“They say Earth was a place of wonders, where towers pierced the clouds, cities lit up the night, and flying machines streaked across the sky.
It was magic.
But the magic conjured the End War. Fire fell from the sky, and metal beasts leveled the cities. That was six hundred years ago. Now the ruins of the Ancient world are buried or overgrown. And the technology of the past is feared as forbidden magic.
Corvala, a young musician on the run from the law, never intended on getting mixed up with history. But when a murderer falls from the heavens and sets himself up as a god, she’s driven into the wilderness and discovers the secret of her a code of immense power embedded in her DNA. The code could save thousands—or plunge her into madness. To defeat the tyrannical false god, Corvala must do something more terrifying than confront the demons of Earth’s history. She must confront her own.”
Title: Angel from the Rust
Series: Earth Medieval #1
Author: Jason Link
Page Count: 424
Genre: Science Fiction Fantasy
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Date Read: October 15th, 2023
| I need to make a couple of things clear as we get into my full review for Angel from the Rust by Jason Link. This was another top 20 to prioritize from my personal SPFBO-9 TBR. However, luck would have it and it also hit my group for the SPSFC-3 pile. I want to make it perfectly clear that the following review is my own and may not reflect the overall scoring or results in that competition. This is one of those rare true mix of fantasy and science fiction tales. I’ve personally only read a couple of these types of stories before. The two worlds seemed rather far apart at the beginning of the story, but I’d recommend sticking with it as these paths cross fairly quickly. I had a lot of fun seeing how things came together in Angel from the Rust. I did opt for both the audiobook and visual for this. If this was a read strictly for my enjoyment I probably would have stuck with the audio and left it at that. But I included the visual to make it an immersion read to make sure the visual book didn’t have any serious formatting or editing errors that I wouldn’t have caught listening alone. With that being said, I felt Tiffany Morgan Baker did a really good job with narrating this story and it’s characters. Once again, this was both a new to me author (Jason Link) and narrator (Tiffany Morgan Baker) and I was pleasantly surprised. The pacing for Angel of the Rust did start out a bit rough for me simply because of the confusion between the perspective in a clearly science fiction scene then suddenly in what appeared to be a much more primitive world being introduced. However, it didn’t take too long for these two worlds to collide and then coincide from that point on as things are laid out for the reader. The worldbuilding was very unique. There was a lot to bring the reader up to speed with this one. As we began to learn about current events we also had a lot of historical information coming out way to fill in what has gotten us to those current events. These details were very important in understanding our current situations. I felt one thing that stood out for me about the cultures was that there was a lot of fear and prejudice to be overcome. This was both from those planet side as well as those not grounded. The character development was very strong in Angel from the Rust. It’s easy to see some of the development from our protagonist (Corvala) and supporting cast (Exodus) but I was surprised on seeing how Serapha evolved as well. I think the latter was one of the most unique parts of this read for me. Though learning the background of Exodus was always really interesting and the story unfolded. This might not have been one of my favorite reads of the year but it was still a lot of fun and kept me interested. I look forward to seeing where this series goes from here. World Building 4/5 Pacing 4/5 Character Development 4.5/5 |
4 Comments
[…] October 28th: Chad reviews Angel in the Rust HERE […]
Great review! I agree, this was one of the rare books that does science fantasy well, with both halves being balanced.
I’ve only come across a couple of reads over the last few years that worked well for me like that. It definitely doesn’t appear to be that easy to pull off. At least from the reader’s perspective.
[…] It could be more of the scifantasy vibes. Please do check out this book though and you can read Chad’s Review and Nicole’s […]