Sorry it took me so long to update. But good news! I’ve already gone ahead and marked several chapters in advance, so in theory the next few will be done quickly.
Now this chapter is… actually kind of boring. It’s Verlaine and Bruno in an airplane on their way to Russia. And what is Bruno doing on this plane? Why eating, of course!
Bruno pulled down the plastic table and set out his dinner, bought at Roissy before boarding: a baguette sandwich with ham and a bottle of red wine from Burgundy. If there was one he understood about the present situation, it was that he couldn’t think on an empty stomach.
I… I think that was a joke. I think. I mean, I’m not sure, because it sure as hell wasn’t funny. Look, I know some of you thought my intro to the spork wasn’t comedy gold, but this is just… bad. It’s like if a dad joke farted.
See, here’s another issue I have with this book: there’s no humor. I don’t mean there’s virtually no humor, I mean there is no intentional humor in this book. Everyone is so incredibly serious. No one stops and says, “Hey all of this stuff going on? It’s pretty freaking weird. Let’s make jokes to break tension.” There’s no clever quips lampshading the strangeness of what’s going on.
But you know, that’s not necessary for humor. Movies like Pacific Rim have comic relief without making it references to how ridiculous it is everything that’s going on. But this book? Has neither. There’s no funny moments in this book.
So let’s do a headcount: there’s no funny moments, the fight scenes are just kind of meh, the characters are barely interesting and inconsistent, and the world-building, while interesting at first look, doesn’t hold up to a lot of scrutiny. If it was only one of those things, I’d be fine—I can read crappy books with great humor or watch awful movies with great fight scenes all day long. But this? This is just boring.
That’s right—a conspiracy thriller about evil angels secretly ruling the world is boring.
Right, on with the story!
Bruno found two plastic cups and poured the wine—
Wait, wait—what do you mean, he “found two plastic cups?” You go through the effort of telling us where Bruno got the food and wine, but he just “found” plastic cups? Where? You’re on a plane. As far as I know, you don’t get those on planes unless they’re handed to you. So he just picked it up? Were they there before? So does that mean he is putting his wine into used plastic cups?
Ew.
Sorry, moving on.
…and poured the wine. Verlaine accepted one, took a pillbox from his pocket, and swallowed two pills.
Okay, STOP.
Okay, Verlaine takes medication? What? When? Why? Why isn’t this further explained?
And you know what? This is never brought up. It’s not important that the character is on medication. So why the hell was it mentioned?
At this point, Bruno’s all like, “So I’ve finally figured out what’s been holding Verlaine back all this time—Evangeline!” However, his internal monologue is also quick to point out that he has a similar stumbling block, a subject on whom he also doesn’t think clearly that might hold him back. Except while Verlaine’s is a woman he met ten years ago and fell in with and still can’t get over, Bruno’s is a psychotic killer.
No one knew it, he hoped, but Bruno was also wrestling with his own demons: He couldn’t forget Eno—the way she moved, her strength, her beauty. Calling up the profile he’d downloaded onto his phone, he scrolled through the supplementary documents, glancing at the DNA report before stopping to examine—admire, if he were honest with himself—the photographs of her exquisitely cold features. It was no use pretending to himself that her penetrating black eyes hadn’t burned into his heart.
Yes, that’s right, Bruno is now creepily obsessed with Eno. Like some kind of sick infatuation. Let me remind you that Eno has killed, mutilated, and castrated several members of his secret society. His secret society that is sworn to bring down the faction that Eno gets her paycheck from. And given angelologists’ view on their enemies, that basically means that the only thing they consider Eno good for is to torture for information or to shoot in the face.
And Bruno wants to get in her pants.
Do I need to explain how creepy this is? No? Well too bad, I’m doing it anyway: Bruno’s staring at pictures of Eno on his phone. He is sitting there, checking out an enemy asset on his phone because he’s just so captivated by her beauty. Even if we remove the plot, the angels and secret society, this is kinda sketchy. Dude, get some self-control!
Verlaine sees Bruno staring at his phone with wistful eyes and asks what he’s looking at. Bruno decides to tell him.
Bruno passed the phone to Verlaine. “Eno,” he said, opting to tell him the truth. “This creature inspires pure obsession among our agents,” he said.
He opts to tell him the truth. Except Bruno conveniently doesn’t mention to Verlaine that he himself is also obsessed with Eno. So… not the truth at all.
Bruno hands over the phone so Verlaine can read over Eno’s file. He’s understandably really disgusted about what he reads.
The victim suffered burns to the neck, wrists, and ankles; lacerations to the fact, torso, buttocks, and back. The body was marred by what appears to be—from autopsies documenting previous victims—ritualistic castration. Organs are never left at the scene and assumed to be kept as a trophy.
Let me repeat in case you didn’t catch that: it’s assumed that she keeps the dicks of angelologists as trophies. Why? Because they’re not at the scene with the rest of the body. Look, I’m not a criminal profiler, and I won’t pretend to be one, but how on Earth do you go from “a body part isn’t with the rest of the body” to “it must have been kept as a trophy?” Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to assume that it was disposed of somewhere else? Hell, the last body like this we mentioned was in a river—I’m surprised you found as much of the guy as you did.
And as far as I know, there’s not any other evidence that the whole ‘taken as trophy’ thing is the case. The angelologists just assumed that because Reasons. Personally, I think they just have an over-inflated sense of their dicks’ importance.
Also, keep in mind that Bruno knows all this, and still wants to get in Eno’s pants.
So moving on from talking about penises: Bruno monologues a bit about Evangeline. Her disappearance was considered pretty sketchy by angelologist standards, and she was basically branded a possible traitor to the organization. Mind you, I don’t blame her for disappearing. Later in this very chapter, Bruno talks about how he saw Evangeline with wings and “repressed an instinctual desire to destroy her.”
Yeah, that’s not healthy.
There’s a bit of narration about Evangeline’s parents. So let’s talk about them! Her father, Luca Cacciatore, was an angelologist who was the first to start the angel hunters, people who go around killing or capturing Nephilim. Now why this didn’t happen before, and what angelologists did before that, I don’t know, as it seems a bit essential in their field of study.
Angela Valko, on the other hand, was Evangeline’s mother. From the last book, we know that Evangeline was secretly the daughter of Percival Grigori III, but her mother married another angelologist, Raphael Valko, to avoid the distrust of having the former lover of a Grigori going around. Now Angela, unlike her husband, was less into field work and more of a scientist or scholar, who was apparently wonderful and everyone at the academy envied her. She was so forward and her work pushed the boundaries of what was normally allowed or accepted by the conservative angelologist leaders.
What was Angela Valko’s work? Pfft. Fudge if I know! Bruno doesn’t tell us. There’s an entire paragraph that keeps talking about how revolutionary her “work” is without telling us what it was. For all we know at this point, her work could have been training killer ferrets.
It’s like what happened with Verlaine. Instead of giving us any idea for ourselves what Angela Valko’s work was like or what the impact of it was, Trussoni holds back any demonstration and is like, “Trust me, it was awesome.” If we don’t know what she was doing, then we should we think much of her? Like I said, she could have been training killer ferrets. So what? Why should I care?
Verlaine and Bruno talk about Eno some, and wondering what she’s planning to do with Evangeline.
“Eno’s motives are never clear. She confounds the best of us.”
Um… objection? Eno’s a mercenary. Her motives are incredibly clear—she gets paid to do violent things. It’s not like Eno’s got this evil plan to take over the world by subtly manipulating anyone. She’s one of the most transparent characters I’ve ever seen. She’s not exactly Albus Dumbledore, guys. What you should be asking isn’t “What does Eno want with Evangeline?” It should be, “What do the people who hired Eno want with Evangeline?”
So they’re sitting there wondering why Eno took Evangeline until Verlaine says, “Maybe it’s because of this!” And he hands the egg that she gave him over.
“How’d you make it through security with that thing?”
I brought you this quote because that question is never answered. In fact, I didn’t actually think about it at all until Bruno brought it up. So how did Verlaine get this Faberge Egg through security? The Plot, that’s how!
There’s a small sculpture in the egg, and Verlaine hopes that Bruno might know what it all means. Unfortunately for him, Bruno knows jack squat about it, but assures them that since they’re going to Russia, they’re sure to find out.
So they land in Russia, and Bruno knows his best student will do anything to get Evangeline back. Have we seen many examples of Verlaine’s determination? Not really. But that’s Bruno’s purpose—to tell the audience how awesome Verlaine is. It’s not like we can be trusted to get that from Verlaine’s actions.
Just… I hate this book guys.
The Smith of Lie on 12 October 2014, 14:56 said:
Firstly to comment about humor. Two of Urban Fantasy series I love (I think using that genre for comparison is only fair) make extensive use of humor. Dresden Files with Spider-Manesque wit and Skullduggery Pleasant with dry wit, both have a lot of deadpan sarcasm as well. And that is large part of what makes them awesome. In case of Dresden Files even more so, since first person narration gives us idea how much of defensive mechanism the jokes are, against all the terrible things Harry have witnessed (and/or done).
How old is Evangeline? Since the schmuck who tried to kill Eno did so back in 1937 at the latest. So, giving the book a lot of leeway, angel hunters are around since 1937. To be a member of organization important enough to start the movement like that her father would need to be either a well established Angelologist or have a meteoric rise in the hierarchy. Either way the whole thing stinks of bad math.
And finally to Eno inspiring obsession. Why. Really, why? She is supposedly a member of warrior caste. Presumably one of many. Her powers so far are related to immplating people who annoy her. Why does she inspire obsession? If we were talking a succubus or some variant of such, if we were talking about character whose speciality is charisma and social grace, sure why not. But in the context? WHY?!
It is official – there are no characters in this book. They are all mindless automatons fueled by plot. No motivation, agency or any such silliness. Resistance is futuile.
pug on 12 October 2014, 20:00 said:
It’s pretty clear the testicles are being taken deliberately, if all the dead bodies are missing their testicles.
“Trophies!” is still a leap in logic though. Maybe the killer just likes breakfast sausage.
swenson on 13 October 2014, 09:49 said:
Arguably you could conclude there was some… reason to need them? Like a magic ritual or to prove they’re dead or something. Still super weird and creepy. Obviously.
@Smith – you’re right, the characters really don’t have any personality. They just sort of do stuff, as required.
Juracan on 13 October 2014, 10:28 said:
Nope! The shmuck who first tried to kill Eno did so in 1899, during the Paris World Fair that year. I suppose that means there were angelologists who went out and did hunting, but they weren’t called “angel hunters” as such.
Then again, I’m just hypothesizing to make up for Trussoni’s awful writing at this point. I don’t know for sure.
I don’t know about Luca’s rank. He was with Angela, who is mentioned as being well-connected in the angelologist community. What the book says is that he started the angel hunters (with Angela’s help) after he got his application to be stationed in Paris rejected.
I don’t know! The best I can think of is that it might be an attempt to make the book “sexier” or try to make Eno more dangerous of an opponent than she already is. But it doesn’t make any freaking sense. It’s not mentioned as being something common among her subspecies (Emim) or even a feature that comes across in any other Nephilim character. It’s just there.
Oh God, you have no idea. When we reach the end of the book, you’ll really see.
That’s what I meant; sorry if it wasn’t clear. The angelologists are awful investigators, making huge leaps of logic without any evidence, not coordinating or even attempting any approach other than violence.
Nope! There’s not a lot of evidence that there’s really “magic” in this setting. There’s a ritual in the last book that can summon an archangel, and it’s mentioned earlier in this book that Verlaine knows how to “bind” angels, but other than that there doesn’t seem to be anything.
I chalk it up to one of those things where the author does something to creep out the reader, whether it makes sense or not.
Catherine Berry on 13 October 2014, 18:37 said:
Mommy, I want a trash-talking Persian for Christmas!
The Smith of Lie on 14 October 2014, 01:57 said:
I remembered the World Fair part, just not which. So I went with latest possible still making no sense.
There were many great secret societies in history of fiction. Illuminati in their many incarnations. Knights Templar. Hellsing Organization. Majestic 12. League of Shadows. Angelologists are not one of them.
This chapter containst one more example of their incompetence, that was missed by all of us. Bruno is aboard the plane to Russia. Bruno is whatever passess for commanding officer of the cell in the possibly most angel infested city in the world. Unless our sporker forgone the mention of some hand wave, their leader just packed and left, leaving his people to fend off for themselves.
Sure, his leadership probably would not help them much, seeing as he did not show any capacity for it, but it is the principle of the thing.
Juracan on 14 October 2014, 10:16 said:
Ah! Well it turns out I skipped a bit that sort of addresses that because there’s a lot to talk about, but that is mentioned! Page 49:
Yup! It’s “totally unsanctioned.” This plan goes against protocol and the rules of the society and they’re going with it anyway. Now as you mentioned, Bruno is leaving his people in a city that’s supposedly overrun with hostile forces. And he mentions that he paid for this trip himself, so it’s off the society’s records. Which means they’re going to Russia (which is supposedly even more crawling with Nephilim), and it’s off the records of the society. There’s no mention of him putting someone else in charge in his absence either.
I repeat— he just up and left, and as far as we can tell, there’s no record of him being gone. So… the society just forfeited their hold on Paris.