Rob Baker’s Reviews > Angel Down > Status Update

Lots of beautiful writing in this grim, bloody novel:

"...and his big idea is to open his stupid eyes, which he doesn and he sees a raft of rain arrows fired from sagittarii of holy archers, a soggy debauch of dead roads and buildings and humans, and a foothill of brick that fell so close it covered Bagger in a pale dust that the rain is turning to grime" (156).

"...and though the angel is carried like Hestia's flame, night falls anyway" (119).

Had to look up the allusion to "Hestia's flame":

"The eternal, sacred fire of the Greek goddess of the hearth and home. Representing warmth, community unity, and purity, it was kept perpetually burning in the public hearth of ancient cities and taken by colonists to light the fires of new settlements" (per Google search)

"...except now slaughter seems pointless to Bagger...and isn't it possible the angel was shot down while serving a summons to the human race, subpoenaed to defend the crimes they mistook as valor" (100).

“and Bagger dares a glance at the others, even amid the death, rumbles and offal stink, perhaps because of it, they have the translucent look of Bishop Bagger’s rapt congregation, because stories are hope, stories have all sorts of fantastical twists, underdog victories, and heavenly inventions, all things soldiers yearn for,” (47).

“…the war would never end, like the carnage won’t ever end, it’s a sentence in a book careening without periods, gasping with too many commas, a sentence that, once begun, can’t ever be stopped…”