Angel Down
By Daniel Kraus ★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10 ""...for if you were to forge new kinds of weapons, and those weapons flew farther and sailed higher than anything before them, it stood to reason that the payloads might strike beings hovering at alti..."
By Daniel Kraus
★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10
285 pages
What’s it about?
Cyril Bagger was a private in the United States Army during World War I. He is serving at the front and trying to get through the war in one piece by any means necessary. He is a con man by trade, and he uses these skills to avoid any duty that will put him in harm's way. He also uses his skills to gain any advantage he can over his fellow soldiers. Guess what, he is not a fan favorite in his company. When five expendable soldiers are sent into no man's land to retrieve a fellow fallen soldier who won't quit screeching, Bagger is among them. When the man they are going to save turns out to be a fallen angel, all kinds of feelings are stirred up, and the plot thickens.
What did it make me think about?
War and its automation.
Should I read it?
Well, I had this on my shelf as it had gotten good reviews- but then it won the Pulitzer, and I was determined to get through it. It did not sound appealing- a gruesome World War I novel with a fallen angel. Really? World War I involved trench warfare in the mud and mustard gas. Who wants to read about that? I guess I did because once I started, I just kept on reading.
Yes, this book is gory, and violent, and cruel- and Daniel Kraus definitely likes writing horror (and I don't read horror), but this book is also really good.
Did I mention the whole book is one long run-on sentence as well? It sounds too bad to be true- but somehow it just works and works beautifully. It is about war, but it is also about the nature of men and why we always cycle back to war. I highly recommend this book, but if you are squeamish, you have been warned...
A passage I marked
"...for if you were to forge new kinds of weapons, and those weapons flew farther and sailed higher than anything before them, it stood to reason that the payloads might strike beings hovering at altitudes that, prior to the Great War, had been secure, and one of those beings might be a goddammed angel,"
