Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton

Angelfire

Courtney Allison Moulton
464 pages
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: February 15th, 2011
Source: NetGalley (291 pages)

This debut, the first novel in a trilogy, is achingly romantic, terrifying, and filled with blistering action.

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 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 been 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 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 rebirth 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 of her past lives - including truths that may be too frightening to remember.

   Angelfire was high on my must-read list. It seemed like everyone rated it as action-packed and fastpaced. That must be why it was such a big disappointment for me - it didn't live up to its hype.

   Ellie is a normal 16 year old. Well, almost normal. Her grades are dropping and her 17th birthday's coming up with a huge party. Enter Will, her Guardian, supposed to protect and aid her in killing reapers - wolf-like creatures that eat humans and send their souls straight to Hell.

   She finds out that she's been doing this - killing reapers and protecting humans - for centuries. Yes, hundreds of years. She'll die, but her soul reincarnates again. But the demonic reapers have come across something that may end her life forever, so that she'll never come back.

    Why didn't Angelfire live up to its hype for me? For one, the action-packed and fast-paced part was sort of lacking. I thought it was pretty predictable and I sort of guessed some of the moves before they happened. And sometimes it moved a little too slow. However, that wasn't really an issue, I don't mind not being action-packed.
My real problem was that it contained way to many references to religion. We're talking about divine forms (God, angels by name), heaven, and hell - it was a little TOO much, for my liking. I confess, I actually skipped past those parts, and I think, out of the 291 pages (in the eARC), I may have skipped 15-20 pages total.

   For some of you, religious references may not be an issue, based on your beliefs, but to me, it was an issue. I think YA fiction and religion are two concepts meant to be kept FAR AWAY from each other.

   Why I didn't rate it lower? I think the debut author deserves credit for the unique plot and the characters, who seemed like the average humans they were trying to depict (not like some novels where the charcters are unnaturally perfect or pratically emotionless, know what I mean?).

   I was really disappointed with the outcome of Angelfire for me. I expected so much out of it, but I'm not sure what happened. It's not an outright "no", but it's not what I would pick up immediately if I had a second chance.

Did you read it? What did you think?