A Kiss Before the Apocalypse: A Remy Chandler Novel
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
It was an unusually warm mid-September day in Boston. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
It was an unusually warm mid-September day in Boston. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I found this book a bit of a slog.It is written in the third person, so the reader is unable to empathise totally with Remy, the main character, who seems to have left Paradise in disgust afer the War in Heaven, rather than any desire to live with humans. Many of the other characters seem to have been just sketched in, and may develop in further novels There is no fire or joy at all...Although the story is interesting,I couldn't care enough about anyone in it, even Marlowe the labrador, to worry about them, or wonder what comes next.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Remy Chandler is a Boston-dwelling private eye, with a black labrador named Marlowe, and a current case tailing an unfaithful husband - all in all fairly typical fare. Everything changes, however, when the man shoots his lover, and then himself, but fails to die, catapaulting Remy into a far more important case, and one which reunites him with kindred he thought he had left behind long ago, for Remy Chandler is really Remiel, one of the seraphim, the greatest of God's angels, who abandoned Heaven in guilt and disgust after fighting, and killing, his brethren in the war against Lucifer, and has been wandering the Earth in human form ever since. Soon, Remy is on the hunt for the missing Angel of Death, and the five scrolls in his possession that will permit the unleashing of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and bring about the end of the world.
Having an angel - not one who has Fallen, but who has voluntarily left Heaven - as a protagonist is the twist in Sniegoski's new series, which he populates with other beings from Biblical tales and Angelography. This is an interesting new theme in urban fantasy, if not an entirely original one (one only has to think of the 1995 movie 'The Prophecy', for example, which has many of the same ideas about angelic conflict and jealousy of humanity). Remy/Remuel makes an appealingly conflicted hero, struggling to be true to his humanity, to be part of the mortal world, while in reality being nothing of the kind, and his relationship with his failing human wife, and pet dog, to whom he can speak, that being one of his angelic powers, lends him a touching air of vulnerabilty. Although Sniegoski doesn't have the skill with description of, say, Jim Butcher, the plot moves along at a fair rate and, the occasional flashbacks to the war in Heaven, and Remuel's past on Earth, before becoming Remy, make interesting reading.I can only hope that we see more of these in the sequel, 'Dancing on the Head of a Pin', which I'll definitely be giving a go.
Having an angel - not one who has Fallen, but who has voluntarily left Heaven - as a protagonist is the twist in Sniegoski's new series, which he populates with other beings from Biblical tales and Angelography. This is an interesting new theme in urban fantasy, if not an entirely original one (one only has to think of the 1995 movie 'The Prophecy', for example, which has many of the same ideas about angelic conflict and jealousy of humanity). Remy/Remuel makes an appealingly conflicted hero, struggling to be true to his humanity, to be part of the mortal world, while in reality being nothing of the kind, and his relationship with his failing human wife, and pet dog, to whom he can speak, that being one of his angelic powers, lends him a touching air of vulnerabilty. Although Sniegoski doesn't have the skill with description of, say, Jim Butcher, the plot moves along at a fair rate and, the occasional flashbacks to the war in Heaven, and Remuel's past on Earth, before becoming Remy, make interesting reading.I can only hope that we see more of these in the sequel, 'Dancing on the Head of a Pin', which I'll definitely be giving a go.
Format:Mass Market Paperback
What happens when an angel of the lord settles on earth and starts earning a living as a private investigator? Unfortunately not a lot.
The concept behind this story in an interesting one but in no way does the plot live up to the pitch. The author breaks one of the cardinal rules of writing ; SHOW dont TELL!! The reader is dictated everything. There are no instances of showing and the reader is treated as an idiot most of the time by having things spelled out for them. For example 'Francis dropped to his knees, his head beginning to swim. Losing as much blood as he had usually had that sort of effect.' Really?! I'm so glad I have been enlightened to something so obvious.
After having the read the book I had very little idea of what any of the characters looked like. There was very little that defined them as being more than names on a page. There was no character development; Mulvehill in particular was a completely wasted character. He had no relevance to anything in the plot. The author clearly thinks that character development means repeatedly hammering his readers over the head with Remy's angst, moaning on and on about how he can't forget what he really is. Enough already! I get it. You can't forget you're an angel - STOP TELLING ME!
The characters were cardboard cut-outs, plodding through a weak, under-developed plot. Everyone is searching for the five scrolls that if opened will summon the horsemen to bring on the apocalypse. You'd think there'd be some mystery and drama involved in finding these scrolls, but no. Remy finds them very easily, thus wasting a hige opportunity to inject some excitement into the flat narrative. The supposed 'twists' and 'revelations' at the climax were neither surprising nor interesting, just...blah. Perhaps if the characters had been developed beyond a name the twists might have had more effect.
The book seems to be attempting to demonstrate shades of grey through its depiction of the Grigori and the Black Choir but no time is spent developing either so the attempt falls flat.
What I found particularly infuriating where the repeated dream sequences and flashbacks. I counted eight in total. In a book that only numbers 269 pages, this is far too many.
At the 'climax' (if you can call it that) the POV undergoes some headhopping, switching from Remy to Francis, and Maddie and even Remy's dog!! Headhopping is a sin I used to be guilty of when I first started writing stories as a teenager. It is something I have cured myself of and I would have expected a published author to be the same.
The antagonists were not particularly menacing and it hard to see the Black Choir as too frightening. An bunch of angry monkeys beat Remy worse than the Choir did.
In a book about the apocalypse, there is no sense of drama, or intrigue, just a series of bland events plodding along at snail's pace. It fails to engage on any level. The few times the author does try and inject some spark into his lifeless prose, he just hurls in a bunch of adjectives. 'A look of extreme hatred on his normally emotionless face, shockingly morphed into a twisted smile' - this kind of writing is cluttered and amatuerish.
The only points of any interest were the interaction between Remy and his dog. Marlowe had a speech pattern all his own and as such was probably the most developed character in the book. The other plus point was the interaction Remy had with his wife. Without giving too much away, she has aged and he hasnt. I thought the author handled this situation rather well but these really were the only plus points in a dreary, boring little book that I wouldnt recommend to anyone.
The concept behind this story in an interesting one but in no way does the plot live up to the pitch. The author breaks one of the cardinal rules of writing ; SHOW dont TELL!! The reader is dictated everything. There are no instances of showing and the reader is treated as an idiot most of the time by having things spelled out for them. For example 'Francis dropped to his knees, his head beginning to swim. Losing as much blood as he had usually had that sort of effect.' Really?! I'm so glad I have been enlightened to something so obvious.
After having the read the book I had very little idea of what any of the characters looked like. There was very little that defined them as being more than names on a page. There was no character development; Mulvehill in particular was a completely wasted character. He had no relevance to anything in the plot. The author clearly thinks that character development means repeatedly hammering his readers over the head with Remy's angst, moaning on and on about how he can't forget what he really is. Enough already! I get it. You can't forget you're an angel - STOP TELLING ME!
The characters were cardboard cut-outs, plodding through a weak, under-developed plot. Everyone is searching for the five scrolls that if opened will summon the horsemen to bring on the apocalypse. You'd think there'd be some mystery and drama involved in finding these scrolls, but no. Remy finds them very easily, thus wasting a hige opportunity to inject some excitement into the flat narrative. The supposed 'twists' and 'revelations' at the climax were neither surprising nor interesting, just...blah. Perhaps if the characters had been developed beyond a name the twists might have had more effect.
The book seems to be attempting to demonstrate shades of grey through its depiction of the Grigori and the Black Choir but no time is spent developing either so the attempt falls flat.
What I found particularly infuriating where the repeated dream sequences and flashbacks. I counted eight in total. In a book that only numbers 269 pages, this is far too many.
At the 'climax' (if you can call it that) the POV undergoes some headhopping, switching from Remy to Francis, and Maddie and even Remy's dog!! Headhopping is a sin I used to be guilty of when I first started writing stories as a teenager. It is something I have cured myself of and I would have expected a published author to be the same.
The antagonists were not particularly menacing and it hard to see the Black Choir as too frightening. An bunch of angry monkeys beat Remy worse than the Choir did.
In a book about the apocalypse, there is no sense of drama, or intrigue, just a series of bland events plodding along at snail's pace. It fails to engage on any level. The few times the author does try and inject some spark into his lifeless prose, he just hurls in a bunch of adjectives. 'A look of extreme hatred on his normally emotionless face, shockingly morphed into a twisted smile' - this kind of writing is cluttered and amatuerish.
The only points of any interest were the interaction between Remy and his dog. Marlowe had a speech pattern all his own and as such was probably the most developed character in the book. The other plus point was the interaction Remy had with his wife. Without giving too much away, she has aged and he hasnt. I thought the author handled this situation rather well but these really were the only plus points in a dreary, boring little book that I wouldnt recommend to anyone.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Fantasy > Contemporary
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
