The final two chapters of Seven Archangels: Annihilation have posted over at Mindflights Magazine. Next week will be the epilogue, and after that, well, you can read the whole thing all at once if you want. Or just go buy it over at amazon. (The link is in my sidebar.) There will be spoilers in the rest of this post.
Chapter 24 begins with Asmodeus and Belior doing what demons do best (backstabbing) and I’d like to point out for everyone that if Satan had simply taken the advice of Beelzebub (“Tie Asmodeus together with Israfel and leave them at the gates”) that the entire chapter wouldn’t have had to take place. But he didn’t, and we get to have some fun.
I committed a writing “bad” in this chapter, but it’s a well-controlled one: the POV shifts three or four times. It’s pretty seamless, though, and it creates a sense of the chaos as Hell erupts in war.
Pretty much everyone who’s read this loves Peter’s line at the end. But my favorite line is this:
A moment later, Raphael’s urgent voice: God says “Remember your strength.”
Gabriel shored up Israfel, slipped out of Satan’s hold again, and then had to brace Israfel once more.
Quit being cryptic, he prayed. I’ve got a lot going on here.
Yes, he’s shot that line at God Almighty. I love him. 🙂
Chapter 25 has a number of sweet “wrap up” type moments. There’s the care of the Cherubim for Israfel, their common loss in the knowledge they can no longer have (and the Seraphim’s detachment from the same knowledge) and then the moment where Gabriel and Raphael lose a bet. My father and Patient Husband both commented about the end of the chapter, “That blowed up good!”
(For the record, my father says God likes big explosions too, based on how the universe began. But that’s debatable.)
This has been a fun run. Next week when the epilogue runs, I’ll wrap up the commentary, and then we can start a letter-writing campaign to make Bill contract me for the other two Seven Archangels books. 🙂
