Angel-Seeker by Sharon Shinn

This has been a lazy on-my-butt weekend. So it was an excellent time to finish a Shinn book and this one kept me up until 5am last night because I couldn’t put it down and had to find out how it ended. Haven’t done this in ages.

It has been forever since I’ve read on of Shinn’s Archangel books. At one time, I’d have to reread her trilogy at least once a year. Then I get a pile of unread books and you get busy and you get into other stuff (aka Harry Potter fandom). Not to mention this one was first published in trade paperback size and I decided to wait for the mass market paperback. So all my fault really.

But I want to talk about Angel-Seeker. In the land of Samaria, there are humans and angels. The angels pray to Jovah on behalf of the humans for help in the weather or medicine, etc. The angels need the humans to reproduce. Angel-Seekers are women who entice angels to sleep with them, hoping to conceive an angel baby. If that happens, the Angel-Seeker gets to move, as a beloved member, into the Angelhold (the communities where the angels live. For a woman with no family or prospects, this seems like a good deal. The problem is, angel babies are quite rare and this can lead to a number of unwanted babies.

This story is told from the point of view of three characters. The first one is Elizabeth, a servant girl, who moves to the new Cedar Hills in the hopes of falling in love with an angel or conceive an angel baby. The second is Rebekah, who gives us our first inside look into the harsh world of the Jansai. She finds an injured angel in the desert, Obadiah (the third character) and this meeting springs their lives into a completely different direction.

I had been so worried that this book might have been a bad idea, sort of one of those staying too long at the party type of scenarios (Cough!StarWarsCough!). I loved the Archangel books and this is the first to break away from that setup. These books have a world I’d love to visit. Experience the Gloria (which is a yearly Woodstock) or walk through Luminaux or just people watch with a drink at a café in Cedar Hills. It is the world you fall in love with, but the stories keep it interesting.

Another fun game is to compare it to Lord of the Rings. I’m figuring that the Edori are very Hobbit like except they really like to travel. The Oracles could be considered the Wizards as they are good to go to for counsel and know lots of stuff. The angels have an ethereal or mystical quality that is rather elf like. The Jansai are not exactly as scary as an Orc but they are not nice people either. And I’m still trying to figure out the dwarf connection. … This is what happens when you read this book way too late at night.

But it is fun and I enjoyed walking in that world again. It also made me want to pick the old ones up again which is a good sign that Shinn didn’t ruin it for me. That was all I was asking for.