Reviews with content warning for War - Angels Before Man

As horrifying as it is beautiful, as pleasurable as it is disturbing. This book had me totally, completely at its mercy.
"Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."

The writing style was unique. Most of the time, it was excellent and the prose elicited stronger emotional reactions from me than I would have thought. But I often found myself rereading passages multiple times to try and understand it, and came away forced to guess the implied meanings.

To me, the ending felt lacking, and a bit dissatisfying, but also leant true to the character of this version of God that had been built up in this book.

If you want a book that will mess with your mind, heart, and (Christian) religious beliefs, this is the one to reach for.

Content Warnings

madscanread's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The slow corruption of a pure, innocent angel to a hysterical, unstable beast spurred on by a cruel, jealous father. A book to make you hate god viscerally and while not making you love Lucifer, it at the very least makes you understand and mourn for him.

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porgyreads's review

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Gut wrenching tragedy littered with intense dialogue.

The stylistic choices do not eclipse the joy of the first half of this novel, in fact they emhance them. However in the second half, perhaps where most clarity is needed, it became easy to find myself lost.

I thought the choice to distinguish between internal and external thoughts worked really well as lucifer begins to challenge the world around him. Seeing how he withholds his true thoughts and feelings as they grow more erratic.

The lyrical prose which when it works WORKS devolves into a pulpy mash of poetic language that casts us out to sea at times. I found myself scrabbling for the threads of the narrative as the language became more figurative. Which took away from the achingly emotional content.

The section where uriels past is introduced and we get both his thoughts and lucifers was a hard adjust at first. But I came to enjoy it, even if I didn’t feel the payoff for the inclusion. It felt like knowing how god had treated him and his kind set uri up to have the most believable corruption arc of all the archangels, and so, not dipping back into his head more as the chaos and arson begins felt like a missed opportunity. Even if he never acted on the thoughts of vengeance lucifer inspires.

I think overall this book does what it sets out to achieve. It reminds me of paradise lost obviously but also a picture of Dorian Grey. The only difference being the purple language choice don’t always work in ABM. Even still it unfolds In a way that would make Milton shiver imo. The modern adaptation, exploration of ambition, selfhood, purpose and malice feeds into an equation that makes perfect sense to the reader, even if it is dizzying to watch it be solved. Had it not become convoluted and lost here or there I would’ve said solid 5 stars. But for the emotional poison that was the tragedy we were promised, I can’t fault it.

Lucifer is born before us, we grow to love him, we anguish for him, we want his revenge. We feel the searing pain of the final moments, of him asking Micheal why he is hurting him too and it breaks us just as entirely.

I think fans of TSOA will love this especially the first half. I wished the last third was tighter but I also know that writing is fucking hard. And experimentation is fucking hard to pull off without alienating the reader. That being said the calibre of writing displayed throughout cannot and should not go without praise. At its end you leave asking yourself over and over: “Is love meant to pierce?”

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