Broken Angel Book

Christian dystopia is hard to come by, and BROKEN ANGEL has to be the most intriguing storyworld I've discovered in this genre so far. A portion of the United States has seceded to form Appalachia, an autonomous nation that has banned reading and books, especially the Bible, but in which a church of legalistic extremism serves as the primary government. This government regulates every conversation and every destination (in fact, civilians ride GPS-tagged horses; no cars allowed). Infractions like getting caught without your personal tracking device are punishable by factory work. Infractions like helping the underground railroad called the Clan transport people to freedom are punishable by stoning.

What makes this world even more intriguing is that Outside, as Appalachians call the rest of the US, clearly has its own issues. Cars are allowed; so is unlimited abortion. Freedom is available; so are genetic experiments and farmed replacement organs. In Appalachia, love and grace have been crushed from Christianity; outside it, morality has turned into a free-for-all.

In this world, we meet Caitlyn, a young woman (no idea how old she is, argh) who is fleeing Appalachia at the directive of her father, Jordan. She doesn't know why she was born with a hunchback and other physical oddities. She doesn't know why a sociopath bounty hunter is chasing her on behalf of Appalachia, why an agent called Pierce is doing the same on behalf of Outside. All she knows is that trusting anyone--including possibly her father--has become dangerous.

The prose isn't beautiful, but it's grammatical and mostly clean, with a tell-all style common to thrillers. I prefer a little wordsmithery, but I still could have given this book 4 stars, if only the characters had drawn me in as well as the storyworld did. I found myself curious about several of the cast and wanted to be curious about several more (including the protagonist), but I never got to the point of emotional investment. The author writes in limited omniscient point of view, letting us glimpse characters' thoughts but never diving all the way into their senses and emotions.

I'm also left wondering why on earth the novel is so short. The plot (mostly a manhunt) is simple enough for this length (less than 250 pages in ARC format), but the characters could have been fleshed out more deeply, and the storyworld is so complex, with so much potential for deeper immersion. Add a hundred pages of nuance and I might have fallen in love with this book, thriller style and all. Because the storyworld is just that good.

For me, as an explorer of dystopia, this was definitely worth the read. I'm hoping for more layers--storyworld, character, and plot--in the next book.