Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - Angels Before Man

Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

Angels Before Man by rafael nicolás

24 reviews

liebert's review

Go to review page

dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense 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

Content Warnings

seykv's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective sad tense 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

I remember when you were created, Lucifer. I saw how our Father sewed you from coppers, how He handled you when you were settings of gold. He embroidered a nose on you, a sweet mouth on you, then the outline for a pair of eyes before He placed suns there. He sculpted your face with wet clay; He opened you like a mandarin and planted a garden of budding flowers inside. He weaved your hair, I think, from the streaks of three bursting stars, and from your wings out of four wandering crescent moons. Your hips came from the tides of a sea, and then He carved your hands and feet from marble and pearls. I watched Him breathe life into you, then cradle you as if you were His first angel. He placed you into a fire cut into the air, and He let you simmer there.

Wow. Just wow. More people need to read this book.

Angels Before Man follows Lucifer's transformation from God's favorite, an angel too shy to glance at his reflection, to the Devil we all know (and love!). This novel is a masterfully crafted character study told through prose as ethereal as its setting. Highlighting the unsavory aspects of Christianity, Lucifer's tragic descent feels not just believable, but inevitable.

Lucifer seems like the perfect angel in the beginning: beautiful, humble, and--most importantly--obedient. He endeared me from his first stuttering words. The novel starts as a fluffy slice-of-life following Lucifer’s early years in paradise. He coos at flowers. He cuddles a colorful cast of characters. He finds a role serving his beloved God. Lucifer loves Heaven, and it loves him.

The entire universe sprawled before him but peppering his cheeks with enough warm kisses to make him laugh.

The sparse plot finds its tension in dramatic irony. Scattered throughout are indications of Lucifer's true nature.

God creates Lucifer as "the Beast," burdened with awareness and thus shame that separate him from other angels. One of my favorite scenes depicts a young Lucifer struggling with his latent sexuality in the bathhouse. He alone scrambles to cover himself. For a reason he does not know, he cannot stop staring at his naked brothers.

Then Lucifer meets Michael. In many ways, their bond is the story's catalyst. It is equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking.

Michael is everything Lucifer wishes he could be. Michael is God's all-important archangel. He is proud of his strength. He has no shame. And unlike other angels, he encourages Lucifer to adopt these same qualities. In Michael, Lucifer finds acceptance of himself and joy outside of God. Their relationship germinates the seeds of his rebellion. But Michael does not witness God's crimes; he cannot understand the movement he inspired or its leader, the angel he still loves. The novel describes his last act: "Michael, between them all, his tears morphing into crystals, slicing down his cheeks and making him bleed."

Lucifer's innocence seeps away one page, one conversation, one betrayal at a time. The angel Lucifer and the demon Lucifer are as different as could be. Yet there were no moments when I felt he suddenly broke character. There were, however, moments when I felt like a frog that saw the boiling of slowly heated water at last. Lucifer would commit some act that would horrify his younger self, and I would then realize that Lucifer had not blushed, bowed, or cried for a number of chapters--he had become so distant but taken such small steps that I took no notice.

The novel uses Lucifer's fall to explore themes of shame and freedom. These are placed within the context of organized religion, but anyone who has felt at odds with inane higher authority can relate to them.

The main conflict occurs because Lucifer cannot conform to his society's standards. God expects his angels to be humble and subservient, but Lucifer becomes unafraid to wield his beauty for himself. God says angels are complete beings born to worship Him, but Lucifer loves Michael as if they were two halves of one whole:"I don't want to be complete; I'd rather be split and become full with you."

Lucifer dares to question God for giving him life--then shaming him for loving it more than Him. For these sins, God punishes him.

Lucifer passes from disobedience into full-blown rebellion. He gains a hatred of the weakness in Heaven that gives God power and excuses His crimes. It applies to angels who serve God, angels who serve him, and even himself. In one memorable scene, he imagines defiling and murdering his innocent young self. He wants to shape Heaven to his libertine beliefs.

Lucifer does not, of course, succeed in that. God is all-powerful. Perhaps He even planned for Lucifer's rebellion. (Why else would He let Lucifer enact so much violence before stopping him? Why else would He encourage Lucifer to use his body by taking his voice?) But the novel makes clear that God does not win, and Lucifer does not lose. Lucifer does create a new order. While the angels who remain in Heaven now fear the lonely God, the demons who fall to Earth still love Lucifer--because they are the only ones free to love whoever they want.

All this is accentuated through beautiful and imaginative prose. The author paints the story through otherworldly metaphors that are right at home in Heaven.

One angel's eyes are described as such:

His irises were bustling rivers, housing a million fish circling abysses of pupils.

This depicts the simple act of fixing hair:

He split the sea of golden threads, then crossed each river over one another, creating a pattern, weaving a braid.

Even a bruised and bleeding face is made poetic:

[The face] belonged to someone who'd been invaded by red cherries, blackberries, blueberries, a conglomerate of them bursting from his skin.

However, there are times when the prose is... experimental

(especially as Lucifer's mental state degrades)

. The point of view can switch back and forth then back again in the middle of a sentence. At times I had to read a conversation more than once to tell whose thoughts are whose. Certain passages are written without proper capitalization or punctuation to convey a character's frenzy--but more often than not, they are just difficult to read. These are my biggest, maybe only, problems with the novel.

The ending is satisfying enough that the novel can serve as a standalone. However, after seeing (stalking from top to bottom) the author's Tumblr, I have seen that two more entries are planned for this narrative. They will center Azazel and Dina and cover the Flood and Armageddon. I am sure they will be of similar quality to Angels Before Man, which has quickly become one of my favorite novels.

Content Warnings

kristinajoy07's review

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

purrson's review

Go to review page

I couldn’t finish this, at least for now. As Lucifer

recovers from being assaulted in Eden, and shields Michael (again) from how God harmed him, he encourages the angels to harm a bird he’s taken from Eden, to see how far they’ll go for his approval, Something about that scene, even though I read past it, stuck with me, and became too much. It’s how visceral Lucifer’s pain is, how he’s spiraling out of control, but still so intelligent and sensitive. It was too painful to read somehow. I wanted someone to tell Michael so that Lucifer would have someone truly on his side, all the way, I wanted Justice for him, but we know how this story ends.

It was all too sad for me, maybe a little too triggering. It’s a beautifully written book. Maybe I’ll come back to it at some point in the future.

Content Warnings

erosugar's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense 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

Content Warnings

alicia_ann_reads's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

This was a book that made me feel things.

First, it's a queer retelling of Satan's (Lucifer) Falling, which I wasn't familiar with so did a quick google to discover it was mentioned in two books if the Bible.

I'm not a Bible follower, but I imagine that anyone who had any form of religious trauma in their life would find this book incredibly cathartic.

The prose was wonderful, the first half is the telling of Lucifer's life from birth, his struggles with being the centre of attention, the 'angel of beauty", his shame and lack of self confidence... Until he meets Michael, who slowly coaxes him out of that shell. You see a really slow burn romance.

The second half of the book takes that and shows Lucifer's fall, how his worship focus went from God to Michael and how God had punished, and from that punishment the seed and kernel of defiance and hatred grew, how Lucifer coined new terms, created Sin as God created...

It is graphic and gory, and really hard to read at times, but it was also powerful.

The negative aspects: Was a little long. Middle part dragged and in the second half saw an increase in internal dialogue; which in and if itself is not an issue but the way it was presented on page was really difficult to read.

You had internal dialogue between apostrophes butted next to external dialogue in quotes with no delineation; and multiple POVs back and forth on one page.. I had to read slowly.

Content Warnings

random19379's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

ashlislibrary's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

reellyfish's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark tense fast-paced

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

4.75

I really enjoyed this book. However, I probably would not recommend this book if you’re christian/religious.

Content Warnings

cakeboxing's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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

More...