The Crippled Angel

This is the third, and last, book in the Crucible Series by Sara Douglass. The series takes place in fourteenth century Europe, and this particular book starts after Hal has taken the throne of England from King Richard II.

The series centres around Thomas Neville, once a church man devoted to a job the angels have given him - banishing all demons back into hell. Things changed drastically once he realized that demons really are only people who were fathered by angels. Neville knows that the future of humanty depends on him, and has been given a choice - either he will hand his soul on a platter to a whore, or he will enslave all humanity to the angels forever.

I had a very hard time with the second book of the series, as that’s when it show more started with the idea that Jesus wasn’t really the Son of God, but that he was just another demon walking around the earth. I wasn’t really sure whether I should continue with the series… but I couldn’t just leave the story hanging and not know how it was finished. Needless to say, I was slightly skeptical coming into this book, but didn’t find it as squicky as I had been thinking it would be, which is always a very good thing. Not that there weren’t parts of the book that didn’t make me uncomfortable (for example, in the book there is no God, but it is really just an idea the collective of angels created in order to get control over humans), but I think I was expecting it more this time around. It also struck me as rather odd for a book that was so much about how there is no God, that the characters (especially Thomas Neville) had to trust so implicitly in Christ that he would make a way for the world to end up not in the clutches of the angels (who are apparantly completely evil), as well as the fact that love is always the answer.

I was proud of myself, though. I’m getting better at guessing which way Douglass will go with her books… but still there are so many things in her stories that I never see until it hits me squarely in the face. While I figured out who exactly Mary was, I still had no idea what Neville was.

Hum, methinks it’s definitly time to take a break from fantasy epics for a while now. show less

Sara Douglass concludes her Crucible series with this third book that takes place among the royal courts of 14th-century England and France in an altered reality that closely resembles our own, but for the interference of angels in mortal affairs. I didn't fall in love with the series, but this is a very interesting time in English (and French) history, and Douglass definitely has a way with words!

The Crucible #3

CRUCIBLE