Jovah’s Angel

Sharon Shinn 1997 Buy from Amazon.com

Jovah’s Angel is the second book in the Samaria Trilogy, set some one hundred and fifty years after Archangel. On Samaria the weather is controlled by intercessions sung by angels, who pray to the god Jovah for weather change. The Archangel is the leader of the angels, who also governs the people in a broad sense.

When the Archangel Delilah is flung from the sky during a storm, leaving her flightless and her husband dead, Jovah chooses a new Archangel, Alleluia. Known as Alleya to her friends, she is shy and retiring, and not at all impressed with becoming the new Archangel. She is portrayed as someone who takes her responsibilities very seriously, from her interactions with the merchants to her shepherding of the younger angels. Although she clearly appears to others as serious and competent, we see from her perspective that she often feels lost, and constantly as though control is about to slip through her fingers.

The merchants are making trouble, most of the angels are no longer successful at weather interventions, and the weather is out of control, creating floodplains and deserts where there was farmland. The only one whose voice he responds to is Alleya, and she cannot be everywhere.

Delilah is is a vibrant yet tragic figure. Fiercely beautiful, yet slightly cruel and very sarcastic. An Edori man called Noah has fallen deeply in love with her, and wants for her to be happy, but since the storm that left her wing paralysed and her husband dead, she has taken to reveling in her own suffering, and creating it in others.

The oracles question Jovah for advice, but he returns only enigmatic answers, and tells them they must find the son of Jeremiah. As Alleya searches for him, the situation deteriorates, and she must find a way to touch the face of Jovah himself.

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