Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton

It’s one thing to have horrifying nightmares of battling with terrible monsters. It’s quite another thing to find out that those nightmares are actually memories. Imagine Ellie’s surprise when she discovers that she’s not just an ordinary seventeen-year-old girl like she thought; instead, she’s the Preliator, an ancient warrior with the gift of angelfire, the only weapon that can truly destroy reapers, the infernal creatures of the Grim. She is reincarnated every time she dies so that she may continue fighting in the ancient war between the angels and the Fallen. This time around, though, there’s much more at stake for Ellie. Her enemies are searching for some kind of ancient talisman with the potential to utterly destroy her; if they succeed, the Preliator will be reincarnated no more. It’s bad enough that Ellie has to deal with family problems and her forbidden attraction to Will, her eternal protector; now she has to destroy her enemies before they destroy her forever.

Sadly, Angelfire did not blow me away as I hoped it would. I was expecting some pretty intense nonstop action and a strong heroine with a propensity for kicking butt. While Moulton does deliver many exciting action scenes, Ellie turned out to be not who I thought she would be and there were many other details that just weren’t smoothed over. The transition from normal teenage girl Ellie to Preliator Ellie was awkward; I felt like there was an unexplained jump between Ellie’s denial of the reality of reapers and her acceptance of her apparent heritage. When I finally got used to Ellie as an ancient warrior, she turned back into a regular teenager in the sense that she started to rebel against her duties. The constant shifting between the main action, Ellie’s increasingly romantic relationship with Will, and other more minor parts of Ellie’s life was poorly done. This made it hard to focus on the story at hand sometimes. The main ideas behind Angelfire, particularly the ancient war between good and bad, though not particularly original, were sufficiently added onto by Moulton that it seemed promising. It’s really too bad that the actual story did not live up to this.

Angelfire may still be enjoyed by fans of Fallen by Lauren Kate, Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick, and Unearthly by Cynthia Hand.

Rating: 3.5

Review copy from NetGalley