Here's another older review to tide you all over while I deal with some personal issues. They're definitely cutting into my reading time, so I don't know how quickly I'll be able to post a "new" review.
I love stories that include angels in them. I'm not even a particularly religious person, but I do think that as characters and in religious ideology, angels are absolutely fascinating. Wayne Barlow's God's Demon was a book I bought even though it was a hard cover because it had to deal with fallen angels (but that's a review for another day). Naturally, when I read the back of Alan Campbell's Scar Night and saw that it contained angels and a city suspended by chains over an endless abyss, I had to buy it.
The novel begins with an action sequence that gets the reader acquainted with the major players in Scar Night's world. There's the Church of Ulcis, the God of Chains, and their secretive assassins, the Spine. But what's surprising in this opening scene is the way angels are portrayed. The Spine are hunting Carnival -- a scarred, blood thirsty angel, who terrorizes the city every Scar Night. When one normally reads about angels, they are usually on the same side as the religion. It made me want to read on to find out why the Church was hunting a supposedly holy being.
Sadly, the pace of the novel slows down after that initial scene. After over one hundred pages of learning tidbits about the city of Deepgate and the Church of Ulcis, we are introduced to one of the protagonists -- Dill, the angel.
Dill is sixteen and the last of the Church's angels. So apparently there are angels that are both allied with and opposed to the Church. Again, this intersting development made me want to read more, even though the pace of the novel was slower. Dill is young, untested, and unsure about himself, a quality which doesn't change throughout the entire novel. As far as main characters go, he was a little disappointing. I would have liked to see a little more development. Also, a huge deal is made about his sword because it belonged to his father, the last Archon of the Church. But Dill never once uses it! He constantly doubts himself and it seems like he's never able to truly grasp what's going on around him.
And then, we meet Mr. Nettle. The reader has to follow his slow, plodding through both the city and the plot as he tries to have his daughter's corpse blessed by the Church and as he tries to kill Carnival. Over one hundred pages of the same thing over and over. Despite being a lesser character, Mr. Nettle gets more "screen time" so to speak than Dill. His repetitive inner monologue gets rather tiresome. I believe some of his scenes could have been shortened without detracting too much from the overall plot.
Finally after the reader is one third through the novel things begin to get interesting. We are then introduced to Devon the Poisoner. Devon is the lead chemical weapons expert for the Church. We learn about his quest to create the mythical elixir known as "angelwine." This elixir is similar to the Elixir of Life the Philosopher's Stone is said to produce. It makes a man nearly immortal and impervious to harm. However, Campbell does add a twist to this trope. Whoever drinks angelwine shall be driven insane by the tortured souls contained within the elixir.
There are a lot of interesting concepts in this novel and the history of Deepgate and the Church of Ulcis is fascinating. Anytime an author writes about a war between gods and then actively includes the deities in the novel as characters, it usually adds mounds of awesome into the story.Scar Night is no exception to this rule. Also, throw in some airships, bloody battles, and a necropolis at the bottom of the abyss, and you've got a seriously awesome setting. The last two thirds of the book make up for the slow first third.
The climax of the novel is the best part, as it should be. There is an epic battle between an ancient machine called the Tooth of God and Deepgate's military. The scene where Carnival and the ex-Spine assassin Rachel confront Ulcis was icing on the cake.
I love it when stories subvert religion or portray it to not be something completely magnanimous. I don't know why; maybe it's just the cynic in me. Campbell shows how the people of Deepgate have been lied too all along and because of his well done development of the Poisoner, we can understand his motives behind his actions.
The worst part of this novel is Dill's relative weakness and the fact that this is part of a series. I don't know what it is, but it seems like authors today just don't write standalone novels. So as a result, many of the questions the reader has may not be fully answered in this installment. I hope that in the next installment there will be more character development for Dill and Rachel. I also want to see more of Carnival because she was the most interesting character in this novel.
Despite some flaws with the pacing and characterization, Scar Night is a thrilling beginning to a promising series. I'm looking forward to reading the sequel, Iron Angel. (Even that title just sounds awesome).
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