A Kiss Before the Apocalypse

Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: An angel that had turned his back on Heaven must now do its dirty work in order to save humanity and all he holds dear.

Opening Sentence: It was an unusually warm mid-September day in Boston.

The Review:

Angels have held our fascination for ages untold. These etheric creatures that seem to encapsulate the beautiful horror nestled within the primitive part of our imaginations. Is it their complete lack of humanity that grabs our attention? Is it our need to touch and personify that which we will never be? Angels, Demons, and an adorable Labrador Retriever all make an appearance in this exciting new series from Thomas Sniegoski, A Kiss Before the Apocalypse.

Remy Chandler is a simple show more private investigator working an open-and-shut infidelity job. What was once easy, if boring, money gig turns into trouble on a Heavenly scale. So why should Remy care about the troubles of Heaven and its Host? It may have a little something to do with him once being one of them. After the war with Lucifer, Remiel lost the drive to fight anymore and walked away from his brothers and Maker to live among the humans on Earth. Now it seems that “Remy” is going to get involved with the politics of Heaven whether he wants to or not.

Remy is an amazing character. His angelic nature is still there, just suppressed by the sheer force of his will. His love and understanding of humanity make him a unique link between Angels and humans. His past allegiances come into constant opposition to his current life. He must find and restore the Angel of Death but by doing that, he loses the woman he loves. The conflicting emotions make Remy’s journey much more relatable than most other angel stories I have read. It is his ultimate compassion for life on Earth that marks him the perfect champion for Heaven’s Designs.

The supporting characters are just as complex, and that’s including Remy’s dog. Each person, both human and non-human, allows Remy to explore each aspect of the story with a new perspective. The dog, Marlowe, expresses each issue in its most simplistic fashion. Things like death and time mean little to a dog. For the record, I love Marlowe just for this reason. Sometimes people make things far more complicated than it needs to be.

With the occasional sad and tension filled pages that were hard for me to personally read, Kiss Before the Apocalypse provides fans a new and interesting twist to the usual angel tale. Sniegoski gives us a hero of biblical proportions with a fondness of coffee and the simple things in life.

Notable Scene:

Remy darted out into the downpour.

“Hey, Chandler,” Francis called to him.

Remy stopped at the car, opening the door as he waited to hear what Francis had to say.

“I know it’s tough, but don’t do anything stupid.”

He wished he could’ve made that kind of promise, but those times had long passed.

Stupid may have been all that he had left.

FTC Advisory: Penguin/ROC Trade provided me with a copy of A Kiss Before the Apocalypse. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. The only payments I receive are hugs and kisses from my little boys. show less

This is a short novel, (less than 300 pages) dealing with big themes at a brisk pace that shows a discipline I wish more writers in this genre would share.

The plot line is pure graphic novel (a plus from my point of view; I’m a long time fan of the genre): The Angel of Death is missing, the apocalypse is coming and Remy Chandler, PI and former Seraphim has to find the Angel of Death to prevent the end of the world. The downside (apart from the blood and pain needed to achieve the task) is that success will mean the death of the woman he loves.

The book brims with new ideas that capture the imagination and old ideas artfully redrawn that give the book a context. The feel is as Film Noire as the character’s name suggests and all the show more better for that.

Sniegoski handles the big issues here not by rambling discussions of ethics and philosophy but by bringing us to the basics of humanity: the overwhelming impact of being loved, the inevitability of death, the optimism it takes to keep going in the face of pain and suffering, and the acknowledgement that there are no short cuts when it comes to emotions; knowing grief is coming won’t protect you from its bite.

The linchpin of this book is Remy’s desire to put aside the angelic nature that he has become ashamed of and embrace the physically fragile but emotionally and spiritually rich existence of humans. This allows us both an insight into the inhumanity of Heaven and the things about our own lives that define us as human.
The various non-human entities here are described succinctly and with a clarity that enabled me to see the movie that this book would make.

The book truly comes to life in Remy’s relationship with his young Labrador dog, Marlowe. Anyone who has ever had a Labrador as part of their pack will recognise Marlowe. They will also be jealous of Remy’s ability actually to hear Marlowe’s voice rather than having to work out what is being said through gestures and body-language; few things are more humbling than realising that your dog is being patient with you, waiting for you finally to figure out what he has already told you three times.

The book would have been stronger in my view if there had been a little more visibility of the back-story between Remy and his wife, but this is a minor nit.

I look forward to the next in the series.

One last thing: don’t be put off by the title. It is definitely the worse thing about the book.

I suspect there’s an editor out there somewhere who should be blushing for having insisted on this title and the even worse cover art.

I imagine the editor saying: “It’s a wonderful title, honestly. We’ll maximise the appeal to the target demographic if we have the word Kiss and Apocalypse in the title and let’s make sure the dog gets on the cover, oh, and give him a sort of Harry Dresden grim-in-a-leather-duster look (yes I know it isn’t in the text – this is cover art, darling, you don’t have to be so literal) and remember to give him a big long sword, gotta love the symbolism in that.” show less

Remy Chandler was once the angel Remiel, and he is still, unless he suppresses his angel nature. After the war in Heaven where Angels fought and killed each other, Remy left to live among humans. In the 1950s he became a private eye in Boston, and met the love of his life and married her. now Madeleine is ill. Meanwhile odd things are happening, mainly that people stop dying, worldwide, no matter how ill or injured they are.

Sniegoski's world is pretty interesting, with pretty good characters and plot. But maybe I'm just growing too old, or maybe watching enough of The Daily Show makes me think more critically and makes it harder for me to suspend my disbelief. It's just that the whole break the seals and the Apocalypse comes thang has show more not only been done, it never made a whole lot of sense while also saying there's an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God on the Throne of Heaven. All those things just can't be true.

Anyway, I liked it well enough to read the second one in ther series. show less

I picked up A Kiss Before the Apocalypse a while ago and it's been sitting on my shelf and I've felt very bad for it so I decided to give it a shot. I've never read anything by Thomas E. Sniegoski before and so I wasn't sure quite what to expect but now I'm hooked, even though Remy looks an awful lot like James Van Der Beek circa Dawson's Creek on the cover. (In case you're wondering, I much prefer the 2010/2011 James Van Der Beek, who makes awesome videos for Funny Or Die.)

There was a lot about this book that I enjoyed. Remy's a great protagonist and I love the idea of an angel who renounces heaven to live on Earth, falling in love with a human woman, having a super adorable dog named Marlowe, earning a living as a private show more investigator. Remy still has some of his angelic powers -- he doesn't age, for example, he can communicate with animals, and he's got empathic qualities -- but he keeps them in check whenever possible. It's less possible when he's recruited by his former colleagues to help find the Angel of Death, who's gone missing, which has major ramifications: Not only is no one dying, but the Angel of Death holds the scrolls that keep the apocalypse from happening.

With such great plot, I had big expectations for the characters and they were all met. Remy, Marlowe, Madeline, the Grigori, Francis...there wasn't a single character who didn't feel real and whole. Everyone was unique and Marlowe made for some good comic relief, though I generally don't enjoy it when animals talk in books in this fashion. Here, however, it worked for me.

I have the next book, Dancing on the Head of a Pin, sitting on my shelf and I'm pretty excited to get into it. Hopefully I'll be sharing my thoughts about it with you soon.

http://ireadgood.wordpress.com show less

After the war that had cast the Morningstar down, Heaven had lost its allure to Remiel and so he walks the Earth as one with mankind. We pick up his story when he's in the guise of Remy Chandler, a PI in Boston with a wife and dog to look after. Unfortunately his aged wife is all but dead and seeing out her final moments in a rest home that cares for the terminally ill. Remy and Marlow, the dog, miss her a lot and Marlowe never ceases to ask after her. The ability to talk with any living creature is one part of Remy's angelic powers that he's not suppressed. Remy is on a standard surveillance gig for a suspicious wife who thinks her husband is cheating on her when he hears a gunshot from the motel room the man and his secretary are in. show more Bursting in he finds the man standing with a smoking pistol over the body of his, now former, secretary. He recognises Remy for what he is and tells him that the Apocalypse is coming then shoots himself. Remy realises that something major is brewing when these two fail to pass over and he discovers that others are failing to cross as well. He finds out why when some of his former brethren tell him that the Angel of Death has gone missing and they want Remy to find him and get him back on the job. Israfil, the Angel of Death, also holds the scrolls that if opened will release the Four Horsemen and bring about the end of the world.

This book is the first of an urban fantasy series written by an author who primarily worked in the YA and comic industries before trying his hand here and in some ways that shows. Only the main character is fully fleshed out and those that either aid or hinder his efforts given only minimal airbrushing to satisfy the story requirements. Hopefully some of these will become more integrated into this world as the series develops. Despite the drawbacks this is not a bad opener and is quite a quick read with the opening noirish feel (what'd you expect when the names of Chandler and Marlowe are given to the featured characters) giving way to headlong action prior to a slightly overlong denouement. I'll be picking up the next in the series hoping for some improvement. show less

The basic concept behind this book is interesting: an angel chooses to live as a human, trying to figure out why God so loves these creatures, and finding his answer in such things as his love for his wife and the taste of a good cup of coffee. Boston private investigator Remy Chandler is actually Remiel, one of the Seraphim. While it may seem like a fall of epic proportions to give up a position in heaven in order to spy on a cheating husband, Remy doesn’t see it that way. But one such case is very strange indeed: a man shoots his lover in the head and chest, and then turns the gun on himself, but neither of them dies. In fact, no one in the world is dying. It soon becomes apparent that the Angel of Death has given up taking souls show more – perhaps because, like Remy, he has experienced what it is to be human, and can no longer bear to do the job. Other celestial forces see their chance to bring God’s great experiment to an end by unleashing the apocalypse, restoring the angels to what they see as their rightful place as God’s favorites. Despite this promising premise, however, A Kiss Before the Apocalypse: A Remy Chandler Novel is not as good as it should be. Although Sniegoski is plainly trying for a classic bit of noir, his writing is not good enough to pull it off. The plotting is hindered by too many dead ends and too many characters. I would have guessed that this was a first novel and been likely to excuse the problems, but the “About the Author” section indicates that Sniegoski has quite a few books under his belt already. Maybe the next in this series will work better, now that the characters have been introduced and the essential conceit already explained. The idea behind this one is good enough that I’m willing to give the series a second chance. show less

I read a short story with Remy Chandler in it and was intrigued by the character. So, I decided to pick up the first book in this series. It was a good book with an interesting premise.

Remy used to be Remiel part of the Seraphim host. He decided to suppress his angelic nature and live with humans. Now his lives with his dog Marlowe, his wife (who is in a nursing home) and runs his own PI agency . On a investigation that should have been a straight case of infidelity things go awry when the man being investigated shoots himself in the head and dies, but then regains his pulse. Something weird is going on, people all over the world are getting fatal injuries but not dying. Remy finds out that the Angel of Death is missing. The Seraphim show more want Remy to investigate and try to find the Angel of Death. Time is definitely not on Remy's side because as hospitals fill with people who should be dead, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are getting restless. If Remy can't find the Angel of Death it could mean the end of the world.

Overall this was a good book. Remy is an interesting character. Sniegoski does a good job of dealing with angelic and demonic nature without getting too weird about all the religion behind it; which I really appreciated. There is a lot of action in this book and the plot moves along quickly. The world being on the edge of destruction really propels the book forward. There is some humor, but more heartbreak in this book than I was expecting. The side characters are well filled out and were interesting to read about. The writing is straight-forward, nothing exceptional but very easy to read and engaging. I also liked that Sniegoski dealt with how these disasters were affecting the whole world and not just Remy's little corner of it.

Despite the fact that this is technically a well-written novel I had a bit of trouble getting into the characters. The characters had depth, but they were a little fuzzy around the edges. The action scenes were well-written but didn't really grab me and make me feel like I was there. So, I guess, everything felt a little softer than it should have been and didn't have the hard definition that I expect from an investigative novel. I also expected more witty banter and humor than I got, really most of this novel deals with heartbreak. Remy is a character who deals with love in the toughest forms. The novel wasn't very uplifting (not that I expected it to be), I was almost in tears a number of times.

So, I guess this was a paranormal PI novel with heart. Unfortunately I wanted something with a bit more humor and well-defined action. For me this was one of those books that I kind of like, but was kind of disappointed in. I wasn't exactly sure what was missing but I have described it as well as I can above. I do think this could be an excellent series; this book may just be suffering from the first book syndrome a lot of paranormal books seem to suffer from. It was an easy read and engaging; so I will be picking up the next book to read and see how I like that one. show less