The Archangel Remiel, now living as the human PI, Remy is struck low by an assassin’s bullet and apparently dying. Only Francis, Linda, Squire and his faithful dog Marlowe can try and bring him back to life before the assassins finish him off

While Remy’s soul is missing, to a different world, a different Earth – one where the worst has happened and the greatest dream of god and angel has been cruelly destroyed. He must find the truth in this apocalyptic waste land, try to find some way to fix the horrors – and perhaps learn a warning for his own world

I am torn about this book.

A large part of it involves following Remy into an alternate reality. No, let me reassess that – nearly every part of this book, certainly every really relevant part of this book involves Remy in an alternate reality. And… this is book 7 in a series and nearly all of the book was… kind of irrelevant to the overarching series? All the action, the people they met, the foes vanquished, the darkness faced is, at best, a cautionary tale for the main series. All of the action in the book is, at best, a warning for what could happen, a prequel, more than the actual story itself.

It doesn’t help that one of the main twists of the last book and another source of conflict is so… downplayed. The Bone Assassin’s attack on Remy seems to come from a very mundane source. I’m not going to spoil it, and it’s certainly an unexpected twist but, again, it’s another major plot element that doesn’t really seem to fit into the overall scheme of the series.

This gives me the odd feeling that the whole book is a time out, an intermission between the main plot, maybe even a new prologue for the new major plot line. I suspect the latter mainly because of the whole burgeoning storyline of the Unification.

The plot of God forgiving Satan and the Fallen Angels and reunifying the broken lands of Heaven, Hell and Eden is clearly going to be an immense, incredible storyline. Which may be the purpose of this book – while it’s not directly contacted to the main storyline of the series, it is there to tell us what is at stake. This is the worst case scenario. This is exactly what could happen if the following plot lines go wrong. This is just how terribly wrong Unification could go. This shows that, while Unification may be a wonderful, shiny thing, it also takes a whole lot of effort and there is immense risk connected to it.

This also shows that, yes, there are actually people out there who are clearly, eagerly willing to ruin everything, literally everything because of their own issues. As well as more than a few people who are not ready for the big bad guys to be forgiven – not at all. This all links nicely with Squire’s backstory and the suggestion that we have many many many many worlds have completely fallen apart. It’s all at stake here.

Then we have the b-plot of the Bone Assassins which also adds nice twist; so while we’re all foreshadowing the big mega awesome plot line to come, there’s also this nifty reminder that small things can ruin everything. It doesn’t take an epic force beyond imagining to completely ruin everything – even simple, insignificant little interactions can really ruin your day. Expect the epic, but don’t ignore the little things.

So, really, in terms of substantive plot? No, the alternate dimension means this book doesn’t add a great deal. But in terms of theme, foreshadowing and establishing a new paradigm? Yes, it most excellent adds to the series and sets up a whole new chapter going forward

And it does this with a huge world, an epic cast of characters, some excellent personalities and a really fun, deep and interesting core team. I like them a lot, I like the richness of the world a lot. It’s huge it draws upon so many Biblical myths and I could just chew on it all day. If there’s one downside to all of that it’s that there’s a whole lot to remember which means, especially after the gap between this book and the last – characters like Simeon, or organisations like the children of Samson can take a moment to remember. I rarely say this, but this book could actually use some recapping, it really could.

Unfortunately between the epic storytelling the epic world and the generally epicness that is this epic series, we also have a notable problem. Terrible diversity

Firstly, let’s look at gender. There are three prominent women in this book – Linda (Remy’s love interest) and Ashley (Remy’s friend) and an alternate world Child of Samson (who exists to establish a quick and sad relationship so she can then die and it be super sad – because a dead woman who gets to play child-like figure to the manly man is much more tragic than a man dying – that whole precious pedestal jewel trope). Oh we have some random bit parts (including a giant pregnant female monster that eats people which I’m not even going to touch except say “giant pregnant female monster that eats people”) but his is the crux. Everyone else is male. And it’s not just a case of a skewed male cast – their roles are blatant as well.

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This is the seventh book in the Remy Chandler series. I think it was probably my least favorite book in this series so far. I don’t know if it’s me just losing interest, or if the stories have just veered way to far from their urban fantasy roots...but I struggled to finish this one.

Remy is on the brink of death, struck down by one of the Bone Masters (famous assassins who never miss their targets). The Almighty himself sends Remy’s consciousness to an alternate reality where Remy struggles to combat the evil there. Meanwhile Remy’s friends are trying everything they can do to bring him back and defend his body against the rest of the Bone Master clan. To complicate matters the Almighty has announced that he wishes to forgive Morningstar and go forward with Unification of the realms. As if this wasn’t enough The Forever Man has plans of his own that involve getting his revenge on The Almighty once and for all.

This was an okay continuation of the Remy Chandler series. The story switches POV a lot (many times per chapter) and was a bit confusing (at least in the ARC these switches weren't marked well, so you would have to read for a bit and then figure out that you were reading from a different point of view).

There's a bit of a time travel/parallel reality thing going on in this book and I felt like it didn't work all that well for the story. The story has just gotten too convoluted. In fact I would definitely recommend reading the books previous to this one because if you don’t you are going to be incredibly confused.

The writing flowed decently and I still enjoyed some of the characters, but at the end I was kind of like "Eh...well I guess I won’t be reading more of that series." The book is long and feels long, and really could have benefited from a bit more editing and tightening up of the storyline.

Previous to this book this has been a very solid urban fantasy series that deals with angel mythology. However, after reading this book I think I am done with this series. It wraps up at a good place and I just didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as previous ones.

Overall an okay addition to the Remy Chandler series. If you are a huge fan of the series give it a read. The series seems to have left its urban fantasy roots and veered into some strange territory involving parallel realities which I thought was too convoluted to enjoy. I won’t be reading more of this series. ( )