Saturday, January 28, 2012

Book Review - "Archangel" by Aaron Worthing

Archangel is a authored by blogger Aaron Worthing, who blogs at his own site, "Allergic to Bull", and has occasionally provided content at Patterico's Pontifications and Big Government.  He describes himself as a:
Pseudonymous blogger at Allergic to Bull. He considers himself just a regular, sort-of cranky, moderately conservative lawyer, living in the greater Washington, D.C. area and ruminating on law, life, and the local spectator sport known as politics.
Archangel is his first novel.  I saw Instapundit mention it one day, and always on the hunt for kindle material to fill up the commute with, I bought it partially to help encourage a fellow (and much better known) blogger, and out of curiosity.  Not being a member of Amazon Prime (I haven't been able to persuade Georgia that it would pay), I paid full fair, $9.99 (free to Amazon Prime members).

Archangel bills itself as an "A Novel of Alternate Recent History."  Other than a brief foray to World War II, most of the novel takes place after Sept. 11, 2001.  An alien baby, is orphaned on earth (sound familiar yet).  With "special powers", both native and technologically enhanced, the alien is raised by an earthly family, and learns to disguise itself as a human, living as a fireman to help the species it is among.  Then it finds itself in the World Trade Towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

I won't give away much more of the plot, except to say characters include major political players in the post 9/11 era, and a few of the blogger types.  The New York Times comes in for a great deal of abuse, as it pursues it's own political agenda against the government. The book is quite a political piece, and makes no pretense of  bipartisanship.  I'm afraid it will only appeal to those on the political right.

The book has a bit of a "cartoonish" quality to it.  The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and both types get what's coming to them in the end.  But then, at the beginning of the book is a disclaimer that the work was not written with the endorsement, knowledge or consent of Marvel, D.C. or another comic book company, so that's clearly a feature and not a bug.

I enjoyed it, but I think the $9.99 price is really too much for a collection of digits by a first-time author.

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