Release date: February 15th 2011
Published by: HarperCollins / Katherine Tegen Books
Genre: Young Adult
Rating: 5/5 stars
First there are nightmares.
Every night Ellie is haunted by terrifying dreams of monstrous creatures that are hunting her, killing her.
Then come the memories.
When Ellie meets Will, she feels on the verge of remembering something just beyond her grasp. His attention is intense and romantic, and Ellie feels like her soul has known him for centuries. On her seventeenth birthday, on a dark street at midnight, Will awakens Ellie's power, and she knows that she can fight the creatures that stalk her in the grim darkness. Only Will holds the key to Ellie's memories, whole lifetimes of them, and when she looks at him, she can no longer pretend anything was just a dream.
Now she must hunt.
Ellie has power that no one can match, and her role is to hunt and kill the reapers that prey on human souls. But in order to survive the dangerous and ancient battle of the angels and the Fallen, she must also hunt for the secrets of her past lives and truths that may be too frightening to remember.
My thoughts:
I read this book back in February, but recently -- after Shattered Souls, that is -- I was really curious to read it again. Basically, I wanted to see if, after so long, I would still feel the same about Angelfire. If I would still love the characters and everything, or if Shattered Souls had me look at it in a different way. I must say, even after re-reading it, my feelings for this book are the same.
There's someting in Angelfire that is completely appealing to me -- the characters. So, there's Ellie, the main character, a sixteen-year-old girl who's mostly normal until she turns seventeen. She has nightmares every night, of horrible creatures and monsters that hunt her down. And then she meets Will, and when that happens, Ellie finds out that her nightmares were not of her own making. They're memories.
Ellie is the Preliator, a warrior that kills the demonic reapers that walk in the Earth, preying on human souls. The reapers' goal is to recrute souls to Lucifer's army, so there can be the Apocalypse. To stop those monsters from achieving their goal, Ellie has Will, her Protector, who, throughout the centuries, has looked over her and protected her, aiding her in battle. Everytime she dies, Ellie's soul is reincarnated, and at the age of seventeen, her powers are "awakened" by Will, so that she can fight again.
Honestly, I have nothing against Ellie. She's just a nice girl, and even though her actions sometimes disappointed me, I liked the way she handled situations, most of the time. Another great point in Angelfire is that Ellie doesn't take long to accept what she is. Oh, of course, meeting a guy that claims to be your Protector, and that you must fight demonic creatures with your swords is a pretty heavy thing to accept, but her memories - and her soul - prove it all to be true.
I loved it that she accepted what she is exactly when the time was right. The book isn't all about Ellie's ridiculous temper and lack of conscience in seeing what was right in front of her eyes. Yes, she doubted Will, but when everything was right there for her to see, and there was no denying it, she could see in her soul that she really was the Preliator.
Will... oh, one of my biggest crushes. He's a perfect character, and not the ridiculous kind of perfect. I mean the kind of perfect that made me truly feel for him, what he had to do, and what he had to endure everytime Ellie died in his hands. His devotion to her was one of the most beautiful things in this book. The way Will took care of Ellie, not just protecting her in battle, but also looking out for her, making sure she smiled as much as possible, was touching. I loved him for it.
The bond between him and Ellie is heart-warming. And so is the romance, but you know why? The author didn't throw the romance at the plot and just made them fall in love out of nowhere. Oh, no. First, we get to see how much they're connected, how they are in sync with each other. The narration, even the slightest detail in it, made me sigh a lot of times. Will is Ellie's best friend, brother, partner, and the only constant in all of her lifes. Even dying again and again through the centuries, Will is the only person that is still by her side. And after showing us the depth of this amazing bond, the romance is slowly developed. It was amazing. The love between them was like an extension of the already-formed bond between Ellie and Will, and yes, it was wrong, but it felt so right.
I found the plot and the way the things went pretty interesting. The reapers were like bogeymen, and I enjoyed the fight scenes. The writing was... okay, though the author sometimes repeated a lot of words in the same chapters. Nothing that would bother the reading, just an observation. I liked the pace of the story, how it was really fast sometimes and in others, slow enough to know what the other charactes in the room were feeling. Also, the secondary characters were really good, as well. Though I would like to know more about Ellie's father and Nathaniel, it was detailed enough.
Throughout all of this, I must say that Angelfire is one of those books that pleased me as much as possible. I loved the characters, the romance, the mythology in it.... one of my favorite. I recommend it.
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