This is another in Sniegoski’s series with Remy Chandler. Remy Chandler is actually the angel Remiel, a member of the Seraphim, who decided to live among us humans as a human and work as a private investigator based in Boston.
In this novel, there is no earthly matter to solve. No, the issue here concerns the return to this dimension of the Garden of Eden. A hotly contested piece of real estate. The Sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve, human descendants of the original first couple have been awaiting this for, well, a LONG, LONG while. As a matter of fact, Adam has been alive all this time, barely, protected by the Sons of Adam who are long-lived and hope he will be allowed to die in the Garden.
Eve has passed on, but her Daughters don’t get along with the Sons of Adam (you can imagine there’s some conflict there about the whole getting thrown out of Eden issue.)
Remy gets in the midst of this through a friend of his named Fernita who has lost something important. And she is connected to the Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve. But, not only do the Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve await the return of Eden, some dark angels and friends of Lucifer await its return also. Of course, they have nasty plans concerning the Garden. And to pardon the expression, all hell will break loose if the dark angels get ahold of Eden.
I like Sniegoski’s characters especially the conflicted Remy always struggling with his Seraphim warrior nature and the secondary characters are compelling as well, even Remy’s dog Marlowe who talks to him through appropriately short doggy thoughts.
Remy may even find human love again.
I can suspend my disbelief with the best of them. But with this novel one issue kept intruding---every one of the angelic host we meet are awfully darn human in action and motivation. The bad angels all have agendas, plots and really twisted personalities. They’re all a huge bunch of preening megalomaniacs. We actually don’t meet much of the good angels.
I get the whole matter of God’s Creation having free will. But God is very much removed from all these shenanigans and I guess I find it hard to believe it’s all okay if the heavenly hosts run amuck in human affairs battling it out in what would be a typical vampire/werewolf territorial dispute in someone else’s dark paranormal universe. Either God is involved in human affairs or he isn’t. Heck, this isn’t even human affairsit is all a heavenly/angelic power struggle and God is quite absent from this conflict.
Even the Archangels are---so I am confused. Maybe I just don’t understand the heavenly hierarchy as well as I should. Or Sniegoski’s as he’s structured it. (Maybe I just don’t remember my religion classes too well!)
But when you have Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones and close personal friends of Lucifer Morningstar intent on destroying/taking over the Garden of EdenGod’s lack of input is kind of noticeable.
So, bottom lineshould you read this?
Of course! It’s very fastpaced. And I am rooting for Remy and Linda! ~~ Sue Martin
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