I mean this in the best way possible: this was such a strange book! It has a bit of a fairytale vibe, which could fool you into thinking this was a a quick, easy read. But nope! Pulling the Wings Off Angels is short, but there’s a lot packed into it. It has a light tone, and it’s very witty… but before you can relax, it drops a bucket of theological themes on your head.

The characters are interesting, even if their archetypes are familiar — but given the story’s overall tone, I think this may have been deliberate, and it definitely works in this context. I’d say that this is a story where the characters are supposed to be seen more as vehicles for themes and ideas than as people, and while I’m not usually a fan of that, I liked it here.

Pulling the Wings Off Angels is a lot of fun. It’s also living rent free in my head. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes offbeat stories of the supernatural, like Good Omens.

Thank you so much for an opportunity to read this book. It was unfortunately a miss for me. I liked the premise and the cover certainly made me want to investigate it more when I first saw it, but I could not connect with the characters and could not get into it.

Upon racking up quite the impressive gambling debt, our protagonist – a clerical student who doesn’t believe in God – is offered a deal: the debt will be wiped, but in return he’s to hand over the angel his grandfather allegedly kidnapped and has kept imprisoned ever since. It’s all nonsense, of course. Urm, of course o.O

After a bit of a madcap jaunt to get there, Florio gets to unleash his plan to use the trapped angel to blackmail God. After all, everything will be fine if you confess in the end, right? Meanwhile our narrator is faced with paying for his grandfather’s sins. Who knew such things were inheritable?

In the short novella, we get a lot of anti-religious thought puzzles – an exploration of a ‘theological paradox’, as the blurb says. “The sins of the father”, etc, etc, is taken quite literally, while God is neither merciful nor fair (or is that just?) all with a massive dollop of Parker’s trademark dark, dry, humour.

It’s an enjoyable romp, but the set up feels more evenly paced than the second half, and the ending felt a little underexplored. Still worth the read, and amazing that such a possibly serious topic can be dealt with so succinctly and so wryly.

A cleverly written novella sparking further contemplation on divinity. The story touches on a complex topic with witty cynicism and dry humor with the right amount of intrigue to keep interested.

ARC was provided by Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Pub Date: Nov 15 2022

Pulling The Wings Off Angels follows a clerical student with a weakness for gambling. Local gangster Florio captures him and asks him to pay his debts or die/lose limbs. A simple choice, provided you have money. Happily, Florio turns generous and offers the narrator a lifeline - if he delivers an angel to Florio, all is forgiven.


But where does one find an angel? Sure, there's a rumor that the narrator's grandfather caught and imprisoned one, but why would anyone believe that? Long story short, the rumor turns out to be true. The Angel is indeed detained in a room built with the help of the infamous Saloninus as the only place on earth that's hidden from and undetectable by god. In this room, one can do and say ANYTHING and won't be held accountable for it in the afterlife.


Florio decides to aim high and blackmail his god, The Invincible Sun. The story's narrator discovers he will have to pay for the sins of his grandfather. Like always, Parker delivers lots of exciting thoughts, plenty of sardonic wits, and a healthy dose of cynicism I adore. Parker has no mercy in pointing out logical fallacies of religion and beliefs. Anyway, the narrator doesn't even believe in the supernatural.


"I believed in the Invincible Sun when I was a kid. After all, there He was, up in the sky, so bright. He hurt your eyes. It was only when I went to the seminary and started studying to become a priest that I stopped. There's nothing quite like the scriptures for killing faith stone dead".

And then, the supernatural turns his life upside down in unexpected and undesired ways. It's a novella, and in novellas, every scene matters, so I won't rob you of the pleasure of reading and discovering stuff for the first time. Suffice it to say, Pulling The Wings Off Angels delivers twists, intriguing thoughts, and solid pacing. I admit I didn't enjoy it as much as Salonimus' stories, but it's still worth a shot.

I was a bit surprised when I came to the end of this novella and realised it was, indeed, a novella, because it packs so much into such a small space. Ultimately, it gives off the vibe of a cautionary folk tale, which I think fits perfectly.

The story managed to broach some weighty, complex topics and yet still maintain a lighter tone, thanks to the naturally engaging, funny voice of our narrator. This is a quick, entertaining story for readers with a more twisted or fatalistic sense of humour (so then, perfect for the likes of me, har har). There are so many jumping off points for a lively philosophical conversation, like the role faith-based belief systems play in our Day-to-Day and how much of a real impact they have on our quality of Life.

Musing over all the different discussion points in Pulling The Wings Off Angels could very well just end up as a Möbius strip of thought that leaves your brain tired, but really- that’s the kind of mindtripy ache I welcome any day. This appealed to me in a lot of ways.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for my ARC!

I'm not sure how I feel about Pulling the Wings off Angels.
It was a really quick read and I really liked the writing style so I will definitely be checking out the authors other work.

I really liked the sound of this novella but In the end I just found it quite dull and it wasnt what i thought it would be.

Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Very talkie. A man who has racked up some debt with the mob now has to trap an angel in exchange for his well-being. Can he pull it off?

Absolutely fucking brutal, not in a physical violence sense (though there is that) but in a moral and psychological sense. If nothing we do matters all that matters is what we do etc etc

If I didn't recognize the author's name, I would have thought this was a debut novel. It had a very amateurish feel, not quite to the level of being a DNF (mainly because of the length). I'm glad this was my introduction to Charles' writing and not something longer.

K. J. Parker has a unique ability to tell compelling stories with such intellectual depth about the mundane. The philosophical inquiry and exploration of the absolutism of divinity is one that I love ponder in general, so this novella was for me!

4 stars, and that only because I like Saloninus.

This is probably my least favorite Parker novella, second only to Long Game. I've said before that I'm not as big of a fan of his metaphysical/religious/philosophical works as I am the economic/political/military ones, so I pretty much knew going in it probably wasn't going to be a new favorite. That being said, it's still Parker, who is an amazing writer whose style I greatly enjoy. It also is becoming almost ridiculous to see just how many real word scientists/philosophers/playwrights/novelists etc that he can just roll into Saloninus lol.

At parts, this really felt like a screed against religion just in general, so much so that, ironic considering the book's themes, felt a bit preachy. Still, the exploration of justice in opposition to mercy and the idea of inheritance and fate is interesting as always, as well as the miserable protagonist and Saloninus his usual ludicrously brilliant (yet once again mysteriously broke) self. With his last 2 novels falling into this metaphysical category, here's hoping the next one is from the other category.

If you greatly enjoyed the other good v. evil works, you will probably love this one.

This novella started off so great, but the second half didn't really go where I wanted it to. The humor was better utilized here for me than in 16 ways, and I do find the core concept incredible. But all the stuff dealing with God, just...wasn't for me. I do think the novella does an impressive amount for such a low page count, and I will definitely read more Parker after this.

Netgalley DNF
I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

What a bizzare yet surprisingly satisfying novella. We open with our main character (a terribly unreliable narrator) about be crucified by gangsters for truly massive amounts of gambling debts, when they’re told that they can get out of everything if they can produce an angle. Cue to the wildest rollercoaster ride of escalation as Parker brings the reader along through a series of twisty theological mind games. The vibes and humor are surprisingly Pratchett-like, reminding me strongly of Good Omens in the religious sardonic humor, but with perhaps a more cynical lens. The story itself is certainly very high concept, focusing more on theological debates than character development or worldbuilding. Our main character is perhaps the most developed, a witty and sarcastic ordained priest in this not-quite-Christian-but-certainly-derived religion who doesn’t actually believe in the god he studies. The rest of the cast tend to play archetypes that are moreso used to push the story forwards than be their own character. Despite this, Pulling the Wings Off Angels was one of the best-paced novellas I’ve read in a while, and finished without wishing this was a full novel. Overall, I rate this book a 4/5.

Review will go live on my blog 11 November 2022

I could not put this down from the moment I picked it up. I rarely have that kind of reaction to a story in the first page, but there we are, and I finished it in record time. And the only thing that made me sad was that I finished it when I did, and realised I had no more pages left to read.

The story is told by a seminary student who is forced to look into a family legend about his Grandfather breaking the wings of an angel. The main character believes this false, but goes along with it to appease the mobster who he goes a lot of money too. It is set in a different land, though it had striking parallels to our own world in certain things which makes the narrative flow easily.

I found it hard to like the main character, all through the book, and at no point did I really feel sorry for him. While he may want to go good, it is mainly for all the wrong reasons, and that is one of the focuses of the story. It is all bound up in talk of religion, but at no point is it about if religion is good or bad, just more the moral choices we make and why we make them.

It is a clever piece of writing, and I would suggest reading it between other larger books, as a bity of a brain refresher.

Unfortunately, I found this story to be lacking in many areas.

In terms of writing style, the details are far too sparse; much of the word count is "witty" dialogue between the major characters, and because of that, it's the characters who tell most of the story. The narrative, therefore, doesn't "show" us the story, which reduces the impact of the story's events by filtering them into snappy pieces of conversation.

The world-building also disappointed me. The religion discussed in the story is simply Christianity with a very thin façade, and the world is simply Earth with all the place names swapped out for stereotypical fantasy-style names. And maybe I would've been okay with that setup (which was surely intentional and done for some concrete reason), if the story itself had more depth and detail...but there's just not much there.

The plot contains a lot of grand concepts that are slung onto the page in very shallow strokes with a rapid pace, constrained by the short length of the story. Consequently, there's no real tension or drama because as soon as one issue is presented, it's resolved on the next page, if not on the same page.

In the same vein, the characters get little development outside of info-dumped backstory or dialogue where the character's explain their own characterization, which is extremely clunky and inorganic.

Honestly, this book reads like the abridged version of a full-fledged novel, with everything cut out of it except the major plot twists and the minimum amount of information that the reader needs to understand what's happening on a basic level. And that's just not how you structure any sort of short work.

To be frank, I'm confused about what the author was going for with this. It this supposed to be religious satire? Is it supposed to be a serious fantasy short? There's nothing in the story itself that tells me what the story was meant to be.

Overall, this wasn't a good reading experience for me. I was equal parts confused about the intent and frustrated at the lack of detail. I can't in good conscience recommend this story to other fantasy readers.

This is fantasy novel only in the lightest sense, in which the "fantasy" is a thin veil drawn over a theological deep dive into questions of determinism, free will, sin, and repentance. The plot follows a down-on-his-luck seminary student trapped into a diabolical plot by a gangster to kidnap an angel and defeat God. Light stuff, right? However, even in what is on the surface a heavy concept, K.J. Parker maintains his trademark dry, dark humor: ("Take, for example, the traditional four-pronged muck fork. Which I did and stuck into the nearest goon before he had the chance to stop me. Then, for the good of my heath, I stuck the other two.") while also pursuing a fascinating philosophical bent, asking questions that modern students of history and theology debate with regularity. Is sin inherited? Can you be doomed for the crime of another, or achieve salvation on a technicality? Does free will exist? Though I am not religious in the slightest, I found these metaphysical exercises enlightening to consider. Parker's strong narrative voice and consistent humor make it so that you never get dragged down by the complexity of the questions asked, even as you find yourself thinking about them long after you put the book down.

K.J Parker has a very endearingly sardonic tone in his writing. It fits in nicely with the subject of religion, as it mirrors my own feelings on the subject, but could turn some people off his stories. His characters are nihilistic, which makes for an entertaining amount of dry humour, that gets me flipping the pages. I would recommend this one over the other short story I’ve read by him, Prospers Demon, which carry’s the same tone, but has a much looser plot. Thoroughly enjoyed this one, and I will definitely be picking up more by him in the future.

An angel held is held captive by a gangster and used to blackmail god, while the protagonist endlessly tries to find a way to erase his grandfathers sins in this compelling fantasy. This is a humorous story full of smart dialogue and theological conundrums that will make the reader smile. It is a very fast read and is honestly more like a fleshed out short story than a novel.