Aaron has been having a nightmare of a civilization destroyed, but it is not until he turns 18 that he sees what destroys it: angels. Over the next few days, he begins to discover he has new gifts, some of them beyond the ability of any normal human being. At first he thinks he's going crazy, but then he meets two men who show him a different possibility. At first he refuses to believe, but eventually he must come to terms with what he is: Nephilim--both angel and human. If he doesn't, all that he loves could be destroyed as the Powers seek him out to kill him.
Impression: This book was on the other end of the book vs. TV/movie spectrum as Stardust--it made a better TV series than book. Oh, the basic story line was okay, but the writing itself was overly simplistic, even for young adult fiction, and generally poor. The TV miniseries even managed to give the characters more depth. As usually happens when a book is translated to movie, the miniseries made some minor changes in the story as well, and, in this case, those changes worked.
Really, y.a. writing doesn't have to be like this. Even older children's books don't have to be so poorly put together. Look at Harry Potter or A Wrinkle In Time. Okay, some would say that the former is poorly written, but I thoroughly enjoyed the HP books. I kept reading them--the author wrote them in a way that I wanted to keep reading them. And the movies have worked for me so far as well. Books and the movies made from them can work well together, this just isn't the case for The Fallen.
Because of my disappointment in the first book in this series, I won't be picking up the rest. The story is unfinished, and I don't care. The other books could get better, but I'm not interested in spending my money on them and finding out they don't. I want to own the miniseries, but couldn't care less about the books.
