Reviews with content warning for Violence - Angels Before Man

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Angels Before Man by rafael nicolás

96 reviews

dead_colonel's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense fast-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

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athenian_frog's review

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I was super, super excited to read this book. I never expected that I would keep bouncing between dropping it and trying to finish another chapter. I saw glowing reviews from people whose opinions I respect, so I think this might be a me problem...

There are some really cool and interesting scenes (Lucifer realizing his talents, the conversations with God) and I found the relationship between Luci and Michael fairly compelling, too. I have no doubt that Mr. nicolás is passionate about this work.

But nine times out of ten, the pacing feels like a sloooooow crawwwwwl. Maybe the point was that in comparison to the mortal realm, the bountifulness of Heaven makes it stagnant? But it really hurt the actual reading.

A lot of characters also felt a bit flat, like they were there just for plot reasons. I didn't feel all that attached. The other thing that prob contributed to the slow feeling was how densely packed the descriptions were. There was a LOT of description loading on the reader, some of it was very hard for me to conceptualize.

I would read a few chapters, put it down, then be reluctant to pick it back up again. The last time I made good progress (over ten pages) on this book before I set it free was a whole two months ago, and I didn't think about it twice. That's kinda what made me say: "okay, what am I doing this for?"

I will check out other rafeal nicolás works just in case another one piques my interest, but I think Angels Before Man might just not be my thing.

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arlingtonchamberofgay's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

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

5.0

rafael nicolás does a beautiful job of painting Heaven as a utopian paradise alongside the perils of asking too many questions, being too different. His writing is wonderfully elegant and walks you through the creation of the angel of beauty and his long life all the way to his fall. Lucifer’s expulsion from Heaven was always going to happen, but you can’t help but pray that it doesn’t, for the angel to succeed in his fight against god and his throne.

This book is for the outcasts, the broken, the abominations. It’s for those of us who have been deemed undesirable in the eyes of god, his church and worshippers. May we create and mold new worlds out of our pains and pleasures.

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naiadtales's review

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dark emotional funny sad slow-paced

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

3.5

I'm a bit conflicted on how to rate this book. The first half was some of the most beautiful writing I've read in a while and I enjoyed witnessing Lucifer's growth but the second half was where the confusion comes in. I understand that it may have been written this way to depict Lucifer's declining mental state but boy was it still hard to follow along. Also some of the choices/paths that the characters took were so nonsensical to me it felt like I was reading 3 different books

Asmodeous raping rosier?? Why ? I get the corruption but I felt like it was already alluded to that they had this kind of relationship from the jump so why was this necessary?

I enjoy stories where non-humans are showcased doing human things and I this was one of the things I enjoyed about ABM. It was cool watching the angels discover themselves and jumping through dozens of hobbies in a bid to pass the time. Another thing I enjoyed was the snippets we got of the time before realization(that may not be the correct phrase) but the stories that we got from the time of the first angels like Uriel (who should honestly needs to get a damn life). It was sad though that these bits came between mentions of other events and was in some cases such a jarring jump from what was actually happening.

My favorite scene is when Rosier admits to never having seen god, or even given much consideration to his existence. He just knows that he is real because of all the splendor that he sees.

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