REVIEW: ‘Demon Angel’ (2007) by Meljean Brook

Demon Angel is the second story and first full-length novel in Meljean Brook’s The Guardians series. It is not essential to read the novella which precedes this story, but “Falling for Anthony” does provide a good background to Brook’s world. Alternatively, readers might wish to check out her website. She has an excellent primer for the series to help readers who are not starting with the first story.

Demon Angel is the story of Hugh, a Guardian, and his nemesis Lilith, a demon. The book is officially divided into two parts, but I would say there are three distinct phases of the story. The first part is set in England in 1217. The second is a sequence of scenes which take Hugh and Lilith from the 13^th Century up to 1991. The third part is set in 2007, sixteen years after the events in 1991.

The story begins in Essex in 1217. Hugh is a seventeen-year-old knight in the service of Robert D’Aulnoy, the Earl of Essex. Hugh has spent the last two years in Normandy, guarding his lord’s child bride, the Lady Isabel. Following the death of King John, the bitter civil war which wracked England is at an end, and Hugh accompanies Isabel and her party back from Normandy to join her husband at Fordham Castle in Essex. Hugh harbours a tendre for Isabel. Although his feelings are reciprocated, neither of them would dream of acting upon them out of piety to God and loyalty to the earl.

As they near Fordham Castle, they pass a site of ancient ruins. Hugh is dispatched to investigate the ruins and check for any loitering rebels who might seek to attack them. It is here that he first encounters Lilith. She toys with him, tricks him into bargaining with her, and steals the first of what will become many kisses. For his part, Hugh can scarcely believe his eyes when he sees Lilith in demon form. It defies all logic and years of Church teachings. As befits her demonic nature, Lilith is determined to make mischief for Hugh and his beloved Isabel. Her plan is to tempt him into sin so as to cause his death. That way, Lilith can claim his soul for Lucifer.

Lilith’s plans are put to the test by the presence of Michael, leader of the Guardians and the demons’ natural foe. Both demons and Guardians are bound to respect mankind’s free will and can neither openly save nor openly kill them. The best they can do is to persuade them to do good or evil. Lilith’s plans for Hugh backfire, and he ends up being claimed by Michael as a new recruit for the Guardians. This results in his ascension to Caelum, the realm of the Guardians, where he spends the next one hundred years training for his new role. Lilith returns to Hell and punishment for her weakness and failure to claim Hugh’s soul.

When Hugh and Lilith next meet, it is 1389. He is a fully-trained Guardian and she is his enemy. A series of scenes show their encounters through the centuries, how they toy with one another, but somehow never end up killing each other. This sequence ends in Seattle in 1991 where an event leads to Hugh’s Fall to earth and Lilith’s destruction.

The story picks up again in San Francisco in 2007. Due to his Fall, Hugh is no longer a Guardian and has lost his immortality. Regaining his humanity has meant he has physically aged from the frozen-in-time seventeen-year-old and now resembles a man in his early thirties. His humanity has also wrought certain changes in his personality as he can now feel things which he could not as a “pure” Guardian and is no longer capable of only being good.

A change in the balance of power in Hell has resulted in Lilith’s resurrection by Lucifer, although she has been stripped of some of her powers. She’s now working undercover as an FBI agent and one of her cases brings her back into contact with Hugh. With the fight between good and evil imminent, Hugh and Lilith must finally choose their destiny.

I loved this book. The prose is rich in detail, the plot is satisfyingly complex, and the characters are multifaceted. It’s a book to be savoured and I found myself deliberately slowing down my natural reading pace in order not to miss any nuances in the text.

Despite the length of my plot synopsis, I’ve barely touched on the intricacies of the worldbuilding, and the excellent cast of secondary characters. There’s a lot going on in this book and it’s longer than the average urban fantasy novel. Although there were a few scenes which dragged, the story engaged me from the outset and kept me turning the pages right until the very end.

Hugh and Lilith are wonderful characters. I loved their witty repartee and seeing their love grow over the course of the book. For most of the story, Lilith is true to her demonic nature, but often struggles with the part of her which is human and strives to act accordingly. For his part, Hugh starts out as an almost too-good-to-be-true teenager, is practically hardened by his purity as a Guardian, and shows genuine emotion when he regains his humanity.

Meljean Brook’s vision of heaven and hell echoes Dante’s Inferno and, consequently, John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It’s not a stretch to say that her worldbuilding is erudite and makes her readers think. When I finished Demon Angel, I had a few minor quibbles about pacing but given that I can’t stop thinking about it 48 hours later – and it has inspired me to write my longest review to date –  I can’t justify giving it anything less than an A-.

Also Reviewed:

“Falling for Anthony” (2005) by Meljean Brook – Book One in The Guardians series

Tagged as: A Minus Reviews, Meljean Brook, The Guardians Series, Urban Fantasy Romance