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Avenger’s Angel

Heather Killough-Walden

Published 2011           419 pages

Summary (from the book jacket)

After an eternity spent walking the Earth in search of their lost soul mates, four archangels are about to learn that finding their archesses is only the first harrowing step to claiming their souls.

When Uriel, the Angel of Vengeance, catches sight of Eleanore Granger he is stunned. He and his brothers have searched for centuries for the elusive archesses made for them by the Old Man and, recognising Ellie as his, Uriel immediately wages a war of seduction to capture her heart.

Beautiful Ellie has spent her life on the run, hiding inexplicable powers others would kill to possess. She cannot deny her attraction to the extraordinarily handsome man with piercing green eyes but can she trust him?

As passion consumes Uriel and Ellie, outside forces just as powerful as the archangels themselves array against them. If they are to realise the love that is their destiny, Uriel and Ellie must fight to the death against those who would tear them apart…

The Review

Avenger’s Angel is the first book in the new Lost Angels paranormal romance series from bestselling author Heather Killough-Walden. HKW’s previous writing credits include the popular e-book Big Bad Wolf paranormal romance series. For The Lost Angels she leaves werewolves behind and creates a new mythology of archangels fallen to earth.

The basic set up for the series is that 2000 years ago the “Old Man” created four mates for his four favourite archangels. Somehow the archesses were lost, scattered to the Earth and the archangels chose to give up living in their celestial realm, falling to Earth to search for their missing mates. The archangels gave up their wings and assumed human lives living undiscovered amongst the general population for millennia. Each archangel has different powers, for example Michael can heal while Azrael (Angel of Death) is a vampire with all sorts of freaky talents, and all can access a mansion that acts as a portal to anywhere on Earth. 

Avenger’s Angel sees Uriel (Angel of Vengeance, currently working as a hawt movie star) find his missing archess in a Texas bookstore. Ellie is perfection in a human package, blessed with great beauty and the special powers of healing, telekinesis and weather control. Once he spots her Uriel launches a determined pursuit, helpless to do anything else since she was made for him…

Arghhh! When Christine Feehan first launched her Dark series I’ll admit that I was completely hooked on the whole destined mate aspect of the books. She made the whole concept of a one-and-only mate seem incredibly attractive and highly desirable. Seeing the soul mates overcome the epic obstacles to their future happiness together never got old… Only it did. After Feehan had written about this same scenario umpteen times and spawned a whole host of copycat romances it just got tired. And slightly creepy in the books where the pre-destined mates got their romantic choices taken away from them. There is an element of this about Avenger’s Angel, and I just couldn’t get comfortable with Uriel’s pseudo-forced seduction of Ellie.

Uriel and Ellie are thrown together and after very little time spent together and with virtually no time to develop their relationship, they are in love. I know they are pre-destined mates but some sort of relationship development would have improved the story greatly – it is after what romance readers read romances for. Maybe there were just too many obstacles being thrown at the happy couple. The story’s plotting is action packed, leaving the characters with little choice but to deal with the drama.

From a personal perspective I found it hard to root for Uriel when Azrael, the angel of death and the world’s first vampire, was a lot more exciting. I don’t think I’m being perverse here, Azrael was just written to be way more mysterious and interesting. In a romance isn’t the leading man supposed to be the most exciting and attractive character?

However, don’t allow me to put you off this book. If you are a romance fan and still into the whole “destined mate” thingy then there is plenty to like here. And while I just couldn’t believe in the romance of Avenger’s Angel as much as I wanted to I still consider the series to have huge potential for further development. I badly want to read Azrael’s story and find out more about secondary characters like Samael, the highly interesting (and attractive) antagonist this piece.

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