Review: Archangel's Blade by Nalini Singh

[megwrites]

Title: Archangel's Blade
Author: NaliniSingh.com; nalinisingh
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Berkley Sensation




Basic Plotline: (from the back cover) "The severed head marked by a distinctive tattoo on its cheek should have been a Guild case, but dark instincts honed over hundreds of years of life compel the vampire Dmitri to take control. There is something twisted about this death, something that whispers of centuries long past - but Dmitri's need to discover the truth is nothing compared to the vicious strength of his response to the hunger assigned to decipher the tattoo.

Savaged in a brutal attack that almost killed, Honor is nowhere near ready to come face-to-face with the seductive vampire who is an archangel's right hand and who wears his cruelty as boldly as his leath sensuality - the same vampire who has been her secret obsession since the day she was old enough to understand the inexplicable, violent emotions he aroused in her.

As desire turns into a dangerous compulsion that might destroy them both, it because clear the past will not stay buried. Something is hunting…and it will not stop until it brings a blood soaked nightmare to life once more."


The Positives : I'm a decided Nalini Singh fan, and this book was very much on par for her style and I liked that she followed up on different characters in the series. The favorites make their appearances, and I love that Elena is learning to deal better with Dmitri this time, and that Raphael and Elena's relationship has stabilized. Getting to see Elena through outside eyes and see that she really has come lightyears farther from where she started is a big plus.

The plot itself is rather well paced, and I liked all the characters. I particularly liked Honor (though her name bugged me a bit, Honor St. Nicholas sounds like something you'd see written on an old fashioned Christmas card or a saint's medal or something). In a genre filled with traumatized women, she was one of the most convincing I've yet read. There was something fundamentally real about her dealing with her trauma. Like the fact that Dmitri doesn't make it all melt away with a touch, and in facts sets her off a couple of times when he reaches for her to kiss her. For that alone, I'd recommend this book. The trauma here isn't romanticized and neither is Honor's slow recovery. She's not instantly cured through the Magical Healing Property of Cock and indeed, they have to make a slow progression in their sexual life and be aware of each other's trigger points and vulnerabilities.

I liked Dmitri here, which is saying a lot because I hated him in the last three books and have wanted Elena to take a baseball bat to his face for the way he constantly pokes and prods at her. Showing this side of him puts a better context to those actions and why he felt the need to test Raphael's chosen the way he has. In his own way, he's trying to help them both out because he knows what happens when someone innocent gets brought into a world they're not powerful enough to survive. Now I can see his actions as him constantly reminding Elena that people are going to be coming at her from all sides, thinking of her as a way to Raphael because she is. I still don't like that he does it, but at least I get it now.

Great supporting cast here as well, and I can't wait for Ashwini's story in Angel's Flight. I'd love a book all about Ashwini, really. She seems delightful and everything I want in a heroine. Double bonus that Honor has friends, female friends, that she talks with! About things other than just Dmitri! She does things with other women. She helps out Sorrow with self defense lessons!

I wish that Sorrow and Venom had been left to have their own book, because I'd love to see how that evolves and what's underneath the surface of Venom's very cold, snake like exterior. Their interactions, however brief, were exciting. Sorrow herself is an interesting character, powerful and weak at the same time, deeply emotional and angry. She plays well off of Venom's cold, unfeeling veneer.



The Negatives: The two big negatives here weren't enough to make me stop or hate the novel, but they took away from what would have otherwise been a pretty excellent read and downgrade my overall rating of the book.

The first is the Honor-is-Dmitri's-dead-wife reincarnated plotline. It wasn't explained well whether reincarnation is something that's even plausible in this world and whether it was a straight up reincarnation or she inherited ghost memories or what. The entire thing feels tacked on and given the bit in the cover blurb that doesn't match with anything in the book it might well be some editing that didn't quite make the joining of two plot lines seamless. There's nothing in the book about Honor having known or thought about Dmitri much, except general knowledge because he's something of a celebrity in the city. So I'm not sure why she'd have been lusting after him since she was "old enough to understand the emotions she aroused in her".

As a reader, the reincarnation plot line undermined how much growing both characters had done. I don't generally tend to like stories that focus on how a person can only ever love one person in their life truly. I like tales of people recovering and learning that you can love more than you think much better. For most of the book, it was that kind of tale. Dmitri was learning to let go, to still love his wife and treasure what was while treasuring and learning to love Honor in the present. Then it turns out that Honor is sort of, kind of his dead wife reborn. As I said, it didn't make a lot of sense.

The second is that every single sex scene or description of their lustful feelings includes the word "sinful". The word because annoying and repetitive enough to draw me out of the story. Using it once or twice as a way to set a mood of "naughty" sensuality is fine. Using it constantly makes me wonder if these characters have some serious hang ups about sex that they keep describing what amounts to a consensual encounter between adults as "sinful". This isn't to say that it's wrong if you characters do feel that sex is naughty-in-a-good-way. That's something a lot of people feel and they have fun with it and it's part of their sexual expressions and thoughts. No shame there.

But using it over and over again stop adding to the mood and takes away from the text.

CoC Score: 10/10 - Singh presents a New York City that is actually more like the real New York City than most fiction gets it. It's full of people of color, with all sorts of races, ethnicities, and nationalities being represented.

Gender Score: 9/10 - This book not only scores well on the Bechdel Test, but it also features a lot of very wonderful women in varying places of varying types. You have someone like Honor with no real superpowers, just her wits and her training and someone like Elena who's near the top of the chain, then folks like Sorrow and Ashwini with some powers. I didn't give it the full ten because, well, I'm tired of women being raped in romance novels and because there was a bit of "of course the man will be the dominant one" undertones here that I didn't like.

GLBT Score: 2/10. There's a brief mention of queerness here. There's a gay man who is checked off the list of suspects because he's a) not interested in women and b) obviously happy with his lover. There's also Jiana, who is probably bisexual and who's also an incestuous monster who has sex with her own soon and turned him into a murderer. The evil bisexual trope. Yeah. That hurt a bit when it turned out she was as bad as her son. This novel is also, like pretty much the entire genre, deeply cissexist. There are no trans, genderqueer, or non-binary characters. Something I just don't buy in a series of books about angels, vampires, and Hunters.

Ablism Score: 4/10. I have some hesitations about how Vivek is portrayed in this novel. On the one hand, I like the character and I like that he's shown as being plenty useful, and also that he isn't the perfectly cheery, inspiring disabled person stereotype. He's allowed to be grouchy and have a bad day and snipe at people once and a while here, to be moody and have off days. Because he's, yanno, human. On the other hand, he seems to sulk down in the basement of the Hunter's Guild like a recluse and there's some speculation on his sexuality which is that he's asexual by choice with the implication being that his disability (being paraplegic) would mean he couldn't have sex. That made me very twitchy when reading.