Review: Regretably disappointing
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 02 7, 2012
I hate to leave negative reviews, and rarely do. I work in the arts myself, and I understand very well how hard it is, and how much courage it takes, to put one's work out into the public eye.  I truly and honestly respect that effort.To the author's credit, I must say that the idea of this novel -- of the angel-investigator -- is engaging; it's creative, and I think it has considerable potential.But I regret buying this, and regret even more spending time reading it.  I freely concede that I'm only one reader, and others may have very different experiences with the novel!  But to me, this work suffers from two irredeemable flaws.It's a fantasy-romance, so I went into it expecting to suspend quite a bit of disbelief ... it's not a genre in which one looks for gritty realism.  But even given that mindset, there were a series of plot points that I found utterly implausible.  (SPOILER)  From the very beginning, when Our Hero's parachutes fail, and he lands in a stream and suffers nothing worse that a few broken ribs, we encounter one unlikely event after another.  A little of this could, in context, be chalked up to the influence of the the Almighty, but there's simply far more of it that I could possibly accept.  (END SPOILER)But worse that the improbable events was the dialogue. It's torturous, ponderous.  No one, from any sort of background or in any walk of life, actually speaks that way.  Every sentence seems weighted with Great, Life-Changing Truths; there's no natural interplay as happens between real humans, especially real humans who know each other well.  Every time someone speaks, they seem to be revealing their deepest emotions, or highest spiritual aspirations.  I could almost picture each speaker ascending a soapbox before speaking.All that being said, I really do think the initial concept of the novel is a good one, and I wish Ms. Paludan well in developing it further in future novels in the series.