Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton

Release Day: February 15th, 2011

Publisher: Harper Collins, Katherine Tegen Books

Pages: 464pgs

The Story

When seventeen-year-old Ellie starts seeing reapers - monstrous creatures who devour humans and send their souls to Hell - she finds herself on the front lines of a supernatural war between the Archangels and the Fallen and faced with the possible destruction of her soul.
A mysterious boy named Will reveals she is the reincarnation of an ancient warrior, the only one capable of wielding swords of angelfire to fight the reapers, and he is an immortal sworn to protect her in battle. Now that Ellie's powers have awakened, a powerful reaper called Bastian has come forward to challenge her. He has employed a fierce assassin to eliminate her - an assassin who has already killed her once.

While balancing her dwindling social life and reaper-hunting duties, she and Will will discover Bastian is searching for a dormant creature believed to be a true soul reaper. Bastian plans to use this weapon to ignite the End of Days and to destroy Ellie's soul, ending her birth cycle forever. Now, she must face an army of Bastian's most frightening reapers, prevent the soul reaper from consuming her soul, and uncover the secrets from her past lives - including truths that may be too frightening to remember.

The Review

There is a lot of YA paranormal fiction out there, but Moulton offered another entertaining book idea up onto the table. After admiring the pretty cover (cause it's very pretty when you have it in your little hands) and reading the book, readers can definitely tell that Courtney Allison Moulton is a very talented writer and every word flowed easily throughout beginning to end. My only problem was the fact it didn't offer anything different to most angel/demon books out there - what with the sometimes-helpless girl and the boy she wants but can't have, and the fact that I couldn't connect with the main character. Pity. Nonetheless, it was full of twists and turns that I appreciated.

When I first heard about this book, I loved the concept and the direction it was heading, but the only let down was the main character! She could be kickass at times - strong even - and I admired that about her, but then she would go straight back to being the nervous little girl...then, she lost me. Plus, how can anybody be so spoiled and rich? My parents would never buy me a $30,000 car like Ellie's parents. I mean, her father doesn't even like her from what I've read...so what's up with that? Secretly, I still think he's an inner reaper on the inside. Because he's abusive and just wrong.

But despite some dialogue mishaps (like a demon saying cliche evil lines and the likes of 'just you and me, baby') and certain events that I didn't necessarily agree with, what made this book interesting was the flashbacks and the demon-hunting action scenes. It kept the reader focused, in my opinion. As for the writing itself, the author certainly knew how to keep the reader engaged and knew how to pull off great action scenes...my only wish is that Ellie stops saying she can't do things and just get on with the fight...without being knocked around.

With two more books in the series, I can see that more is going to happen and more questions will be answered. The mythology was researched very well and the action scenes strengthened the book itself more than the character dialogue, and while the romance and some characters ran a little flat at times, I'm still looking forward to the next book that due out sometime in 2012! We know there's more to the characters than meets the eye, which I'm assured will have more of a part to play in the next book, so we'll leave it at that. No matter what I think, still pick yourself up a copy if you love the likes of Vampire Academy and the Fallen series!

The Rating

3/5 stars