Since it appears on the cover blurb, I don’t think it counts as a spoiler to mention that teenager Gabe Adams is the Archangel Gabriel. However, it is news to Gabe, who starts off unaware of his special place in the scheme of things and is just a teenager in New York, hoping to get a place at NYU and concerned about the migraines and nightmares he has been suffering recently. Several hundred pages later, having passed through Durham in Northern England and landing up in Ethiopia, he is beginning to get to grips with his destiny although, as the first of a series, you won’t be surprised to find as many questions as answers left after the final turn.
Despite featuring angels (and demons) it makes Raiders of the Lost Ark seem almost like a serious work of theology and digs as deeply into Gnostic myths as Dan Brown ever did. If that doesn’t put you off then it rolls along as you’d expect of an action adventure epic, quite gripping but not overly scary and safely away from sordid.
It is billed for the young adult market and I’m not sure it transcends that billing but not a bad read and I have to admit that I’m intrigued to know what Book 2 will be like (if only to see how the author progresses the story now that there’s no way back to Kansas).