Hi, Satuawany ,

I was beyond excited to see your stories available for review again. And I just had to start with the most (seemingly) controversial. When a reviewer says the story doesn’t need the main component, they either completely didn’t get it or were on to something. Knowing you, I thought there wouldn’t be any “on to something”, but after finishing the story, I have a tiny inkling of what might have caused the comment.

Not that I protested any angels in the story. Oh, how I wish I had read that story twenty years ago! I was sooo into Biblical myths back then that I read the Old Testament (to the delight of my grandmother who thought I had found God). And yours is so delicious! I just loved that you had a multiverse, and there was a mythical reason for that multiverse: the God’s need not to be alone, splitting oneself to have company and forgetting they were one. And the heartbreaking path of The One Who Decided to Remember. Knowledge that led to stagnation that led to vilifying knowledge. I never truly understood what was so wrong in seeking the knowledge of good and evil. Why would an omnipotent being be so afraid of an informed decision? Only an insecure god would ask for blind obedience. On my trip, we actually touched the topic of management styles, how some people of power demand perfection, and others—obedience; how we, people of creative professions, can endure the longest chain of the most ridiculous request if we feel the goal is to do better and can rebel at the smallest demand that is do as I say. And you know how I love pondering on the question of free will, so your retelling of the myth of Adam and Eve is wonderful.

I absolutely adore stories with misunderstood characters. I cheered for your Lucifer, and I was heartbroken when his attempt to do the right thing ended up disastrous for humans. I admit I only looked up Samael after finishing the story, and learning that Samael is Satan only added a gorgeous finish to the story. All three angels on trial are canonical demonic figures, and seeing them as protagonists—and absolutely believing their noble intentions—is wonderful.

By the way, I loved how God—Celedore, not Yahweh, but I noticed you used Yahwyn as a common noun for all gods of the multiverse; nice detail—is fading away by creating more of the Earth, and how He is love (canonical, again) that will remain in all His creatures but will become inaccessible directly. I loved the idea of recombination of souls, the continuity through forgetting and knowing intuitively. That’s some deep shit right there, Chy. One could make a religion out of it.

And I absolutely loved the love story. It’s wonderful that your angels have genders and bond with each other, fall in love and consummate their love. It’s interesting that they have this need for modesty and clothes, something the humans of Eden don’t have yet (another thing I never understood in the Biblical myth, why nakedness is, presumably, evil), and have monogamy and jealousy and rivalry—things, I assume, that also come from knowledge. Ah, but I was talking about the love story. I giggled at the inversion of gendered names for Sam and Lucy, and how the man was the innocent one in the pair, and the woman was the experienced (the canonical seducer who was seduced by innocence). Oh, watching those two interact, especially when their relationship was taboo (like Cassiel, I “sensed what was already there” early on)—oh, that was delicious. I love a good build-up. You’re damn good at writing romance, which reminds me I just love a touch of good romance in a speculative story.

Yet at the same time, I felt like I read the story too soon, that I needed to read it after I became fluent in your universe of interconnected stories. Right now, I could only follow the surface, the retelling of the Biblical myth and the touching love story of Sam and Lucy. So many details were lost on me. Aendella, Saedyn, the light that spoke to something inside Sam, the winged beings, the mages—it felt like this short story was tying so many ends spread through your novels—novels I haven’t read yet—that it explained—or systematized—tons of information, made sense of and connected previously independent myths, and I… just couldn’t appreciate it. The story screamed importance, and I couldn’t properly follow. I felt like the serpent just gave me an apple of ultimate knowledge, and I munched it absentmindedly and missed the effect.

So I can imagine myself saying, “the story would have been great if there weren’t any your version of angels in it”. It doesn’t mean your version of angels is inferior to the standard angels, no. I love that you have this original twist, and I can see you did a lot of serious research to make it compatible with the canonical lore. And I love that your stories are interconnected, defying genres and marrying magic with vampires (which Yahwyn has created vampires, exactly?). I’m just frustrated that I haven’t read everything to be able to see things clearly, to be able to get the references and say “oh, this is why!” to all those passing mentions. I should have read the story later when I'm less ignorant. Maybe I’ll come back to it. And I will write you a better review then (this one wasn't in-depth anyway).

I saw a couple of homophones, but I could only find one without rereading the story: “Don’t need words to now it’s terrified.”

Oh, I almost forgot to comment on the voices-in-the-dark inserts. I loved not knowing who is telling the story, and who is the listener. I was the listener, eager to learn about the first autumn (discovering beauty in dying things, a promise of continuation) and the second fall (which one was the first?); I could imagine asking all those questions and playfully arguing about the semantics. I wish there were at least one more of those interruptions along the way. But that ending, uh, that ending:
“And then what happened?”
“Exactly.”

{e:chef's kiss} Perfect!

Cheers,
J.B.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .