For those of you who’ve read other works by her, this is different from what your use to.

Angels that walk among us and Demons that no longer hide in the shadows!

Unhappy with the life he life was going, Zaniel Havelock left the College of Angels, walking away from all his friends and everything he’d had become comfortable with. But the one he he couldn’t seem to give up was his ability to communicate with the angels.

He now uses those said talents to aid him in his job in the police force, but it’s a branch not many get on. It’s the paranormal unit of the police force.
Zaniel works alongside colleagues with different faiths and special skills (psychic’s mainly)
This task force is charged with keeping the peace between humans/angels/demons.
And it’s not an easy thing to do most days.

So we have a new case for Zaniel to work…..

At first glance it’s a case for homicide, but upon closer inspection there seems to be an angelic side to this case.
Could an Angel have killed the victim? Why?

We also have demons to contend with, and like angels there are demons that are different from their kind. What are they up to?
And when they start doing things they shouldn’t be able to do, Zaniel has no choice but to reach out to old friends.
But with old friends come the old betrayals and secrets, and it’s those secrets that he’s keen to see kept buried!!

There is a religious tone to this book, but not enough to put me off from reading it. 
And with a new book/series comes the obligatory backstory and world building, which happens to be one of my favourite parts in a book.
Now It makes a change to see a male in the lead in this authors work, it’s usually a kicka$$ female. And the use of bedroom antics is missing too. It seems to be focusing on the detective work rather than orgies and bed hopping!

It’s a story a lot good versus evil. About personal choices and how the wrong choice can take you down a path that’s hard to turn from.
It’s a murder/mystery story with an angsty romance thrown in (Zaniel is married!)

So who did kill our victim? Is there something more going on?

I’m hoping we don’t have to wait too long for the next book out.

🦋

Detective Zaniel Havelock is a man with the special ability to communicate directly with angels. A former trained Angel speaker. A terrible betrayal compelled him to leave that life behind. Now he’s a cop who is still working on the side of angels. But where there are angels, there are also demons. There’s no question that there’s evil at work when he’s called in to examine the murder scene of a college student. Zaniel is forced to confront his own very personal demons, and the past he never truly left behind.
Zaniel's marriage is also on the rocks and he wants to mske it work. I could not stand his wife. She seems a little self centered to me and I have a feeling that we will find out more about her in the books to come and what makes her tick. Zaniel is one of those guys that you want to meet in real life and see if he is to true to be real.
This is the first book of a new series and I can't wait to get reading more of this series.
Thanks to Berkley and NetGalley for the ARC to review.

Immerse yourself in a world where detectives and Angels collide, . I was instantly intrigued, and the way this world building was laid out and described, I imagined a hit sitcom from the 90’s like something out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the spin off Angel, just more grown up and sophisticated almost. it was refreshing, it was comforting (because I loved watching those type of paranormal shows when I was younger. The mystery kept me reading, and the characters intrigued me enough to find out, what’s going to happen??

What I loved: The narrative, first person narrative will ALWAYS keep me reading. As the reader you understand the main character like no other. I also loved the fact that it’s not only a mystery.. it’s got a bit of angsty romance, some suspense, and lots of what I believe to be good looking Angels among us eh?

Move over Vampires.. the Angels are back in town..

As intriguing as this premise is...it really missed the mark.

With any new series there will be world-building, any avid reader would expect this, however, there is usually backstory and a flow and reasoning. This book had none of that, it was truly all over the place with the information dump and at times very random and in the most awkward ways.

Our male protagonist, Zaniel (Havoc), is just plain exhausting. I felt no real draw to him, nor to any of the other characters, they really fell flat for me. There was one intriguing character and that was her, the nameless angel. Hopefully there will more of her in the follow up book.

The plot, if you can truly call it that, was weak at best and truly the timing of it all just felt rushed.

Thank you to Netgalley and Berkley Publishing Group for allowing me to read a copy early.

Wow. It feels like it's been a hot minute since Laurell K. Hamilton sat down and started a new series. Naturally, that fact alone was enough to get me curious about A Terrible Fall of Angels. A Terrible Fall of Angels is the first in her new Zaniel Havelock series.

Angels are real. This is a fact that Detective Zaniel Havelock has always known. For a time, he trained to be one of those that could communicate with angels until he turned away from that path and became a detective.

His training and abilities serve him well in his new role, as he deals with crimes surrounding angels and the fallen. It's complex and dangerous work, but work that needs to be done, especially when something demonic is on the rise.

"Someone had to keep the peace between beings that could tear the world apart if they ever went to war again."

I'll say it once again: wow. A Terrible Fall of Angels is such an intense and captivating read. So much so that I found myself surprised by how invested in the story I had become. I don't normally love reading overly angelic novels, so this is a rare exception to the rule for me!

Trust me when I say that this novel is nothing like Laurell K. Hamilton's other novels. I don't mean that offensively – it is merely a statement. The main character is Zaniel Havelock – that's right! A male protagonist. That's not the only significant difference between this new world and her others, but it is one of the more prominent ones.

The series, while having religious entities, is surprisingly not overly religious. It is very careful to dance around some aspects at times, which I actually kind of appreciated. However, it took me a while to get into the swing of things with this new world.

The first part of the novel does throw a lot of information out to the readers. It kinda makes Havelock look like a bit of a know-it-all. But then again, he sort of is! He's the only one in his unit with this sort of training, and it shows!

I should probably mention that there are some heavy subjects covered within this first novel. For example, Havelock is first and foremost a detective. That means he's dealing with crimes, including a very graphic one that comes up within the first few pages. Consider yourself warned!

Overall, I really enjoyed this new world and style of writing for Laurell K. Hamilton. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next and how Havelock (and his unit) will react to the inevitable chaos that comes with it.

If it takes me more than a week to make it to 20% it's a sign that the book isn't for me. This was a bit of a mess, I couldn't connect with Zaniel, the writing is all over the place and while I know that world building in PNR/UF is tough if you still want to keep the reader's interest at the same time. This was info dump galore with no real background from the start and so, so confusing. Pains me to wave the white flag because I found the premise fascinating

I love supernatural thrillers. The premise for this book fascinated me. And, so, I expected to at least like, if not love, the story.

It's a DNF (did not finish) for me.

The short and not so sweet of it:

The plot execution is a mess. The story is all over the place. Nothing made much sense. The characters are just sort of there. And I didn't care about any of it.

I gave up a little past the halfway point.

There is no way this book would be published if Hamilton were not already an established author. Without even a fan base hoping for glimpses of characters they already care about from the beginning of a long series that has gone downhill, there is no reason for anyone to buy this tremendously sloppy, scattered, and boring book.

Hamilton's newest series began slowly for me as a reader. But by halfway through, I could not put it down. I love the world Hamilton has created and the damaged protagonist at the forefront. A great read for fans of paranormal!

What a great start to a new series. I love Hamilton's writing style but need to take breaks from the Anita Blake series because sometimes the story is more erotica based...does that make sense? This wasn't that. Still had the strong character driven story that LKH is known for and was incredibly hard for me to put down. I can't wait to see what the next installment has in store! Thanks for the preview to what I suspect will be a new favorite series!

Taking her readers into a world full of angels, demons, and magic, bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton introduces a fantastic new series with A Terrible Fall of Angels.

Disillusioned with the life he was living, Angel Speaker Zaniel Havelock left the College of Angels, giving up all he knew and the friends he had. One thing he didn’t give up, though, was his ability to communicate with the angels. Using his talents to serve on the paranormal unit of the police force, Zaniel works beside those of varying faiths and psychic skills in order to keep the peace between Heaven and Hell. But when demons start doing things they shouldn’t be able to do, old friends come back into his life, and age-old secrets are revealed, Zaniel will put his faith to the test and find new inner strength.

I’ve been an avid fan of Hamilton’s Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series for ages, so I was very excited to see a new series featuring a new area of paranormal fantasy. I found A Terrible Fall of Angels very reminiscent of the early Anita Blake novels: heavily on world building and character introduction with plenty of room to fill out both of those aspects in later books. The personal relationships in this book are mostly professional and platonic; the sexy scenes that the Anita Blake novels have become known for are completely missing from Zaniel Havelock’s introduction.

I think Hamilton does a great job at creating these fictional, magical elements within the real world. I did have many questions early on about these unknown fictional elements - background information, characters, abilities - and Hamilton did eventually resolve many of these unknowns. There were definitely characters and hints of Zaniel’s history that were left unexplained, setting up for future character development in the next books. There were a couple of elements of Zaniel’s personality that I didn’t care for, like his inability to call his friend by his friend’s preferred name, but I’m hoping to see Zaniel grow throughout the series and outgrow his smaller worldview.

I loved the interweaving of faiths in A Terrible Fall of Angels. Having followers of God working alongside practicing Wiccans, and not only working with them but being their best self while making each other stronger, was a great message woven throughout the plot. Readers have seen the mixing of faiths to a character’s advantage before in Anita Blake, but A Terrible Fall of Angels takes it to a whole new level.

This was a fantastic launch to a new series from Laurell K. Hamilton. I love the paranormal elements Hamilton chose to use and I am excited to see if Hamilton takes Zaniel down the same sort of path that Anita had to travel or if his story will be so much cleaner giving his closeness to the angels. Zaniel has a lot of fleshing out to go through, and I can’t wait to see what the next step will be on his journey.

Hamilton’s new series is set in a world where demons, angels, witches, and people with angel related gifts reside. The main character is a man, a change of viewpoint for Hamilton, who is a police detective and an angel speaker trying to stop a demon possessed killer.

As with most new series, this first book spent a lot of time on world building. The premise of an entire group of people with various angel related gifts and the people/organizations that train them is not a typical paranormal concept, so the book seemed to drag in the middle while explaining the intricacies of this new world.

I’ll be honest, I spent much of the book waiting for Hamilton’s sexual-heavy scenes (which I like), but instead found only many looks and glances. Perhaps in the next book. All-in-all I found I really enjoyed the book and look forward to the next in the series.

I received an ARC copy of this book from the Publisher via Netgalley and am voluntarily leaving my review.

Laurell Hamilton's new Zaniel Havelock series revolves around a deeply flawed man who was at one time an angelic emissary of sorts and has since moved on to a local PD, where he serves as an expert on the angelic. A new case tosses "Havoc" back into the arms of the angels--and into a demonic spotlight.

Though A Terrible Fall of Angels had great potential, it read like a book out of the middle of a series. Unfortunately, the reader is given little backstory and way too much unnecessary dialogue. These are frequent faults in the Anita Blake series as well, but at this point in that series, but years of experience have made us familiar with the characters. Zaniel Havelock needed--and deserved--more of an introduction.

I was intrigued by the potential for this novel as Laurell K. Hamilton started out writing amazing science fiction/paranormal novels that had none of the romance/sex crap. She went down hill in her writing for many years, but in the past couple had rededicated herself to the original strength of her writing skills instead of sex books. That combined with the unique take on angels in this world was intriguing. I liked Zaniel's character and I REALLY liked the world that she built. It is such a unique combination of paranormal mishmash of beliefs in a normalized way.

It is also an intrigue case for this paranormal detective division to be working on that opens up a lot of future plot points and stories that delve into all the hidden possibilities hinted at within the plot. What I didn't like is that it seemed to end so abruptly that I had no idea the end way coming since I was reading this on my Kindle. It just seemed to cut off when I wanted more. That isn't to say this is a bad thing as I will definitely be picking up other books in this series, but it did leave a slightly off taste in my mouth for the ending that I will remember when the next book comes around.

Hamilton has done it again! While I was expecting another female protagonist from this powerhouse author to completement her other Merry Gentry and Anita Blake series, this male protagonist did not disappoint. I would have liked a stonger sense of location in the story, but that may be because like Hamilton's other two successful series I am based in the St. Louis, Missori area. However, Hamilton's take on Angels and spiritual practices is novel and intriguing. I cannot wait to see where this series takes us!

I absolutely loved this book! Laurell K Hamilton will continue to be one of my favorite authors of all time. Zaviel was such a dynamic character and I loved learning about him and the different things he has going on in his life. Some of his challenges were very unique but also made him very relatable. I also really loved the new twist on angels and demons and their relation to religion.

A riveting concept full of angels and demons. What more could you want?

I was really pulled into this story by the promise of some amazing spiritual fiction full of light vs. dark and I wasn't disappointed. From the very first page, I was thrown into an action packed crime drama with some really incredibly staged fight scenes with a demon twist. I mean, a man with the power of an angel trying to prevent a demon from wreaking havoc, kinda tight in my opinion.

The main character, Zaniel started off a little bland for me, but quickly came into his stride as we got to know him and his background. I could feel how passionate he felt for his job and why he left his old life behind. The one thing that really bothered me and was the reason why I couldn't give this book five stars was every time Zaniel looked at a woman, he made a comment about her boobs. At one point he made a comment that he wasn't listening to a conversation with a female character because he was staring at her boobs. It was always boobs...

I've read that this authors other books are more on the steamy orgy side of things, but this book didn't have any of that. It was fairly clean... Except for the boob thing...

Any who, besides the awkward sexual references, I really liked this book. It had great action and mystery to keep my reading. A unique story.

A new series by Laurell K Hamilton, featuring a male protagonist. Enter, Zaniel Havelock (Havoc), a police Detective, veteran, and former student at the cult – I mean College – of Angels. The College of Angels accepts students who have a gift of communicating with angels, but once accepted, it can be hard to leave. Havoc managed to leave the College only after some traumatic events that are hinted at, but not fully fleshed out in this first book (I’m looking forward to the full story later).

In a world where most people are born with Guardian Angels they can’t see, and witches, familiars and spirit guides are common, the police are starting to actively recruit gifted cops. As a police Detective in the City of Angels, Havoc is often called for crimes of a magical nature. But when he is called to the scene of a murder he and his colleagues quickly realize that it was no ordinary murder: there was a demon involved, and in a way no one has seen before. The search for those involved is the driving plot point, with enough descriptions of Havoc’s past history and current relationships to keep a reader interested.

It was hard not to draw parallels between this book and the early Anita Blake books. The pacing is similar, as is the way Hamilton describes the interactions between officers, both professional and private. I wasn’t mad about that, though, because the descriptions of police procedure and law that have adapted to the existence of magic is one of my favorite things about Hamilton’s writing and world building. The descriptions provided about the College of Angles are great, and I can’t wait to learn more about it – because it’s clear that even if the College is done with Havoc, the angels are not.

As a longtime Hamilton reader, it was almost shocking to read a book with no sex in it, but this novel is kind of a throwback to early Anita, except that Havoc is almost divorced and has a son. We get our main character in couple’s therapy right away, trying to repair his marriage. The ending and conclusion are slightly abrupt, but there is plenty of room for more story, and I would absolutely keep reading. 4.5 stars.

As a child Zaniel Havelock was taken into the College of Angels and trained to become an Angel Speaker, someone who can talk with angels without going insane. A series of traumatic events convinced him to leave the college and build a new life for himself. He joined the army and then the police force and is now Detective Zaniel Havelock of the Metaphysical Coordination Unit which is better known as the Heaven and Hell Unit.

Zaniel, who gained the nickname of Havoc while in the army, is at the crime scene with lots of clues that an angel was somehow involved. But a visit from an angel messenger tells him that even the angels don't know what happened that led to the brutal murder and rape of Megan Borowski.

Zaniel has to find out and, apparently, he is the only one who can. But he is also in the middle of trying to save his marriage to Reggie who is having issues with him being a police officer. He loves her and he certainly doesn't want to lose his three-year-old son Connery, but this case and its dangers are crowding in on his time. There is a most unusual demon involved.

This is the first of a new series for the author so there is a lot of worldbuilding which is well-integrated into the story. This is a world with angels and demons, guardian angels and totem animals, and of faith. Zaniel is an intriguing character. He's a man of faith but his faith isn't the narrow one taught at the College of Angels. We meet two of his fellow students in this story. One is Surial who has stayed in the College of Angels and risen up the ranks to a powerful position. The other is Jamie who was kicked out of the College when he went insane after an angel encounter and who has lived as a street person for at least ten years but who has now regained some sanity. We meet some of Zaniel's fellow police officers including a man who gets blissed out when he sees an angel, Zaniel's lieutenant who is a voodoo priest, and a colleague who is a witch with totem animals.

The story was intriguing and I am looking forward to more stories set in this world. The main story plot is resolved here but there are still some dangling threads that I am eager to know more about.

I went into this book with a terrible fear that it would just be Orgies But With Angels Now! Thank God and every named angel in this pantheon that it is not. This is a throwback to a more classic LKH with a plot, gripping action, and somewhat fleshed out characters!

The vibe of this book is that LKH is learning to be a writer again. It could benefit greatly from a heavy handed editor. By the 20th or 30th description of Zaniel's rippling abs and lengthy expositions on how much time he spent at the gym because he doesn't want to go home I was wishing he would take up a hobby. The secondary characters are interesting but the main character lacks emotional maturity. We're supposed to believe Zaniel has years of life experience as a powerful student in the College of Angels, an active duty soldier, and now a cop, but he spends most of his time staring at his estranged wife's tits, obsessing over her clothing and sky high leather boots, and critiquing the makeup of EVERY woman he encounters.

If this book were written by a man I'd have some thoughts about sexism and female characters not being written like they are actual people. Zaniel seems to have no ability to relate to women as anything but sexual objects. If the entire side arc of his estranged wife was shelved the book would flow better and he would be a more likeable character. It jarred me out of the story each time Zaniel interacted with a woman and tried to guess her age, spent paragraphs discussing her makeup (or its lack) or reflected on how attractive the woman (or man) found him. With 50% less Reggie, gym talk, flirtation, and tea this would have been a 5 star book.