Angel-Seeker by Sharon Shinn

Angel-Seeker by Sharon Shinn. New York: Ace Books, 2004. ISBN: 0-441-01134-9

This is the fourth of Sharon Shinn's “Samaritan Angel” books I've blogged, and the fifth one I've read, and the fifth one she's written so far as I know. When I wrote about Jovah's Angel and The Alleluia Files, I said that gradually rediscovering lost information about their cosmology (or should that be theology?) was an important part of all these books. That was perhaps true then, but less so with the latest two exemplars, Angelica and Angel-Seeker.

Angel-Seeker actually goes back to the time of the very first Samaria Angel book, Archangel, and tells a story about two very different young women in that era. One is a blatant angel-seeker, one of hundreds of young women who travel to where the angels congregate, hoping to catch one, or at least his child. The other most decidedly is not, belonging to a tribe very much like the ultra-orthodox Muslims of today, whose women are kept in a strict Purdah-like state. But it doesn't take much prescience to guess that while each finds love, it is not at all in the way they expected.

Because of the time frame in which it is set, Angel-Seeker can be read immediately after Archangel, if desired. Recommended for fans of Shinn's other work.