Wings of the Wicked, by Courtney Allison Moulton

Release date: January 31st 2012
Published by: HarperCollins / Katherine Tegen Books
Genre: Young Adult
Rating: 5/5 stars












Life as the Preliator is harder than Ellie ever imagined.
Balancing real life with the responsibility of being Heaven’s warrior is a challenge for Ellie. Her relationship with Will has become all business, though they both long for each other. And now that the secret of who she really is has come out, so have Hell’s strongest reapers. Grown bold and more vicious, the demonic threaten her in the light of day and stalk her in the night.

She’s been warned.
Cadan, a demonic reaper, comes to her with information about Bastian’s new plan to destroy Ellie’s soul and use an ancient relic to wake all the souls of the damned and unleash them upon humanity. As she fights to stay ahead of Bastian’s schemes , the revelations about those closest to her awaken a dark power within Ellie that threatens to destroy everything—including herself.

She’ll be betrayed.
Treachery comes even from those whom she loves, and Ellie is broken by the deaths of those who stood beside her in this Heavenly war. Still, she must find a way to save the world, herself, and her love for Will. If she fails, there will be hell to pay. 


My thoughts:

I read Angelfire back in February, and I spent the whole year waiting for Wings of the Wicked to come out. And now that it did, I wish I had waited another year before picking it up. It would be so easier if I had the third book in hand. I can't stop thinking about this book, so I apologize beforehand if I sound crazy o.O

I'd say Courtney Allison Moulton did a fantastic job at writing a sequel to Angelfire -- I'd even go further and say that this series doesn't fall into the second book curse, and that's saying a lot, especially from me. Every aspect that I loved of Angelfire is intensified and explored deeply in the characters. We get to see Ellie struggling to balance two lives, as a teenage girl in high school, and as the Preliator.

Ellie struck me at first as a interesting and mildly nice girl, but it’s obvious now how much she feels for those she loves. I remember I didn’t pay much attention to this when I was reading Angelfire, but in Wings of the Wicked, Ellie’s emotions are all over the place, both for her life and responsibilities, her family, and her feelings for Will.

Something I haven’t forgotten throughout the year was Will’s relationship with Ellie. For me, this is one of the most beautiful romances I’ve ever read in my life. Their love for each other is not something that came out of nowhere; it took five hundred years to blossom, and when it did develop in Wings of the Wicked, it felt natural, because they’ve been together all this time. Will’s not Ellie’s boyfriend, he’s her partner, brother, protector, someone who loves and understands her above all else. It’s heart breaking seeing them so obviously in love, but without the capacity – and courage – to go further than that. Will’s not supposed to love Ellie, and by doing so, he’s risking his life, as well as Michael’s wraith.

“It was so hard for me to see him every day and want him so badly, but yet again I had forgotten about how much it hurt him to feel the same way. It was so painful for us to be apart, but I didn’t know if either of us was strong enough to be together.”

Will’s love for Ellie’s not the only thing that made me sigh. His personality is stronger that it was in Angelfire. A lot of people may have thought that he acted like Ellie’s puppet, obeying her orders and following her around, but now I see that that’s not how he is at all. Will does what Ellie wishes because he loves her, but when it comes to her safety, he goes through whatever’s necessary to help her, even without her consent. The balance between his feelings and his job is perfect, and the connection between these two elements in him only makes Will deadlier in battle.


Cadan is another character that enchanted me even more in Wings of the Wicked. He's not only the reaper that tried to get to Ellie and seemed to irritate Will so much. Cadan is wonderful in his own way, and the fact that he's demonic made him that much more interesting. As much as I loved Will, I was always anxious to see more of Cadan and Ellie interacting.

However, as much as I love Courtney’s writing style, some fight scenes seemed anti-climatic. Let’s imagine this: Ellie is fighting a reaper, and suddenly, it grabs a human and starts to slowly cut his neck (This didn’t happen in the book, it’s just an example). Instead of unleashing her power on the creature, Ellie just stands there, open-mouthed, while the human’s death is thoroughly, fully described. And then, when the guy is dead, Ellie gets angry and kills the reaper in less than one minute. See what I mean?

Another thing that was both good and bad was how much happened in this book. Seriously, a hundred things blow up in Ellie’s face, and sometimes I got lost during the course of events. Of course, this makes the book’s pace a lot faster than normal, and that’s the good part (it keeps you on the edge of the seat the whole time), but I found it somewhat weird.

And the ending… Oh, man. I’m really trying not to freak out while writing this review. Imagine that you spent two weeks fighting evil and going through hell, and then, after everything’s ok again, you get to go home and take a long, hot shower. When you leave the bathroom with that sense of security, you go to bed and turn on your TV. But right there, at CNN, there’s a reporter saying that there’s a bomb falling from the sky, and that there’s directed at your address. And you know you’re going to die in less that 2 seconds…………………. Now imagine that the book ends right there.

See why I freaked out so much? That’s basically how I felt after reading the ending:



Only a series as wonderful as Angelfire does that to me. And I can’t help but give Wings of the Wicked 5 stars, even with the bad parts. The waiting was worth it, and I just hope that the third book will live up to my expectations – that, by the way, are very high.