Book Review: "Angels' Blood" by Nalini Singh

Angels' Blood by Nalini Singh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"Angels' Blood" begins another one of my favorite series by author Nalini Singh. The Guild Hunter series occurs in another universe where angels not only exist, but basically rule the planet.


 The hierarchy goes:

• Archangels
• Angels
• Older or stronger Vampires
• Humans
• New or weak Vampires

Angels Make vampires; and I purposefully use the capital "M" here. The process of changing a human to a vampire is top secret; no humans know how it happens, only that the angels carefully screened candidates and not everyone is eligible. Also, a vampire agrees to a 100-year period of indentured servitude to the angel who Makes him. That's where are story begins.

Our protagonist, Elena, works as a vampire hunter for the Guild. The Guild licenses and manages the only legal vampire hunters in the world. They work for the angels, returning vampires who decide that they don't want to uphold their end of the contract and try to skip out on their masters.

Elena is the best vampire hunter out there.

While normally this would be good, her competence caught the attention of the archangels who rule the world - the Cadre of Ten. Now, Raphael, the Archangel of New York and ruler of the North American continent, needs Elena to do a private job - track down a rogue archangel.

The book moves quickly along, taking the reader down the rabbit hole and into a world of secrets and feathers. The relationship between Elena and Raphael grows as they work towards finding the rogue archangel, going from employer and employee to lovers. But hunt for the rogue does not live in the shadow of their relationship; contrariwise, the reverse is true. I felt the urgency of the hunt, needing to find the rogue before more innocents were hurt. Ms. Singh carefully intersperses short chapters from the point of view of the rogue, bringing him to life.

The book moves quickly along, taking the reader down the rabbit hole and into a world of secrets and feathers. The relationship between Elena and Raphael grows as they work towards finding the rogue archangel, going from employer and employee to lovers. But hunt for the rogue does not live in the shadow of their relationship; contrariwise, the reverse is true. I felt the urgency of the hunt, needing to find the rogue before more innocents were hurt. Ms. Singh carefully intersperses short chapters from the point of view of the rogue, bringing him to life.

Ms. Singh weaves a beautiful story here, creating a wonderful new world and populating it with believable characters. I recommend this book to anyone who likes a good fantasy.

View all my reviews