Archangel’s Resurrection by Nalini Singh: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Archangel's Resurrection by Nalini Singh

Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter series has advanced to its fifteenth book. What began as a series about vampire hunting woman and her archangel, has expanded to an entire world of vampires, angels, and archangels. In Archangel’s Resurrection the world expands even more, tens of thousands of years into the past.

We follow Alexander through his childhood and advancement in ranks over the millenia, until he becomes the Archangel of Persia. He’s already thousands of years old when he meets Zanaya who is only at the beginning of her journey to become the Archangel of North Africa, and he’s willing to wait a thousand years more, until they’re more equal in strength, to start their first romance.

It’s a story of two powerful, stubborn archangels who love for a thousand years and fight for another, only to return to each other to start the cycle of toxic love affair again. But neither can let the other completely go, even when Zanaya choses to sleep for ten thousand years to avoid the madness of angels.

The first half of the book is fairly slow, the details brushed over, with only brief moments of the two together. And when Zanaya finally awakens in the modern world, it’s only to perish at the hands of the Archangel of Death, and so Alexander has to wait a decade more for her to heal.

The main story happens in the last third of the book. Zanaya and Alexander are finally mature enough to break the cycle of stubbornness and anger and become vulnerable enough with each other to let the other in to start a proper relationship. There’s also some aftermath of the war with Lijuana to deal with that threatens to destroy their newfound happiness.

Despite the tempo difference between the two halves, this was a good book. It was interesting to see what the long lifespan of angels does to them, and to meet familiar names from earlier books. The toxic romance was a change of pace too and kept the story fresh. In the end though, I couldn’t help wishing that it hadn’t taken them quite that long to get to their senses. The ending hints at the next romance, which will likely be even longer in the timespan than this one. I can’t wait to read it.