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September 27, 2004
I'm done! Alleluia!
I wasn’t expecting too much from Sharon Shinn’s The Alleluia Files, and I wasn’t disappointed. Archangel was by and large the best book in the series—much of the reason being that Archangel dealt with one romance, while The Alleluia Files and the second book Jovah’s Angel, mix two romances together.
The Alleluia Files brings us three hundred years beyond Jovah’s Angel, in a time when technology is advancing, albeit at a snails crawl. Tamar is the primary protagonist, and is a member of the “Jacobites,” a group of persecuted radicals who claim that Jovah, their god, is really nothing more than a powerful ship orbiting the planet. In order to prove this, the Jacobites have been searching for legendary recordings known as the Alleluia Files, hence the books name. Contrary to the book’s back cover, neither Tamar nor any other character has been raised in captivity among the angels.
Make no mistake about it, in spite of its science fiction leanings, The Alleluia Files is a romance. Tamar is destined to be the mate of the angel known as Jared, the leader of the angel host at Monteverde, a care-free leader who prefers r&r over real responsibility. Needless to say, the sparks fly from the start, but because of Tamar’s suspicious nature, the romance seems doomed. Rounding out the trio of characters is Lucinda, an angel raised by her aunt away from the other angels on a secluded island.
Although Lucinda’s role is ultimately critical to the story, I feel that her character development detracted from the more interest romance, the one between Jared and Tamar. Jared remains seriously underdeveloped as a character, and is clearly dragged throughout the book along the path that Shinn wants him to take.
Deus ex Machina takes on a whole new meaning with The Alleluia Files, and I don’t mean literally, the spaceship named Jehovah that orbits the planet. Shinn relies so often on “convenient occurrences” in the book that it comes out a very sloppy conclusion to the trilogy.
Finally, there is the issue with the Edori homeland of Ysral. One of the purposes of the spaceship was to regulate the atmosphere of the climatologically difficult Semorrah so that the settlers could live there fine. The angels would “sing their prayers to Jovah” and the rain would come, or stop, or medicine would come down from the ship, or a number of other things. However, in the conclusion to the trilogy, Ysral is described as a paradise.
Why didn’t the original settlers of Semmorah settle on the disastrous continent rather than the temperate paradise of Ysral? I find no rationale here.
I am happy to have finished the The Alleluia Files. It was an exhausting endeavor to muddle through it. The only consolation is that I understand that Shinn made a greater effort in writing the next book, Angelica. I have, in general, enjoyed the series and have every intention of reading the new book.
You can purchase The Alleluia Files here: The Alleluia Files
Posted by Bastique at September 27, 2004 10:50 PM