The Fallen by Thomas E. Sniegoski

The Fallen: The Fallen and Leviathan is book one and two of the Fallen series. In this book we meet our protagonist Aaron who, on his eighteenth birthday finds out that he is not just the troubled foster kid he thought he was, but rather the son of a human woman and an angel. A Nephilim. Now he is being pursued by a group of angels called the Powers, who believe that all Nephilim are an affront to God and should be eradicated, however there is a prophecy that tells of a Nephilim born to redeem all the Fallen and it seems that it may just be Aaron who is going to fulfill it.


I struggled with this book a little bit. While reading, it was pretty easy to get through but as soon as I put it down, I didn't really want to pick it back up again. It didn't excite me at all and I found that it was quite predictable. I didn't like the fact that it was two books in one, I didn't really understand why they did that and the second book was worse than the first; what with the main villain being an enormous sea monster. Hardly scary. There is no romance in these two books, so don't read them if you are hoping for it. The majority of the books are just about following Aaron around while he struggles with his new found power, but you get a little fun with some other characters.


Practically all the characters are male, so that makes for a little bit of a harder read, but it wasn't a big problem. I was actually looking forward to having a male main character but Aaron turned out to be a little bit of a disappointment in the fuss he made in the second book, I would have thought that he would have moved on quicker from the issues he was having since he was about to be devoured. He wasn't a bad character in the rest of the books, in fact he was quite normal and I liked his reaction to finding out about what he is.


There are a few other characters that I thought were quite interesting but most of them didn't last long. Sniegoski has a penchant for introducing characters that we don't really need to know about, but it was interesting to get a snippet of this other persons life before we find out what happens to them. The main character that stood out was Verchiel, who is the leader of the Powers.  He is everything an angel shouldn't be; he hates humans and kills them without a second thought, however you realise that he really does believe that God wills this to happen and I think that he is quite misunderstood. I like him actually, which is not something that usually happens. Most of the time I'm with the protagonist, thinking that the evil guy really is evil but not this time.


All in all, this was quite a slow read but it wasn't terrible. Give it a go if you don't mind the lack of romance or female characters. There is quite a bit of action going on, so check it out if you are into that. 

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