Sarah's Library

6/10 - An interesting prologue for the rest of the Lost Angels series, but it's a bit frustrating because this book ends in a cliff hanger and it isn't resolved for ages, or possibly at all (it bloody better be). I've read the next three books and so far nothing of what happened in Always, Angel has been resolved, in fact Angel is hardly seen or discussed and is seen as a mysterious character whose motives are unknown (from what I remember of what I read, it was a number of years ago).

Then of course, there's the editing mistakes I picked up.

Location 104
...she zeroed in on where the creature's crouched on the lower branch...
Not only is that the incorrect way to use the possessive plural, but it doesn't even need to be a plural at all as there's only one creature crouched on the branch.

Location 111
His coal-black skin shifted over the bones and muscle of his body
The way that's written makes it sound as if he has many bones, but only one muscle in his body. Muscle needs to be muscles.

Location 342
The recognition flashed before his beautiful face...
That sounds like the recognition is floating in mid air. The phrase more commonly used is 'flashed across' and while you might still envision 'recognition' doing things that an incorporeal idea shouldn't be capable of doing, but it's infinitely better than 'before'.

Location 367
He leaned in further, cascading her with his heat...
Switch that sentence around so that it's ...his heat cascading over her... and you have a much more sensible sentence. The way it is now has me picturing waterfalls appearing in mid air to 'cascade' in Angel's direction.

Location 539
The sound of his boots on the ground echoed with just the right amount of dangerous anticipation.
First, this is the second or perhaps third time Killough-Walden's mentioned boots echoing inside Angel's apartment. Where does she live that footsteps echo inside a fully furnished room? She doesn't live in a cavernous church or warehouse, it's just a normal apartment (from the way she describes it earlier in the book). High heels don't even echo in my bathroom which is pretty much all tile and glass, so I find it unlikely that boots would echo in a room full of soft furnishings like curtains and bedding.
Second, how does an echo show 'dangerous anticipation'? An echo is just an echo, it's the human brain that puts foreboding into particular echoes. The foreboding isn't there naturally.

Location 583
...at six in the late afternoon
Isn't that 'six in the evening' normally?

Location 607
...Angel was a tall raven-black-haired woman...
Umm, either raven or black is redundant here as they mean pretty much the same thing in this context. If it's 'raven' then it's obviously black (and vice versa), so there's no need to use both terms. It's not like 'raven-yellow' or 'sunny-black' are common ways of describing hair colour, so no one's going to get confused if you just say 'raven-haired'. We're all going to know you mean that the woman has black hair.

Location 657
...the temperature within the church as well below freezing.
That as should be a was. No explanation necessary.

Location 657, further down the page
...both the chain that held her and the wires she was connected to were coated in rime.
I wasn't sure what rime meant, so I used my wonderful dictionary feature on my Voyage to look it up. According to the OED entry for rime it is frost formed on cold objects by the rapid freezing of water vapour in cloud or fog. That makes some sense because the room is cold thanks to the presence of a phantom, but not once does Killough-Walden mention the cloud or fog needed to create the water vapour which is what causes the rime to form. Clouds do get a mention, but not until a couple of pages later, well and truly after the appearance of the rime. If you're going to talk about rime you need to have already established the existence of the cloud or fog that caused it.

After reading this I feel inspired to go back and reread and review the rest of the full length books in the series (that was already my plan, but now I want to do it immediately instead of at some indeterminate point in the future). I think I'll put a hold on Avenger's Angel right now.