Well...I'm going to give this a 3.5 and round up.
This story just didn't feel like it had the depth of the other work I've read from her. At first I thought it might be from coming to this setting from the outside--but no, she actually has deep spiritual grounding in Christianity, as she explains in her Afterword. For me the book picks up as protagonist Celeste and sister Mariel's blind spots and secrets are revealed, and that improved my rating.
The setting is a difficult one for me. I resist metaphors that refer to the losing side in the Battle of Heaven as equivalent to oppressed people of today. Maybe more important, fictional work in this space is really crowded, all the way back to Milton (whom she references). Lucifer and company as antiheroes has been done and done and done, so if you're going to come to this space you have to bring something new. Aliette de Bodard has been mining this vein for awhile, and this book even uses the same term (Fallen) for the demons that de Bodard does. If Roanhorse wants to come back to this world I would want it to be in the form of a novel, maybe a long one, that gets very deep into a unique build of this kind of world. Good luck to her.
The setting is a difficult one for me. I resist metaphors that refer to the losing side in the Battle of Heaven as equivalent to oppressed people of today. Maybe more important, fictional work in this space is really crowded, all the way back to Milton (whom she references). Lucifer and company as antiheroes has been done and done and done, so if you're going to come to this space you have to bring something new. Aliette de Bodard has been mining this vein for awhile, and this book even uses the same term (Fallen) for the demons that de Bodard does. If Roanhorse wants to come back to this world I would want it to be in the form of a novel, maybe a long one, that gets very deep into a unique build of this kind of world. Good luck to her.
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