Susan Ee’s YA novel ANGELFALL started life in the murky world of self-publishing – but don’t let that put you off. It’s about Penryn, a 17 year old gutsy girl who pretty much takes care of her entire family (schizophrenic Mum and disabled sister, Paige). Oh yeah – and the Apocalypse has happened. Like for real. But you won’t find any of the usual cataclysms involving zombies, floods, plagues or errant asteroids. Instead it’s pure Book of Revelations, with angels come down from heaven, dishing out wrath and vengeance while smiting left, right and centre – and their target is mankind.
When Penryn ends up unexpectedly in the middle of a seraphic street brawl she saves one angel’s life (but not his wings which get gruesomely sawed off) only to find that the bully-boy angels, robbed of their original target, kidnap her sister instead. Her only option is to nurse the injured Raffe back to health in the hope that a “you scratch my back” scenario will ensure he’ll help her find Paige before it’s too late.
Luckily for our protagonist, Raffe is a total hottie. Despite an age-gap that makes Bella and Edward’s relationship in THE TWILIGHT SAGA look relatively “normal” (and not so much a case for whistleblowing), the lusting appears to be mutual. Penryn alternates between gawking over his Greek statuesque muscles and cursing his status as destroyer of mankind, while Raffe is suitably enigmatic and unreadable (to Penryn – not us. Come on! Just give her a kiss…We know you want to). And so begins a rather familiar story of will they, won’t they, witty repartee and pouting as they travel across devastated California.
One of Ee’s strengths is combining canoodling teenage smoochies with unsettling and disturbing horror: there’s hanging half-eaten little girls, cannibalism, roaming street gangs straight out of MAD MAX (1979) and a climactic scene that was certainly a surprise in its grisly inventiveness. If Cormac McCarthy wrote YA fiction it would probably look (a teensy bit) like this. And Mum is particularly disconcerting; without her anti-psychotic meds she goes feral, leaving a trail of rotten eggs in her wake (literally – they’re like her calling card). Even better she talks to demons and mutilates corpses. She gets a kick out of wielding an electric cattle prod – she’s our kinda gal.
Ee comes up with some highly creative concepts like angels with a dapper fashion sense, dressing sharp in pinstripe zoot suits, fedoras and two-tone brogues. They hang out in opulent hotels throwing wild parties in true ANIMAL HOUSE (1978) style, while they favour their women human and dressed like Tina Tuner in the ‘80s. We were reminded a bit of Margaret Atwood’s seminal dystopian novel THE HANDMAID’S TALE, where the subjugated women pimp themselves out to their enemy oppressors in secret hotels across cities. ANGELFALL is certainly an ideas book: highly visual and almost written to be on the big screen (film rights have already been sold and Sam Raimi is pencilled in to produce).
Like most YA books, ANGELFALL appeals beyond its target audience of teenage girls, no doubt helped by its dystopian motifs and adult gore. The YA category has tapped into the current zeitgeist for dystopias for a while now and it’s been a popular and fertile ground (THE HUNGER GAMES, NOUGHTS AND CROSSES, DIVERGENT, UGLIES, DELIRIUM). ANGELFALL has enough of a new take on a familiar trope to keep it interesting. But again, like most YA novels be prepared for an incredibly fast paced page turner in place of measured character development and a protagonist prone to intense fits of hormonal self-obsession – even in the midst of Armageddon.
ANGELFALL out now in paperback and ebook, published by Hodder & Stoughton. You can order it here: Angelfall (Penryn and the End of Days)
