like he’s her brother just because he gave her proof that she’s been lied to her entire life. This is not good writing. She literally reads a journal and goes “wow, everything i’ve been told for a hundred and forty years is just lies and I trust the people who I’ve considered my evil mortal enemies to be eradicated my entire life!” This is not good writing. She just suddenly considers him to be a brother to her now. This is not good writing.
“And just like that, they are on even footing. No lies or guilt between them. No hatred and wariness.” Literally. And just like that, they’re completely fine. It’s not a natural progression of the relationship and it makes everything that happened before it feel shallow. Not that it felt that deep at all in the first place.
“No. I will not serve him. His goals are evil. He is evil.” What? And just like that, just because you were shown a journal entry, you’re on this side now? 140 years of indoctrination, just gone? This is not how people act. But of course, a skilled writer can use abnormal reactions to show something unique or significant about this character and or the state they are in. That’s not the case! This is just bad writing.
One thing that I did consider natural (as well as a natural progression of the story) is that Grace decides to go back to the Citadel to show her father proof of what’s actually happened.
Anyway Grace spends like a fifth of the book just being chased around and it’s boring and at the end she just gets chosen by God Himself, a 14 year old, and she just gets gray wings and is supposed to end the war somehow, OK, great.
5. Conclusion.
I never want to read anything by this author ever again unless something drastically changes in the way that she writes. This book was genuinely painful to read before I even hit the halfway point. I’m writing this part having read 69% (ha) of the book and I do not want to go even further. The sunk cost fallacy is the only thing that’s keeping me reading this book.
The pacing is nonsensical and just bad.
Finishing this book was like swallowing staplers. I have more to say but I genuinely ran out of character count. I hate myself for finishing this book and if every self-published book is like this I never want to pick one up again. Bye.
July 12, 2020
Gosh, I really enjoyed this book. It’s been several months since I read it, and I’m still thinking about it. I read it during a time when I was DNFing a lot of books and reading erratically, but this one I kept thinking about when I put it down, which says a lot about how compelling the story was.
And the story WAS compelling. It was well plotted, the characters were well developed, and the fantasy world was intriguing without being overwhelmingly detailed. I hope we can visit more of the world, and in more detail, in future books, but I really liked that you got just enough information to make the story make sense, and not any more.
The main relationship in the book is a found sibling one, as opposed to romantic, and I thought that was lovely. Indeed, at its heart this is a story about relationships, between siblings, and between parents and children. It doesn’t shy away from having some pretty awful people, but it doesn’t dwell on their awfulness and lets you see the effects they cause. Even better, those effects are both global (civil war!) and interpersonal. A big part of Grace’s character arc is coming to an understanding that her relationship with her father is toxic (something that the reader can see much sooner). And Grace, oh, Grace, I just love her so much.
The other aspect of the book that I loved was the plot twists! It is really hard to surprise me anymore, because I’ve read so. many. books. and can often see what’s coming. But this one had some great twisty moments. I also really appreciated that the twists weren’t there for shock value, or to make the story more dramatic, it was just such a well-told story that I couldn’t see where it was going.
Five stars, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series! I need to find out what happens with [redacted] and [redacted].
Many thanks to Kimberly for not only sending me the book, but waiting patiently for me to finally read it, and even more patiently for me to finally review it (sorry! I’m a terrible reviewer)
And the story WAS compelling. It was well plotted, the characters were well developed, and the fantasy world was intriguing without being overwhelmingly detailed. I hope we can visit more of the world, and in more detail, in future books, but I really liked that you got just enough information to make the story make sense, and not any more.
The main relationship in the book is a found sibling one, as opposed to romantic, and I thought that was lovely. Indeed, at its heart this is a story about relationships, between siblings, and between parents and children. It doesn’t shy away from having some pretty awful people, but it doesn’t dwell on their awfulness and lets you see the effects they cause. Even better, those effects are both global (civil war!) and interpersonal. A big part of Grace’s character arc is coming to an understanding that her relationship with her father is toxic (something that the reader can see much sooner). And Grace, oh, Grace, I just love her so much.
The other aspect of the book that I loved was the plot twists! It is really hard to surprise me anymore, because I’ve read so. many. books. and can often see what’s coming. But this one had some great twisty moments. I also really appreciated that the twists weren’t there for shock value, or to make the story more dramatic, it was just such a well-told story that I couldn’t see where it was going.
Five stars, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series! I need to find out what happens with [redacted] and [redacted].
Many thanks to Kimberly for not only sending me the book, but waiting patiently for me to finally read it, and even more patiently for me to finally review it (sorry! I’m a terrible reviewer)
December 9, 2019
Going into this story, I already knew it was in my usual reading wheel-house. I’m always a sucker for fantasy stories, especially ones with complex conflict. This story was absolutely no exception.
I’ll admit that I became a touch worried at some points, having noticed some of the tell-tale signs of upcoming cliches that, while I always enjoy, I’ve seen written poorly too many times. Kimberly Grey pleasantly surprised me, however. Not only did Grey execute some of my beloved cliches, but they also lead some of them into outcomes I absolutely did not expect. And, let me tell you, I loved it.
Grace, as the main character, is a brilliant narrator to follow. Not only does she begin the story believing in her mission and the people alongside her, but the reader is given the opportunity to watch as her own understanding of the world, war, and everything around her actually develops. After all, Grace is still a child in this war, a child that has been misled and trained to be a soldier all her life. On top of that, she’s just an all-around lovable character and I really enjoyed my time with her.
On top of the complex conflict and lovable narrator and her development, I absolutely loved the focus on found-family in this story. It’s been a while since I had the opportunity to read a story with a well-written found-family element and, I must say, this was refreshing and incredibly satisfying. Grey could’ve easily written a romantic relationship between Grace and her new family member, but, again, pleasantly surprised me by creating a loving, sibling relationship. Thank you so much for that.
I highly recommend this book, and I’m excited to see this published so that more people can take in this story.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I’ll admit that I became a touch worried at some points, having noticed some of the tell-tale signs of upcoming cliches that, while I always enjoy, I’ve seen written poorly too many times. Kimberly Grey pleasantly surprised me, however. Not only did Grey execute some of my beloved cliches, but they also lead some of them into outcomes I absolutely did not expect. And, let me tell you, I loved it.
Grace, as the main character, is a brilliant narrator to follow. Not only does she begin the story believing in her mission and the people alongside her, but the reader is given the opportunity to watch as her own understanding of the world, war, and everything around her actually develops. After all, Grace is still a child in this war, a child that has been misled and trained to be a soldier all her life. On top of that, she’s just an all-around lovable character and I really enjoyed my time with her.
On top of the complex conflict and lovable narrator and her development, I absolutely loved the focus on found-family in this story. It’s been a while since I had the opportunity to read a story with a well-written found-family element and, I must say, this was refreshing and incredibly satisfying. Grey could’ve easily written a romantic relationship between Grace and her new family member, but, again, pleasantly surprised me by creating a loving, sibling relationship. Thank you so much for that.
I highly recommend this book, and I’m excited to see this published so that more people can take in this story.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
January 8, 2020
Received a copy from the author for review.
The synopsis of this story sounded really good to me which is why I was excited to read this novel. A Christian fantasy surrounded around human like angels. I enjoyed that the angels all had real emotions. They weren't just ready to go to war and all stoic. You had many that felt emotions which I enjoyed. I also enjoyed that they had different features from feathers, skin and eyes that depicted whether they were from the Desert, Forest or Mountain clans.
Grace is a young White-Wing trained to be the Saboteur. She is the adopted daughter of the White-Wing Spymaster, Concord. She always seeks to please her father and find her place among her people. She's very inquisitive and seems to want to belong even though she is different. I loved watching her grow from being this dependent child to an independent one. Grace had a lot of "moxie" going for her.
Concord is the White-Wing Spymaster, and a trusted advisor of Justice. I didn't think he was a bad guy until things were revealed about him. I didn't care for him at all. He was annoying and terrible as a father.
Justice is the king of the White-Wings and is bitter about the death of his twin sister Haven. He seeks to destroy all Black-Wings. He is just an idiot all around and his death was WELL DESERVED. Allegiance is the mother of Grace and the White-Wing Air Commander. She is an evil woman with no heart. I wanted to slap her every single time she appeared on the page. She irked me to no end.
Charity is the Black-Wing queen and many believe that she is evil, however, she is more than that. She's a caring and loving woman. She protects her people even if she has to look bad. I enjoyed her.
Honor is a Black-Wing healer. When Grace is captured by his people he is charged with caring for her and making sure she is healed. Honor is an intelligent young man with a pure heart. He seeks to bring peace to all.
Glory is the captain of Charity’s personal guard and he was a tough looking guy, but seemed to be a sweet man. I liked him enough and was sad for his end.
I'm definitely interested in continuing on with the trilogy and finding out what happens next for Grace and Honor in their world with the war.
The synopsis of this story sounded really good to me which is why I was excited to read this novel. A Christian fantasy surrounded around human like angels. I enjoyed that the angels all had real emotions. They weren't just ready to go to war and all stoic. You had many that felt emotions which I enjoyed. I also enjoyed that they had different features from feathers, skin and eyes that depicted whether they were from the Desert, Forest or Mountain clans.
Grace is a young White-Wing trained to be the Saboteur. She is the adopted daughter of the White-Wing Spymaster, Concord. She always seeks to please her father and find her place among her people. She's very inquisitive and seems to want to belong even though she is different. I loved watching her grow from being this dependent child to an independent one. Grace had a lot of "moxie" going for her.
Concord is the White-Wing Spymaster, and a trusted advisor of Justice. I didn't think he was a bad guy until things were revealed about him. I didn't care for him at all. He was annoying and terrible as a father.
Justice is the king of the White-Wings and is bitter about the death of his twin sister Haven. He seeks to destroy all Black-Wings. He is just an idiot all around and his death was WELL DESERVED. Allegiance is the mother of Grace and the White-Wing Air Commander. She is an evil woman with no heart. I wanted to slap her every single time she appeared on the page. She irked me to no end.
Charity is the Black-Wing queen and many believe that she is evil, however, she is more than that. She's a caring and loving woman. She protects her people even if she has to look bad. I enjoyed her.
Honor is a Black-Wing healer. When Grace is captured by his people he is charged with caring for her and making sure she is healed. Honor is an intelligent young man with a pure heart. He seeks to bring peace to all.
Glory is the captain of Charity’s personal guard and he was a tough looking guy, but seemed to be a sweet man. I liked him enough and was sad for his end.
I'm definitely interested in continuing on with the trilogy and finding out what happens next for Grace and Honor in their world with the war.
January 8, 2020
Received a copy from the author for review.
The synopsis of this story sounded really good to me which is why I was excited to read this novel. A Christian fantasy surrounded around human like angels. I enjoyed that the angels all had real emotions. They weren't just ready to go to war and all stoic. You had many that felt emotions which I enjoyed. I also enjoyed that they had different features from feathers, skin and eyes that depicted whether they were from the Desert, Forest or Mountain clans.
Grace is a young White-Wing trained to be the Saboteur. She is the adopted daughter of the White-Wing Spymaster, Concord. She always seeks to please her father and find her place among her people. She's very inquisitive and seems to want to belong even though she is different. I loved watching her grow from being this dependent child to an independent one. Grace had a lot of "moxie" going for her.
Concord is the White-Wing Spymaster, and a trusted advisor of Justice. I didn't think he was a bad guy until things were revealed about him. I didn't care for him at all. He was annoying and terrible as a father.
Justice is the king of the White-Wings and is bitter about the death of his twin sister Haven. He seeks to destroy all Black-Wings. He is just an idiot all around and his death was WELL DESERVED. Allegiance is the mother of Grace and the White-Wing Air Commander. She is an evil woman with no heart. I wanted to slap her every single time she appeared on the page. She irked me to no end.
Charity is the Black-Wing queen and many believe that she is evil, however, she is more than that. She's a caring and loving woman. She protects her people even if she has to look bad. I enjoyed her.
Honor is a Black-Wing healer. When Grace is captured by his people he is charged with caring for her and making sure she is healed. Honor is an intelligent young man with a pure heart. He seeks to bring peace to all.
Glory is the captain of Charity’s personal guard and he was a tough looking guy, but seemed to be a sweet man. I liked him enough and was sad for his end.
I'm definitely interested in continuing on with the trilogy and finding out what happens next for Grace and Honor in their world with the war.
The synopsis of this story sounded really good to me which is why I was excited to read this novel. A Christian fantasy surrounded around human like angels. I enjoyed that the angels all had real emotions. They weren't just ready to go to war and all stoic. You had many that felt emotions which I enjoyed. I also enjoyed that they had different features from feathers, skin and eyes that depicted whether they were from the Desert, Forest or Mountain clans.
Grace is a young White-Wing trained to be the Saboteur. She is the adopted daughter of the White-Wing Spymaster, Concord. She always seeks to please her father and find her place among her people. She's very inquisitive and seems to want to belong even though she is different. I loved watching her grow from being this dependent child to an independent one. Grace had a lot of "moxie" going for her.
Concord is the White-Wing Spymaster, and a trusted advisor of Justice. I didn't think he was a bad guy until things were revealed about him. I didn't care for him at all. He was annoying and terrible as a father.
Justice is the king of the White-Wings and is bitter about the death of his twin sister Haven. He seeks to destroy all Black-Wings. He is just an idiot all around and his death was WELL DESERVED. Allegiance is the mother of Grace and the White-Wing Air Commander. She is an evil woman with no heart. I wanted to slap her every single time she appeared on the page. She irked me to no end.
Charity is the Black-Wing queen and many believe that she is evil, however, she is more than that. She's a caring and loving woman. She protects her people even if she has to look bad. I enjoyed her.
Honor is a Black-Wing healer. When Grace is captured by his people he is charged with caring for her and making sure she is healed. Honor is an intelligent young man with a pure heart. He seeks to bring peace to all.
Glory is the captain of Charity’s personal guard and he was a tough looking guy, but seemed to be a sweet man. I liked him enough and was sad for his end.
I'm definitely interested in continuing on with the trilogy and finding out what happens next for Grace and Honor in their world with the war.
August 17, 2019
I was given a copy of the book by the author in exchange for an honest review.
I was excited, then wary, then excited to read this book. I'm always a big fan of "the enemy isn't who you think" stories and this one looked to be decent. When I read a bit more and discovered that the book was labeled as "Christian" in some sources, I was a bit more wary. I've been burned by thinly-veiled proselytizing calling themselves faith-based books before and a story about angels seemed to be very on the nose.
This one, however, was much more than I had hoped. The Christian values are still there for people that appreciate that in a story (especially near the end) but they're more subtle aspects of the themes, rather than any kind of outright Christ analogy. The main cast of protagonists are endearing. There's an adorable platonic relationship, which is sorely underrepresented in YA fantasy.
I appreciated Grace's journey and the hardships she goes through to right a wrong she believes she's committed. The sheer determination she showed through the third act was admirable and the description of her trek more than shows her perseverance. I wanted her to beat the odds as I read.
Probably my favorite part, and what made me such a big fan early on, was the world building. It was done seamlessly with the story. There were few paragraphs of straight exposition and more discovering the world as the characters moved through it, or told old stories. It can be slightly confusing at first, but in all you can get the gist without getting an impromptu history lesson.
While there were a couple moments where Grace felt a bit too much like a traditional YA protagonist, they were easy to ignore when the rest of the story was told so well. I would definitely recommend to anyone that enjoys YA fantasy, Christians and non-Christians alike.
I was excited, then wary, then excited to read this book. I'm always a big fan of "the enemy isn't who you think" stories and this one looked to be decent. When I read a bit more and discovered that the book was labeled as "Christian" in some sources, I was a bit more wary. I've been burned by thinly-veiled proselytizing calling themselves faith-based books before and a story about angels seemed to be very on the nose.
This one, however, was much more than I had hoped. The Christian values are still there for people that appreciate that in a story (especially near the end) but they're more subtle aspects of the themes, rather than any kind of outright Christ analogy. The main cast of protagonists are endearing. There's an adorable platonic relationship, which is sorely underrepresented in YA fantasy.
I appreciated Grace's journey and the hardships she goes through to right a wrong she believes she's committed. The sheer determination she showed through the third act was admirable and the description of her trek more than shows her perseverance. I wanted her to beat the odds as I read.
Probably my favorite part, and what made me such a big fan early on, was the world building. It was done seamlessly with the story. There were few paragraphs of straight exposition and more discovering the world as the characters moved through it, or told old stories. It can be slightly confusing at first, but in all you can get the gist without getting an impromptu history lesson.
While there were a couple moments where Grace felt a bit too much like a traditional YA protagonist, they were easy to ignore when the rest of the story was told so well. I would definitely recommend to anyone that enjoys YA fantasy, Christians and non-Christians alike.
December 6, 2021
I’ve been reading Kimberly’s work for awhile and came into this novel with high expectations. I can safely say that those expectations were exceeded. Grace is a wonderful protagonist to this story, and all around an incredible character. The world building is so gorgeous, and I was constantly eager to see what happened next. I am so excited for the next book and to see where the story goes
June 17, 2019
This is a really good book. The characterization of Grace is really good. It could do with another round of beta reading and some professional copy editing though. It has the potential to be a 5 star read!
April 29, 2020
Really enjoyed this book!! The main character was very sympathetic and easy to root for, and the themes of family vs found family were really heart warming.
April 1, 2023
You will like this if you are White™ and Christian™ and yes I mean that neg lmao
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 29, 2019
Exceptional book from a new author - Leaves me eager to read more from her. This book is about guardian angels - and their struggle for control. Grace is soon questioning her beliefs about the basics she has grown up with. The tension and battle scenes are gripping, and Ms Grey's descriptions of feelings and moods put you right there in the story.
June 14, 2022
A MUST for lovers of angel fiction
Black and white lines are drawn, redrawn and redrawn AGAIN until they look more like an intricate cobweb than anything resembling moral absolutes.
I loved this book. It was a slow burn that hit all the right notes in the end as it brought us towards inevitable but surprising clashing climaxes. If you think you know where this is going, you’re wrong and you will be thankful you were.
Black and white lines are drawn, redrawn and redrawn AGAIN until they look more like an intricate cobweb than anything resembling moral absolutes.
I loved this book. It was a slow burn that hit all the right notes in the end as it brought us towards inevitable but surprising clashing climaxes. If you think you know where this is going, you’re wrong and you will be thankful you were.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews