Robin > Books: 2024-reads‎ (73)

“We aren’t investigating that bloody death circus,” he said, grinding his teeth. “I was clear on that!”
“Well, you’re not the boss of us!” I said, voice rising.
“You could have died!” Rorick roared.
Anita shot webbing at me. The sticky silk struck me gently in the cheek. It was like being slapped by a slightly chewed marshmallow.

Death gave me wings.

"The Executive called me 'remarkably unremarkable',"  Leopold said dryly. "Average absolutely to the decimal point.  Unspecial by every magical metric,' If we're going to insult my abilities, let's quote an expert."

I don’t know what is going on…recently it seems like I’ve found a few more books that have angel/demon dynamics in them.  I won’t say that Celestial Academy: Essence the first book in the Afterworld series has large religious intonations, because it definitely does not.  It is more like various teams playing on the court.   You have team Angels, they appear to be the upper crust of society now and make many of the rules in the human world.  Then there is team demons who tend to run some of the shadier happenings in this world.  There are also some fey, vampires, shifters, goblins and other supernaturals hanging out too.  Then there is the bottom of the food chain so to speak, the humans.  Most are sold into slavery to Angels, demons or others.  They have been since the world was lost in the magical war twenty-ish years ago.  This is the story of one of those Humans, Wen.

Wen, well what can I say I loved her from the beginning.  She has sass, an unusual talent, a really high threshold to pain, a mouth that runs away with her when it should just shut up and a propensity to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Owned by a demon she is doing everything to get out of his clutches along with her best friend and roommate Sarah.  Wen will do whatever it takes, even if that means selling Angel Essence (something only she seems able to collect) to earn the money needed to buy their freedom.  After she is busted by Godrick one of the Nephilim, whom she dubs Angelhole (see sassy),  she is swept away to the Celestial school to be trained by none other than the sexy half angel she just can’t help antagonizing.  As Godrick tries to whip her into shape, Wen just tries to stay alive in this magical school that seems to want her dead.

There are fights and challenges to move to the next level.  Wen, will have a shot to learn what she is capable of and possibly a little bit into the question of who/what she really is.  With her bff Sarah also at the school, at least she has one ally.

I hear this is like Zodiac Academy (ZA), but I haven’t read that series yet and so cannot comment on the similarities.  Still that said now I want to jump into ZA as well.  I always enjoy the magical school set up.  Wen is roommate with four other women of various background and the five of them make up one team.  They are supposed to learn how to work together to pass the tests coming at them.  A little had to do with a demoness, a fey, a paltry human, a Nephilim and whatever Wen is.   It was also nice that all the characters are around twenty so them lusting a little here and there felt slightly more mature and less icky.  The romance aspect of the story is a really slow burn.  The forced proximity wore Godrick down as Wen is likeable overall and her needling of him turned from aggravating to flirtatious.  It is a fun relationship to watch.

Come back to me - always

I’m really excited to see what is in story for the characters of this story in the next book.  The ending wasn’t a cliff hanger, but the author definitively gave us a tease and dropped a little bomb to get the reader really excited to see where the next story is going to go.

"The world humans knew did end, if not in the way we thought it would.  It’s now a whole new world – Afterworld – because of one tiny difference.  We now have Hell – and Heaven – on Earth.”

“We’re all pretending to be heroes, dear heart,” she observed. “Everyone is looking to us now, so we had better play the parts assigned to us.”

“By the cast-iron balls of the god of blacksmiths,” growled Tuke. “That was a flag of truce. He came over to parlay”

“I know,” said Kagen, his voice as cold as winter ice. “But I came here to start a war.”

“It’s difficult to assign value to discovery when you haven’t sorted out the parameters of reality yet.”

“We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship – to teach, if we are called upon; to be taught, if we are fortunate.”

“So many lifetimes ago, the world promised me that I would never be alone again. I waited three thousand years for that promise to come true. And it was worth it.”

“The Yherajk were a less immediate but infinitely more complicated problem—alien globs who want to befriend a humanity that, if asked, would probably prefer to be befriended by something with an endoskeleton.”

“Your president only speaks for Americans. American movies speak for your world. Who hasn't seen Wizard of Oz? Or Jaws? Or Star Wars? We've seen them, and we're not even from this planet.”

“Surprised that clunker of yours has lasted as long as it did,” he adds.
“I can fix her, no worries,” I say.
“There’s a three-meter-wide hole in the side.”
“We all have our flaws.”

That’s how close life and death are. Not just here, in space or on a volatile planet. Everywhere. Everywhere in the universe, you’re one cracked O-ring away from total failure. And we all just go through each day, ignoring that. Pretending like we don’t see the cracks.

“If you’re as careful as you’re supposed to be, you seem neurotic. I feel neurotic.”

“Now her head and mouth felt empty. She felt like she carried emptiness around with her, a six-foot radius of it.”

“Stop bringing logic into an emotional argument.”

“The first year is when some of us lose our lives. The second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity.”

“Those trees in the distance are the Twilight Forest, where wolves of Doubt and Uncertainty prowl. The open ground you see is the Grueling Field, where spirits of the punished plant and plow, but never reap or harvest. It is a place of thankless work, nourished by worries that plagued humankind since farming began. A place where seedlings die from crippling frost and plants are felled by cruel wind. The pines around us are the Evening Forest, where the birds of Regret and Missed Chances shriek and wail. When we pass through it, we will enter the Glades of Remembrance. They will make you relive your most painful memories.”

“The road goes everywhere you’d want to go. Everywhere you’d think of going. It never ends. And you’re never alone there. And everything you’d ever want is right there on the road.”

“One generation to change the text. One generation chooses to teach that text. The next g

“One generation to change the text. One generation chooses to teach that text. The next grows, and the lie becomes history.”

“Hope is a fickle, dangerous thing. It steals your focus and aims it toward the possibilities instead of keeping it where it belongs—on the probabilities.”

"Never punish a student because they don't know what you didn't teach them in the first place."

"Remind her that witchcraft and ingenuity go hand in hand. Her imagination will point the way."