Review: Raziel by Kristina Douglas (The Fallen #1)

Raziel (The Fallen #1)
Kristina Douglas
Published: Jan. 25, 2011 (Pocket Books)
Purchase: Book Depository or Amazon
Review source: purchased

Reviewed by: Jill

Rating (out of 5): 4 stars

Allie is having a very normal day. She’s running late for a meeting, forgot to eat lunch, got to flirt with a hot stranger, and her stilettos are killing her. Then everything changes when she is accidentally hit by a bus. The stranger she was just flirting with guides her to the portal to be taken to Heaven, but she is pissed about dying and isn’t going peacefully.

Raziel is an immortal fallen angel and has been sentenced to eternity on Earth as a guide for souls to the portal to either Heaven or Hell. He is having to drag Allie to what he has been told is the portal to Heaven, and pushes her in, when suddenly the portal changes into the one to Hell. He quickly grabs her and drags her back out and the portal snaps shut.

Raziel and Allie travel to Sheol, the hidden realm where the fallen angels and their wives hide from the Nephilim (basically evil, crazy, fallen angels). The fallen angels realize that they might have been tossing “good” souls into Hell for a while now, and never realized it. They think that Uriel, the only angel left in Heaven, has been causing them to do this, just out of spite for the fallen angels.

There are a lot of questions that aren’t answered in Raziel. Some plot holes, some things that are hinted at and then never mentioned again. For example sometimes Uriel is spoken of as “the only one not to tumble to Earth,” but I don’t know if that means he’s the only angel or the only archangel left. Another example is the fact that Allie being kind of a ghost/dead person isn’t really talked about or explained, other than to say that she’s corporal in Sheol. I’m not sure if these holes are intended, because they could be expanded on in further books, or are just ignored.

Something that I didn’t like about this book/series is the idea of multiple soul mates. Basically, these fallen angels are immortal and have had multiple soul mate/wives over the millennia. And they love each soul mate equally. So, if their wives die, sucks for the wives, but the guys just move on to the next girl. I’m not against people having multiple soul mates or the idea of remarriage after losing a spouse, it just kind of ruins the romance and the sweetness for me a bit. The next book seems to be about one of the men who literally just lost his wife at the end of this book. I’m not feeling that one, so I don’t think I’ll be picking it up.

One of the things that I really did like about this book is how much antagonism there is between Allie and Raziel. I love it when the couple has a love/hate thing going on for a while, but I do like to see a legitimate resolution of that, which I felt was skipped over in this book.

The plot and action in Raziel were great though, and this series has some really good potential if some of the plot holes are filled in the coming books. I just couldn’t get over the multiple soul mates deal, which is just a personal quirk for me. If you like alpha males and females that never back down, you’ll definitely enjoy this book.

Sexual content: Sex