World After
AUTHOR: SUSAN EE
PUBLISHED: 19TH NOVEMBER, 2013 BY SKYSCAPE
GENRE: YOUNG ADULT, PARANORMAL, POST-APOCALYPTIC
SERIES: PENRYN & THE END OF DAYS #2
FORMAT I OWN: KINDLE & PAPERBACK
PAGES: 320 [KINDLE]
MY RATING: 5/5 STARS
BUY IT: BOOK DEPOSITORY
Blurb:
In this sequel to the bestselling fantasy thriller, Angelfall, the survivors of the angel apocalypse begin to scrape back together what’s left of the modern world.
When a group of people capture Penryn’s sister Paige, thinking she’s a monster, the situation ends in a massacre. Paige disappears. Humans are terrified. Mom is heartbroken.
Penryn drives through the streets of San Francisco looking for Paige. Why are the streets so empty? Where is everybody? Her search leads her into the heart of the angels’ secret plans where she catches a glimpse of their motivations, and learns the horrifying extent to which the angels are willing to go.
Meanwhile, Raffe hunts for his wings. Without them, he can’t rejoin the angels, can’t take his rightful place as one of their leaders. When faced with recapturing his wings or helping Penryn survive, which will he choose?
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My Review:
Hello bookworms and welcome back to another book chat! Today, I will be reviewing World After, the second book in the Penryn and the End of Days trilogy. This book chat will be split up into two parts: non-spoiler and spoiler, because I love this series so much that I HAVE to talk about it. This was an amazing second book to the End of Days trilogy and has left me literally dying to read the last one! Find out why below…
If you haven’t read World After, or the first book Angelfall yet, please click here to read the Angelfall book chat, because if you read this one, you may encounter some spoilers.
Spoiler-Free Review:
So, as usual, I am going to start off by talking about the characters. The characters were just as amazing – and possibly BETTER than they were in Angelfall! Susan Ee did not fail in the character development aspect of this novel!
Penryn is our main character in this book, as you may know if you have read Angelfall. Penryn in World After is just as badass, strong, smart and completely independent as in the first book. Once again, she is stuck with taking care of her mentally ill mother and her baby sister, who have come together once again under the roof of the rebellion. She is glad to have her sister back, however her sister is different after being kidnapped by the angels, and Penryn has to deal with that. One thing I loved about Penryn in this book was that despite being separated from Raffe, he wasn’t on her mind every second of the day, and I applaud Susan Ee for the way she handled that! Penryn struggles with the idea of being a hero. She believes she is just an average teenage girl who is just doing what she needs to survive and keep her family safe. However, as she struggles with once again, her sister going missing, she goes through a series of events that concern not just her and her family’s well being but that of all the other people she encounters.
The side characters in World After were just as great. Once again we see Dee-Dum who are absolutely fantastic characters that make me smile. The conversations they have with Penryn are just fantastic and I love how they seem to appear in the most unexpected places.
Paige was developed more throughout this book. In Penryn’s eyes, she is always the kinder out of the two siblings. Paige is known to be kind and considerate and gentle, the image of a perfect person. We see her struggle with coming to terms with what has happened to her and some moments with Paige made me want to cry. I really felt for Paige and her struggle.
Penryn’s mother as usual is crazy. Communicating with the ‘devil’ and cutting up and defacing people and acting totally wild. Not how you’d expect your average mother to be like. Despite her craziness however, she loves her daughters and wants them all to be together as a family.
Beliel is one of our angel antagonists or villain. I found him absolutely despicable. For so many reasons. One is what he did to Raffe at the very end of Angelfall – my blood boils just thinking about it. Not only that, throughout World After, we see his character develop and I discovered how twisted, cruel, mean, self-centered person he really was. And when an unfortunate little something happened to him, I was not at all sympathetic.
Raffe does not appear much in World After so character development was not seen with him. However, when he did appear in the book, my heart jumped with happiness. As usual he’s attractive, brooding, witty and I love him. Okay, I just love him.
Now let’s talk about the rest of the aspects of this book, starting with plot. The plot was amazing, as usual. Fast-paced, full of action with many dark and gruesome scenes coupled with some genuinely comfortable scenes – as comfortable as you can get in an apocalyptic novel, anyway. Susan Ee keeps up this dark undertone to the story so I never forget that it’s an apocalyptic novel. World After continues to dive in further into twisting your average angel story into a twisted and dark one. Every time I picked up the book, promising to read maybe one or two chapters before going back to my exam study, I would end up reading 5 chapters or more! It was that good.
Susan Ee’s writing style is just as great as it was in the first book. It’s so good that you can literally picture the things she is describing. I kind of felt like I was watching a movie to be honest.
That is it for the spoiler free section of this review! I hope all of you enjoyed reading this review! Tell me in the comments whether you have read Angelfall and/or World After! And please tell me if you are planning on picking up the series! Now, I would suggest you not read any further unless you plan on spoiling yourself! However, anyone who has read this book and wants to share their thoughts, good or bad and would like to fangirl along with me… PLEASE CONTINUE!
Spoiler/ Discussion Review:
Okay, so first off I want to point out something that happened at the end of the first book – Raffe getting betrayed and forced to wear those horrible demon wings! That moment, reading that exact scene… I don’t know about anyone else, but my heart broke for him and so many other emotions swirled through me at the same time! When a book can do that to me and hit me so hard, I know that it deserves 5 stars.
I was frankly quite sad that for most of the book, Raffe and Penryn were separated. But they did have to go through their own struggles and I like how Susan Ee did that, instead of keeping them together, which would have been the cliche way, in my opinion. I loved the book despite them being apart, because there was still so much action going on with Penryn – dealing with her sister who has been mutated by the angels, trying to figure out what she is going to do next – that Raffe and Penryn’s separation didn’t stop any of the plot moving along.
Now can we talk about what happened to Paige?! Oh dear, the poor girl! Susan Ee has constructed angels in such a twisted way. When I first discovered what the angels had done to Paige – mutating her into this monster-type thing – I was absolutely horrified and confused as to what they were doing. Then when I finally realised what the angels were doing, I was even more horrified. I really enjoyed this gruesome aspect to the angel-paranormal story. It added to the darkness of the entire story.
There’s an element of family and the importance of siblings weaved in, as Penryn struggles to see her sister as the same girl she was before she was mutated, even though Paige is still the same she always was – she’s just different on the outside and eats different things. This little complication stirred up emotions in me, because I felt so sorry for Paige!
Okay, okay, let’s talk about Raffe please! It might seem ridiculous that I really love Raffe’s character, but I do. Reading from Penryn’s perspective, I’ve grown just as fond of him as she has and the moments when Penryn came so close to re-uniting with him made my heart flutter. I was brimming with happiness at them finally coming together at the end. I was so relieved to be once again reading their wonderful conversations that are full of smart comments and wit.
Let’s talk about the antagonists. Beliel… I wanted to rip his face off.
He was a horrible character – mean, self-centered and even his own comrades disliked him. But, I did feel a twinge of… could it be sympathy? Towards him when I learned of his relationship with Paige. And then there was that scene when Paige came to him and his reaction was totally unexpected! My heart melted a little, because after seeing him as such a heartless character, it was so out of the blue! And then Paige attacked him and I was soon back to cheering Paige on, despite feeling that little twinge of sadness deep, DEEP down inside.
Uriel was another antagonist and the one creating disgusting mutations and basically was the leader. He was not developed very much, but I did not like him either. Of course, he is constructed to be unlikable. But creating those half-man-half-scorpion creatures to imitate judgement day? Jeez. Too far mate.
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