A fast, dark, twisty tale about murder and strong bonds of family. I was totally enthralled by the setting, characters, and how the story kept peeling away layers of lies and conspiracy to reveal the truths and true motivations. 

4 ⭐ CW: Death, blood, oppression 

Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse is a novella inspired by Christian mythology set in an Old Western mining town. I've been enjoying this type of mythology lately. I've recently started watching Lucifer and enjoy the different take on angels and demons. Like with a lot of novella's I wish there had been more! I would have liked to learn more about this town and the structure of oppression of the Fallen. 

We follow Celeste, a Fallen woman who is determined to prove her sister Mariel is innocent of murder. In this world, the battle between the seraphim of Heaven and the demons of Hell ended when Abbadon fell, and his body was left to rot in the mountains creating a new element called Divinity that is being mined. The only people with the ability to see Divinity are the descendents of those demons, called the Fallen. The Fallen are second class citizens, and must put up with discrimination and oppression, and are considered a necessary evil. 

Celeste is a Fallen that can "pass" for an Elect, a non-Fallen person, while her sister cannot. Celeste has spent her whole life looking after Mariel, denying herself the things she wants, and fooling herself about the kind of person her sister really is. This was a great take on the "tragic mulatto" trope, and you can see the comparisons to what life was like for mixed raced people who could "pass" for white versus those who could not, and the struggle and difficulties it posed to both sets of people. 

I just wish we got to see more from Abraxas and the other Fallen. I wanted more descriptions and a bit more world-building, but such is the nature of novellas. It was still a great story with a good twist, and morally gray characters. I love the trope of the angels not necessarily being the good guys. 

Well, this is definitely a thing. I don’t think the timing of when I read this novella was the greatest. That and the huge Christianity plot points was… interesting for me to absorb at this time. Short read.

Rebecca Roanhorse is one of the best fantasy writers out there. I would've loved to spend more time in this world.

Solid quick read in a unique setting. The characters are messy and the plot moves satisfyingly quick. The ending matches well with the story. Roanhorse is really good at writing characters who want different things and play their cards close.

 This one fell super flat for me unfortunately. I really loved the idea behind the setting and what parallels the author was trying to draw but I just did not connect to this.
Celeste (our main character) felt like every other "Flawed Female" character we get in urban fantasy stories with her 'burn the world down' mentality for one specific cause. The same can be said for her love interest, he was very much the Spike Style love interest of 'bad boy but good for her' type.
I think maybe if the story had been from Mariel's perspective it would have been much more interesting.

Especially since both sisters are effectively murderers by the end. At least Mariel had a better reason. That whole, kill my boss's girlfriend because she's kind of mean was way to female on female violence for me. I didn't like that.

I received a copy of this book through a giveaway.  Thank you to the author, Rebecca Roanhorse, and the publisher, Saga Press, for this ARC copy. 

I wanted to like this more than I can really say I did. The writing is exquisite and immersive. The story is inventive and engaging. My biggest issue is that this book needs at least 100 pages more to delve into the characters and set the players more. The pacing is too quick with sudden character shifts that just don't read as plausible, much less believable. 

The only characters I liked in the end were secondary ones (one of whom could be considered more of a primary-B character he is so borderline). He is treated more like a secondary character even when he is being used as a primary character. And a lot of this all has to do with the lack of character exploration in the brief novel. At just about 200 pages, this needed a strong hand adding in more of the world and the characters. We meet one female character briefly, get a curt description of her personality in the next scene confirming what we saw, and see a complete 180° change in her, all in the span of I believe 50 pages. I felt I must have missed something, as though the ARC was missing pages - which, I checked, it was not. 

Another 100 pages written as beautifully as these pages would have easily improved my rating, provided of course they expanded and showed nuance in the world and characters. 

I really like Rebecca Roanhorse’s writing, especially her worldbuilding. I liked the fantasy elements of this story and the parallels to our very real corrupt justice system. I loved how casually queer this was as well.

I was drawn to this because I love fantasy stories that incorporate religion (be it a real religion or fantasy, I just like religious themes in books… despite being very agnostic lol) and because I really like the Between Earth and Sky series and wanted to read more from the author. I also wanted to try something new, since I’ve never read a western-adjacent story before, but unfortunately I’m not sure it’s for me. I’m not typically a fan of murder mysteries either.. which I didn’t realize this was. I struggle with flawed/unlikable main characters, so I wasn’t really a fan of Celeste. None of the characters really grabbed my interest, sadly.

So 3 stars for the writing, world building, ideas and social commentary, but not really a story for me.