Title: Strange Angels
Author: Lili St. Crow
Pages: 293
 

I don’t think my knowledge with the English language is enough to fully grasp whatever message this book have (or whatever the author wants me to think). There’s nothing wrong with picturesque and eloquence, and definitely nothing wrong using figure of speech. Using it too much, now that’s a problem.

Strange Angels is strange, literally. I admit that what attracts me the most is the appearance of two sworn enemies in the (paranormal) literary world – the vampires and werewolves. And no, I’m not thinking of Twilight, so please refrain from raising those eyebrows. Thank you.

The story revolves around Dru Anderson (which I still don’t know what it’s short for and she doesn’t want to tell, one of the mysteries of this book, apparently). She has touch and she knows things (creatures) in the Real World. His father is hunting those creatures but when he returned home, he was dead and walking… a zombie. Dru has no choice but to annihilate him which made her an orphan, with nowhere to go. One of her classmate, a half-Asian guy name Graves helped her but in the process was dragged into Dru’s world. He was bitten by a werewolf (spelled as werwulf). This made him a loup-garou; a person bitten by a werewolf without the furry situation but with extra abilities (so no tattered clothes in sight). While digging around her father’s death he met a dhampir (half vampire) Christophe. He told her that she is a svetocha, a rare female dhampir. Since she is exotic, she posses abilities, powerful than a normal dhampir, and she (and other svetocha) can kill a vampire. A powerful vampire is hunting her down, before it’s too late – before she blooms.

One my frustrations are, that this book is wordy, too wordy. I don’t have particular problem with that. I enjoy Angel Star despite the expressiveness I mentioned. But I feel it’s… uhmm… descriptive in an unnecessary way, which is beyond me; and like I’ve said, sometimes it hinder me to fully grab the authors point, or just the scene. I was really frustrated. Another thing I didn’t like is the tone (not literally) of the narrator (Dru). It’s ironic that how she expressed the situation in a verbose way is the exact opposite when it comes to her dialogues (or the entire dialogue). Isn’t her words limited with no, yes, fuck and shit (oh yeah, testosterone too) and what I hate the most is dragging the Lord’s name in vain. Completely unpleasant and disrespectful. And why not use the word vampire, referring it to as “sucker” does not make it any less… well, a vampire. And certainly will not make it unique.

Dru, came to me as strong in a very obnoxious way. Sarcastic dialogues and rug thug colloquial line. I appreciate the author’s stance on making her heroine strong but it’s not how I see her. Dru is interesting enough but not good enough for me to completely like her character. She is sometimes too strong and other times so weak. As for the other two guys – Graves and Christophe they are ok (for most part the dhampir guy but Graves is amazingly remarkable too; and he is Asian ;D). I just can’t understand why Dru smell Christophe as apple pie (see, I don’t get the metaphor applied in this book, I swear, it is mind boggling in an awful way), and why the hell I’m thinking it’s green apple. Not that it matter. So weird.

The plot has potential for something big. Maybe some people saw it but sadly I didn’t. It was interesting enough for me to read the second book (which I did) but not enthralling enough that I have this squishy feeling of excitement. Good plot but sad to say, the execution didn’t work for me.