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veryreaderie 's review for:
The Reapers Are the Angels
by Alden Bell
I have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it's full of very powerful sentiments; Temple wanders her post-apocalyptic world with an eye for beauty, and her descriptions of vistas and experiences can really make you hold your breath. Exhibit A:
She remembers again the Miracle of the Fish—the silver-gold bodies darting in circles around her ankles as though she were standing in the middle of another moon—the way things could be perfect like that on occasion—a clear god, a god of messages and raptures—a moment when you knew what you were given a stomach for, for it to feel that way, all tense with magic meaning.
It has become something to her, that memory—something she can take out in dismal times and stare into like a crystal ball disclosing not presages but reminders. She holds it in her palm like a captured ladybug and thinks, Well ain’t I been some places, ain’t I partook in some glorious happenings wanderin my way between heaven and earth. And if I ain’t seen everything there is to see, it wasn’t for lack of lookin.
The beauty of her recollection is almost palpable, especially against the backdrop of a barren world torn apart by flesh-eating zombies. However, the plot of The Reapers Are The Angels left something to be desired. The book is intensely meandering, and purposefully so, but worse than that is Temple's lack of goals. She supposes she wants to go some places, like Niagara Falls, but beyond helping a straggler she finds along the way she has very little driving her. She survives where others wouldn't, and she is keenly aware of the world's beauty despite the disasters, but it was hard for me as a reader to get a grip on her character. She isolates herself from others, not physically but emotionally, and this causes her to stay largely unaffected by the events in the book. Her actions are purely instinctual all the way through. The Temple I met on page one seemed to be the exact same girl I said goodbye to at the end of the book. I admire the author for straying from the beaten path, but at the same time the lack of character development made me feel like the book wasn't as significant as it could have been.
My favorite thing about this book is that it forced me to think long and hard about what makes something beautiful and what makes life worth living. What is truly horrifying and what is simply different? Temple's level personality definitely helped tone down the terror of zombies. Exhibit B:
Looking down over the guardrails of the roadway, she can see the slugs out there wandering in the rain—some looking curiously upward only to get rain in their eyes. Others sit in the gutters watching the small rivers of water course over them. Sometimes the dead can seem clownish or childlike. She wonders how people could have let such a race of silly creatures push them into the corners and closets of the world.
This is a zombie book that doesn't linger on the horror of the supernatural and instead accepts it and moves on. What terrified me a lot more than the zombies was being in Temple's shoes. She can connect to the glory of the human experience, but not to other people. She can't even read. Her outlook is simple, sometimes annoyingly so. She refuses to protect herself against a man who has sworn vengeance against her and does so due to some misplaced(?) feeling that he hasn't done anything to her yet. Suffice to say that The Reapers Are The Angels was frustrating to read at times due to Temple's outlook, but it was also a unique experience thanks to Temple's outlook.
Besides an out-of-place switch to third-person omniscient to tell things Temple would have no way of knowing, I'd say the book is very well done, but in that "I still can't decide how I feel about it" way. Suffice to say this is a 3-star rating that comes from a deep need to give the book both 5 stars and 1 star at the same time.
She remembers again the Miracle of the Fish—the silver-gold bodies darting in circles around her ankles as though she were standing in the middle of another moon—the way things could be perfect like that on occasion—a clear god, a god of messages and raptures—a moment when you knew what you were given a stomach for, for it to feel that way, all tense with magic meaning.
It has become something to her, that memory—something she can take out in dismal times and stare into like a crystal ball disclosing not presages but reminders. She holds it in her palm like a captured ladybug and thinks, Well ain’t I been some places, ain’t I partook in some glorious happenings wanderin my way between heaven and earth. And if I ain’t seen everything there is to see, it wasn’t for lack of lookin.
The beauty of her recollection is almost palpable, especially against the backdrop of a barren world torn apart by flesh-eating zombies. However, the plot of The Reapers Are The Angels left something to be desired. The book is intensely meandering, and purposefully so, but worse than that is Temple's lack of goals. She supposes she wants to go some places, like Niagara Falls, but beyond helping a straggler she finds along the way she has very little driving her. She survives where others wouldn't, and she is keenly aware of the world's beauty despite the disasters, but it was hard for me as a reader to get a grip on her character. She isolates herself from others, not physically but emotionally, and this causes her to stay largely unaffected by the events in the book. Her actions are purely instinctual all the way through. The Temple I met on page one seemed to be the exact same girl I said goodbye to at the end of the book. I admire the author for straying from the beaten path, but at the same time the lack of character development made me feel like the book wasn't as significant as it could have been.
My favorite thing about this book is that it forced me to think long and hard about what makes something beautiful and what makes life worth living. What is truly horrifying and what is simply different? Temple's level personality definitely helped tone down the terror of zombies. Exhibit B:
Looking down over the guardrails of the roadway, she can see the slugs out there wandering in the rain—some looking curiously upward only to get rain in their eyes. Others sit in the gutters watching the small rivers of water course over them. Sometimes the dead can seem clownish or childlike. She wonders how people could have let such a race of silly creatures push them into the corners and closets of the world.
This is a zombie book that doesn't linger on the horror of the supernatural and instead accepts it and moves on. What terrified me a lot more than the zombies was being in Temple's shoes. She can connect to the glory of the human experience, but not to other people. She can't even read. Her outlook is simple, sometimes annoyingly so. She refuses to protect herself against a man who has sworn vengeance against her and does so due to some misplaced(?) feeling that he hasn't done anything to her yet. Suffice to say that The Reapers Are The Angels was frustrating to read at times due to Temple's outlook, but it was also a unique experience thanks to Temple's outlook.
Besides an out-of-place switch to third-person omniscient to tell things Temple would have no way of knowing, I'd say the book is very well done, but in that "I still can't decide how I feel about it" way. Suffice to say this is a 3-star rating that comes from a deep need to give the book both 5 stars and 1 star at the same time.