Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton

Release Date: February 15th, 2011
Pub: HarperCollins/ Katherine Tegen Books
Source: Publisher

When seventeen-year-old Ellie starts seeing reapers - monstrous creatures who devour humans and send their souls to Hell - she finds herself on the front lines of a supernatural war between archangels and the Fallen and faced with the possible destruction of her soul.

A mysterious boy named Will reveals she is the reincarnation of an ancient warrior, the only one capable of wielding swords of angelfire to fight the reapers, and he is an immortal sworn to protect her in battle. Now that Ellie's powers have been awakened, a powerful reaper called Bastian has come forward to challenge her. He has employed a fierce assassin to eliminate her - an assassin who has already killed her once.

While balancing her dwindling social life and reaper-hunting duties, she and Will discover Bastian is searching for a dormant creature believed to be a true soul reaper. Bastian plans to use this weapon to ignite the End of Days and to destroy Ellie's soul, ending her rebirth cycle forever. Now, she must face an army of Bastian's most frightening reapers, prevent the soul reaper from consuming her soul, and uncover the secrets of her past lives - including truths that may be too frightening to remember.

Fierce in both its humor and intensity, Courtney Allison Moulton's Angelfire has everything a reader wants: an entertaining plot, action-packed scenes and a romance that readers will find thrilling and authentic.

So I have to talk about the fight scenes in this book--they are amazing. The detailed passages that Ms. Moulton wrote where you can literally feel the crunch of bones breaking from one of Ellie's punches or the wet smack of blood as someone's head hits the floor....erm, yeah, you get the point. But for all the detail the action scenes have, the fights never come off as gorey. Moulton did a wonderful job of balancing the horror aspect of the story without making it disgusting (which I am thankful for). Another aspect that really impressed me were the threads of theology & mythology woven together in Angelfire. I've always been interested in those topics so seeing them within a YA novel was awesome to say the least! Courtney Moulton introduced a fresh new take on them but wasn't so out there that she completely deviated from the original lore.

Now for the romance... all I can think of to sum up Ellie and Will? Swoon. Will can protect me anytime. ;) I enjoyed reading of how Ellie and Will slowly became friends, fighting partners and then let themselves become romantically intertwined with one another. Seeing how they both teased and fought with each other made them genuine and their romantic tension gives readers some reprieve from the intense issues that Ellie must deal with. However, as much I liked Angelfire, I did feel like there was one detail that could've been different. There are some things that Ellie gets away with too easily and that did make certain parts of the story lose a smidgen of credibility for me but it didn't bother me too much. (Not enough to make me completely distrust the story, that's for sure)

Full of kickass action, a romance that'll make you swoon, and a unique combination of mythology and theology, Angelfire is an awesome book that shouldn't be missed! (And it has Will. Will with his glowing green eyes and spiraling tattoo.... oh, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. ;) )