Archangel's War (Guild Hunter, #12) by Nalini Singh 
Series: Guild Hunter #12
Published by Berkley on September 24, 2019
Genres: Paranormal/Urban Fantasy
Pages: 400
Format: eBook
I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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Wings of silver. Wings of blue. Mortal heart. Broken dreams. Shatter. Shatter. Shatter. A sundering. A grave. I see the end. I see. . .
The world is in chaos as the power surge of the Cascade rises to a devastating crescendo. In furiously resisting its attempts to turn Elena into a vessel for Raphael’s power, Elena and her archangel are irrevocably changed. . .far beyond the prophecy of a cursed Ancient.
At the same time, violent and eerie events around the world threaten to wipe out entire populations. And in the Archangel Lijuan’s former territory, an unnatural fog weaves through the land, leaving only a bone-chilling silence in its wake. Soon it becomes clear that even the archangels are not immune to this deadly evil. This time, even the combined power of the Cadre may not be enough. . .
This war could end them all.
Achangel’s War is a tension-filled, intense read. You will cheer and you will cry and it will be everything you hoped it would be.
I know what you are thinking. You wouldn’t torture us with a review of a book that we have been dying to read and still won’t be out for another three months, would you?
SPOILER ALERT!
If you haven’t read Archangel’s Prophecy, walk away now! If you were waiting to read it because of the cliffhanger, go now it’s time to catch up on your reading.
While I will keep down the amount of spoiler-type information discussed, there are a few tidbits that must come out if we talk about this at all. So let me tell you now:
#1 Elena will emerge as Elena. Raphael and Elena succeed in keeping the Cascade from robbing Elena of her personality. It would be a very boring book if Elena was just a walking battery with no personality. She also emerges sans her beautiful midnight and dawn wings. Cry your tears now and get that out of the way.
#2 Lijuan will be back. See above title “ARCHANGEL’S WAR”!!
OK! Let’s talk.
In Archangel’s Prophecy, the sleeping Archangel Cassandra tells Elena that her body is falling apart because the Cascade is trying to turn her into a vessel to hold power for Raphael. Of course, in order to become the vessel to hold power, everything that makes her Elena (memories, personality, etc) will be wiped away. Why? Because it will scare us obviously. We can’t lose Elena so we have spent nearly a year fretting about this turn of events. But as we finished the last story, we had to watch as she slowly loses muscle coordination and strength and simply falls apart — including the disintegration of her beautiful angel wings. She is becoming human again. Also in our complete dedication to accepting any plot point in an Urban Fantasy, we completely accept that this human turned angel turned human again is absorbed into a chrysalis like a caterpillar. We don’t go — what? It’s Nalini Singh, so we go — Oh, no!
In the end, Raphael takes a portion of his heart and puts it into Elena’s chest and puts her failing human heart into the remainder of his heart and they both go to sleep to recover. Again, as fans we accept this without hesitation. As you can imagine, this action will cause changes in both Elena and Raphael.
The Cascade seeks chaos and as Lijuan grew into her crazy, zombie making powers, it has shot all kinds of crazy powers into the other Archangels to compensate. In Archangel’s War, it is far from done causing changes to the archangels and to Elena as well. This is how we know that Lijuan will be returning and that her powers have been increasing since she disappeared. The Cascade keeps jacking up everyone’s abilities and creating new ones because there is no chaos if all the power is one-sided.
The Cascade is also creating another dangerous phenomenon and waking several ancient archangels who have been sleeping. If you remember, and if you don’t you are reminded in this story, archangels can’t hang around each other for too long since their joined powers create unbalance. When Alexander awoke in Archangel’s Enigma, it created a problem since there should only be ten archangels who make up the cadre who are awake any any one time and everyone was very concerned about an eleventh archangel. But then Lijuan went to sleep so everyone breathed a sigh of relief because they were back to ten. Now, we on the verge of a major war, things are going crazy in China, and there are way too many archangels hanging around causing as much of an imbalance as the Cascade. And one of those waking archangels is a complete shock and will causing be causing a lot of tension between some of our favorite characters in future stories.
As I said, Lijuan is back and if you thought she was scary-crazy in prior stories, she’s got herself a Cascade boost to level psycho-crazy in this story. So much so that the other archangels are like…
When it is finally time to get down to the battle, you will need to make sure you cancel all plans. Seriously, you are going to need to block out a several hours in order to read the last third in one go. There will be no putting it down and going to sleep in the middle of this battle. You are not going to be able to stop reading and go to work. I foresee an Archangel Flu hitting the world in September when everyone suddenly calls in sick to work.
Things are going to get real before this story ends and it is not going to be all rainbows and puppies for our side. Bad things are going to happen and many tears will be shed.
Achangel’s War is a tension-filled, intense read. You will cheer and you will cry and it will be everything you hoped it would be. The best part is that while it might be the end of the story arc, it is not the end of the series. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Favorite Scene:
She just worked out the source was a groundcover plant when a movement from the taller building to the right caught her eye. It proved to be a flutter of color situated a couple of stories higher than her current position; her first thought was that someone was about to lose a towel they’d hung over the railing to dry.
Then her brain put all of the pieces together.
Elena began to run, her heart pulsating in her mouth. She knew her voice couldn’t travel that far, but she yelled out a desperate warning to whoever was looking after the toddler who’d managed to climb over the balcony railing and was now clinging to it by his fingertips while his legs kicked helplessly in the air. He had to be screaming, but no one ran out of the apartment to rescue him.
No angels in the sky. Urizen deep inside his home. No one on a nearby balcony who could scramble to get to the child. Raphael was fast, but she had no idea of his current location and the kid had a matter of seconds at best.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
She touched her mind to Raphael’s anyway, because if this all went how she thought it would, both she and the little boy would need healing. Serious healing.
Raphael! Urizen’s place!
No more time.
She couldn’t fly. But her bones had been pronounced immortal strong. And seven stories was survivable for an immortal of three hundred if she fell correctly and made sure her head didn’t get separated from her neck. Decapitation would be a serious bummer to her desire to spend eternity with Raphael.
All these thoughts and more passed through her mind in the second it took her to cross half the length of the roof. The rest of the time, she spent calculating her odds. The distance between the two buildings wasn’t huge. If she jumped at the right moment and aimed her body weight perfectly, she could put herself in the correct position to catch the little guy before he fell. Curl her body over and around him and her stronger bones would take the impact of the fall.
One of the toddler’s hands lipped off the railing.
He was going to fall at any second.
Elena’s foot hit the edge of the roof and she launched herself into the air, her eyes never leaving the child.
He lost his final grip just as a frantic female face appeared at the balcony. Her terror shattered the quiet, but Elena barely heard it, her body flying through the air. Angles, wight, position, her hunter’s mind worked it all out with ruthless efficiency…and a small, screaming weight fell into her arms, the momentum of the catch sending her tumbling.
Fuck, this was going to hurt. Bad.
That’s just mean.
I actually didn’t feel that the end of the last book qualified as a cliffhanger since we knew Elena survived. Looking forward to reading it when it releases.
Do you have another favorite scene to share?