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Archangel series by Sharon Shinn
Feb. 28th, 2019 11:25 pmI have to review some of Sharon Shinn's Samaria novels. I both enjoyed them and am loling greatly.
Here's the series description from her website:
I read Archangel, which is about the archangel Gabriel on the eve of his becoming archangel, and he's looking for a wife, who will sing next to him on the Plain of Sharon. Every year the disparate nation tribes gather in harmony and the archangel and spouse open the ceremonial singing. If the singing does not happen, Jovah will first smite the mountain, then the rest of Samaria. His Kiss, which is a crystal embedded in his arm that speaks to Jovah, says his wife is Rachel, who is one of the Edori, who live nomadic lives almost completely separate from Jovah. And she does not want to involve herself in the politics of the angels.
I also read Angelica set before Archangel, which gives strong hints about what Jovah is. There are mysterious strangers that are able to appear and disappear with unnatural speed, and can cause huge destruction with flame. It's about Archangel Gabriel (another one) and Susannah, his wife, and then Miriam, Gabriel's sister, who meets one of the strangers while running away with the Edori.
Finally I read Angel-Seeker, which is two stories. One is about Elizabeth, who takes off from being a housekeeper in her relative's home, where she's treated as a poor dependent, and tries to make her fortune in the city by birthing an angelic child. Mothers of angel children are mostly set up for life, because of how rare the angels are. Then it is the story of Obadiah, one of the angels, and Rebekah, who is a Jansai woman who lives under the extremely restrictive conditions all Jansai women do.
This is the mainstream published wingfic, I swear. It's never been a genre that particularly appeals to me, but lots of the hallmark traits (the temptation that angels present to writers?) is right there and it was incredible to read it in published fiction and have tag names float through my mind. The wings are of course sensitive to touch and angels are twitchy about people (especially clueless humans) touching them. Their metabolism burns hot so they only wear leather. All the angels are beautiful. It followed fandom's wingfic in so many ways - Sharon Shinn's novels are in the fantasy and romance junction, except I would say she leans more fantasy - that I was frequently pulled out of the narrative to laugh. Not that there's anything wrong with wingfic. Iddy stuff is iddy, and I obviously enjoyed the books enough to read three of them in a row! But it made me wonder if theyr'e tropes that just seem to evolve out of angelic literature, or if liking these tropes makes wingfic more appealing, or what. I don't think Shinn is involved in fandom, though I could be wrong.
What I think is a super interesting aspect of the books is the science fiction part. The world of Samaria is like a pre-industrial world, but there are lots of hints that there are more advanced societies. For one, even the religion records that they were not from Samaria originally, that they were carried there "in Jovah's hand" to a new place where there was not so much conflict and strife. The angels, who are able to fly, are able to make intercessions - they can fly up and sing and cause the weather to change, they can ask for rains of medicine to fall, and the medicine that falls are clearly pills. Most fun of all is Angelica. As Miriam first nurses and then starts to teach the stranger how to speak the common language of Samaria, she discovers that they have some words with the same roots, and eventually finds out that he arrived in a spaceship of some kind. And then, when the strangers are trying to destroy Samaria, Susannah can't sleep one night at the oracle's place. Believing herself to be sleeping, she walks to the place where there's an odd interface, and is told to close her eyes for a minute (while Jovah beams her up inside - Jovah is an orbiting spacecraft). She has to reposition Jovah's artillery, which destroys the spacecraft of the strangers who are waging war on Samaria with vastly more advanced weapons. I found this personally super interesting. It's something about the contrast of the deeply fantasy setting and the science fiction. Though Jovah is obviously AI - it speaks, it understands - I don't see why it couldn't reposition its artillery itself.
Personally, I probably dislike Angel-Seeker most. I like that Shinn just took head-on the subject of Elizabeth going to the city to get pregnant with an angel baby. It's an interesting story and also has plenty of terribly prosaic and unromantic attempts - angels are encouraged to be licentious in the hopes that one of their children is angelic, because they're so rare, and they play pretty important roles; in a world so dependent on fairly un-technological agriculture (this is not a world with the Fritz-Haber process), weather control is pretty important, among other things. But Rebekah's society, arrgggh. Men and women live in separate parts of the house, the men have all the outward facing roles and tasks and all the power, the fathers choose marriage and the women aren't even allowed to meet the men they marry. All women are veiled outside the house. And if you are caught outside, the women get thrown into the desert to be stoned, and then die of exposure. It's not enjoyable reading and the women around Rebekah aren't very pleasant to her either; her mother regards her as useless (except Rebekah has to do all the baby-caring because her mother's just "too tired") and the children with her current husband the much more important offspring. It was not fun to read. I hate these plotlines.
I read these three because they were borrowable at the library. Actually that's true of plenty of my reading. I really need to read Alleluia Files, which goes much more into detail of what people believe Jovah is - and some being to suspect it's a ship.
Here's the series description from her website:
In Samaria, angels raise their beautiful voices to intercede with the god Jovah on behalf of humans. Because their ancestors fled centuries ago from the violence of a war-torn planet, harmony is prized among all people. But sometimes the divine music of the angels is not enough to prevent conflict among mortals—and sometimes the god can’t even hear the angels singing.
I read Archangel, which is about the archangel Gabriel on the eve of his becoming archangel, and he's looking for a wife, who will sing next to him on the Plain of Sharon. Every year the disparate nation tribes gather in harmony and the archangel and spouse open the ceremonial singing. If the singing does not happen, Jovah will first smite the mountain, then the rest of Samaria. His Kiss, which is a crystal embedded in his arm that speaks to Jovah, says his wife is Rachel, who is one of the Edori, who live nomadic lives almost completely separate from Jovah. And she does not want to involve herself in the politics of the angels.
I also read Angelica set before Archangel, which gives strong hints about what Jovah is. There are mysterious strangers that are able to appear and disappear with unnatural speed, and can cause huge destruction with flame. It's about Archangel Gabriel (another one) and Susannah, his wife, and then Miriam, Gabriel's sister, who meets one of the strangers while running away with the Edori.
Finally I read Angel-Seeker, which is two stories. One is about Elizabeth, who takes off from being a housekeeper in her relative's home, where she's treated as a poor dependent, and tries to make her fortune in the city by birthing an angelic child. Mothers of angel children are mostly set up for life, because of how rare the angels are. Then it is the story of Obadiah, one of the angels, and Rebekah, who is a Jansai woman who lives under the extremely restrictive conditions all Jansai women do.
This is the mainstream published wingfic, I swear. It's never been a genre that particularly appeals to me, but lots of the hallmark traits (the temptation that angels present to writers?) is right there and it was incredible to read it in published fiction and have tag names float through my mind. The wings are of course sensitive to touch and angels are twitchy about people (especially clueless humans) touching them. Their metabolism burns hot so they only wear leather. All the angels are beautiful. It followed fandom's wingfic in so many ways - Sharon Shinn's novels are in the fantasy and romance junction, except I would say she leans more fantasy - that I was frequently pulled out of the narrative to laugh. Not that there's anything wrong with wingfic. Iddy stuff is iddy, and I obviously enjoyed the books enough to read three of them in a row! But it made me wonder if theyr'e tropes that just seem to evolve out of angelic literature, or if liking these tropes makes wingfic more appealing, or what. I don't think Shinn is involved in fandom, though I could be wrong.
What I think is a super interesting aspect of the books is the science fiction part. The world of Samaria is like a pre-industrial world, but there are lots of hints that there are more advanced societies. For one, even the religion records that they were not from Samaria originally, that they were carried there "in Jovah's hand" to a new place where there was not so much conflict and strife. The angels, who are able to fly, are able to make intercessions - they can fly up and sing and cause the weather to change, they can ask for rains of medicine to fall, and the medicine that falls are clearly pills. Most fun of all is Angelica. As Miriam first nurses and then starts to teach the stranger how to speak the common language of Samaria, she discovers that they have some words with the same roots, and eventually finds out that he arrived in a spaceship of some kind. And then, when the strangers are trying to destroy Samaria, Susannah can't sleep one night at the oracle's place. Believing herself to be sleeping, she walks to the place where there's an odd interface, and is told to close her eyes for a minute (while Jovah beams her up inside - Jovah is an orbiting spacecraft). She has to reposition Jovah's artillery, which destroys the spacecraft of the strangers who are waging war on Samaria with vastly more advanced weapons. I found this personally super interesting. It's something about the contrast of the deeply fantasy setting and the science fiction. Though Jovah is obviously AI - it speaks, it understands - I don't see why it couldn't reposition its artillery itself.
Personally, I probably dislike Angel-Seeker most. I like that Shinn just took head-on the subject of Elizabeth going to the city to get pregnant with an angel baby. It's an interesting story and also has plenty of terribly prosaic and unromantic attempts - angels are encouraged to be licentious in the hopes that one of their children is angelic, because they're so rare, and they play pretty important roles; in a world so dependent on fairly un-technological agriculture (this is not a world with the Fritz-Haber process), weather control is pretty important, among other things. But Rebekah's society, arrgggh. Men and women live in separate parts of the house, the men have all the outward facing roles and tasks and all the power, the fathers choose marriage and the women aren't even allowed to meet the men they marry. All women are veiled outside the house. And if you are caught outside, the women get thrown into the desert to be stoned, and then die of exposure. It's not enjoyable reading and the women around Rebekah aren't very pleasant to her either; her mother regards her as useless (except Rebekah has to do all the baby-caring because her mother's just "too tired") and the children with her current husband the much more important offspring. It was not fun to read. I hate these plotlines.
I read these three because they were borrowable at the library. Actually that's true of plenty of my reading. I really need to read Alleluia Files, which goes much more into detail of what people believe Jovah is - and some being to suspect it's a ship.
