Archangel's War (The Guild Hunter, #12)

by Nalini Singh

[EBookObsessed]

This is the only War you are ever going to be excited about. It will be bloody and brutal and Nalini Singh will make sure you love every moment of it.

Elena emerges from her cocoon looking a little worse for wear, she is nothing but skin and bones and missing her beautiful new wings. But the most important thing to Raphael and Elena is that, with or without wings, Elena is still Elena. Raphael sent out enough power to stop the cascade’s attempt to make Elena nothing but a battery to store Raphael’s power for the upcoming battle, and maybe it was also enough to destroy the house, but hey, it’s hard to control your super-duper archangel powers sometimes.

Even reduced to skin and bones, Raphael’s hunter is not down and out, and Elena is determined to be ready to fight when Lijuan strikes, even if it means battling without her beautiful wings of midnight and dawn. But the cascade is determined to create chaos and there is no chaos if one individual is too powerful, so it has more tricks in store for Elena and Raphael before the battle even begins.

The biggest problem the Cadre will have — well after the bitter and devastating re-rising of Lijuan and the bloodbath that a war with her will create — is that fact that the cascade is causing too many sleeping ancient angels to awaken too early. Really, how many sleeping angels are there because the sleeping ones are usually a little cray-cray so waking them too early might give us another Lijuan. Anyway, the Cadre, and the world’s territories, can only sustain ten archangels. Any more, and they will be too close to each other and their powers battling and causing catastrophes. So now there are too many archangels around and if all survive the upcoming War, then Lijuan will be just the beginning of the problems to come.

As far as a conclusion to a story arc, Nalini Singh goes all out with this story giving us a devastating battle against evil on many, many fronts. Lijuan has always been, well, crazy yeah but also a brilliant and sneaky strategist and brutal, even to her own people. This war will be ugly and drawn out, like most wars are, it will also be bloody and devastating. Casualties will be high and no matter the winners and losers, it will take the world a long, long time to overcome the devastation and horror that will come. While Nalini drags our feelings out and stomps all over them with each battle, no war, even in fiction, should be clean and easy. And in Archangel’s War, she doesn’t spare our feelings or favorite characters the devastation and trauma since every character we have met so far is a strong individual and fighter, whether an archangel or a newly turned vamp, and most will be right on the front lines of this battle royal.

This was a phenomenal conclusion to the series arc, and as Nalini has proven with her Psy-Changeling series, the end of an arc is by no means the end of the series. I have no idea where the series will go from here, but I am certain that we will enjoy each and every story she brings us next.

Received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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