THIS BOOK Y’ALL GOOSEBUMPS, REVOLUTIONARY, STUNNING- A #BookReview by Amy Johnson

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I simply had to share this delightful, not to mention (dare I use the word) stellar review of Misericorde …I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did!

Posted on November 21, 2020 by amyjohnson895

In the year 2446, the world exists as a mere shell of what it used to be. The Great Catalyst tore the human race apart as the Horsemen rode. War, Pestilence, Famine… All that remains to ride is Death.

Archangel Tzadkiel, Angel of Mercy, had taken the task upon himself to find one human on the planet who understands what mercy is. Humans are a vile species, though, and as his journey nears its end, he fears he may never find that person. When he is captured by the soldiers of The Bastion, hope wanes even further.

A mere scullery maid, Lourdes hears screams from her room every night. They break her heart and haunt her nightmares, and even though she doesn’t even know who they come from, she swear to find him and help him.

When she does exactly that, though, Lourdes discovers she’s opened a door that she might regret and entered a world darker than she ever imagined.

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Style/Length:
Let me just get this off my chest before we start.

OMG THIS BOOK Y’ALL GOOSEBUMPS REVOLUTIONARY STUNNING!

*clears throat* I, um, really enjoyed this book, guys. Morgan’s style is absolutely breathtaking. It’s thick with descriptions of the world she has created (which is incredible) and the people who live in it. It reads like a fantasy in that way, because it seems like a brand new created world. In reality, it’s what’s left of ours.

It was a rather long read, and at first, I struggled to get into it. My kindle is set up to track my percentage through the book because that’s how I set my pace. So, I was about 30% of the way through and had been reading for DAYS. Thats a bit unusual for me, considering how fast I read. But the beginning was just so description heavy that I didn’t want to miss anything by hurrying.

But DUDE did it get good after 50%. I scarfed this book down like Tzadkiel eating oatmeal (you’d understand that if you read Misericorde 😂). One night y’all. ONE. NIGHT. When I say I stayed up till one am, I 100% mean it. Please tell me you’ve done that before. I was lying in bed, telling myself that I needed to stop. One more chapter. Just till the end of this one. Oh wait, I can’t possibly stop THERE. Okay, till the end of this part them. But apparently my eyes don’t listen to my brain. Because I kept on going.

And boy, did this leave me with a book hangover. That awful feeling of MAN, NO BOOK WILL EVER COMPARE.  ugh. This is a lot to say: It had a slow start, but once I got in, it was just perfect. Chef’s kiss.

Characters:
The two “main” characters are Lourdes and Tzadkiel. That’s obvious. I’ll talk about those for a bit and then touch on some secondary characters.

Lourdes is a scullery maid. She is the perfect submissive slave, doing what she has to without complaint or attracting attention. The author makes sure to describe her as beautiful, of course. But she is so much more than that. Lourdes is incredibly strong, kind, brave and just… a wonderful female lead. She’s my favorite female MC that I’ve read in a while. Now, Lourdes does go through a lot, and there were tears shed for her. I’ll have to go into detail about that later.

Next up is Tzadkiel. I don’t read a lot of books about Angels and such. My background knowledge about angels comes from out Trenchcoat King Castiel. 😂 So, the standards were REALLY high for Tzadkiel. And lord a’mercy, he did not disappoint. While being the typical strong, macho male character that you expect from him, you also get to see a really vulnerable side of him as demons attempt to bring him down. He’s far from perfect, and endures so much along his search that I just… ugh. I love him. Happily simping over here.

Now we’ve got some other characters. There’s Levesque, head of the Tower Obligar and man in charge of “controlling” Tzadkiel. I didn’t like Levesque to start off with but there was a quick change in his personality that somewhat redeemed him in my eyes. He got what was coming to him, though. Then, there’s Philippe who deserved every ounce of HATE I felt for him. Sauvage: the man who deserved TO BURN IN THE FIRES OF HADES *clears throat* sorry. He’s a, um, bad guy.

I had no issue with the characters! Nothing negative! There were a lot to juggle, but each one stuck out enough for me to be able to pluck them out of the story easily. I was never confused. So Kudos to the author for balancing them out so well.

Plot:
There’s actually a few things I want to talk about in terms of plot. The structure of this book is fascinating to me. There are only nine chapters (and you thought CAGED had long chapters 😬) but each one is cut up into different sections. The story jumps around in time quite a bit to build this world that the author is developing.

You have an omniscient and omnipresent narrator who seems to just oversee and explain the history, then you have Gabriel and Anna’s storyline (2060), Tzadkiel’s arrest storyline (2445), and then Lourdes and Tzadkiel’s combined storyline (2446). Each storyline is very clearly marked at the start by telling you what year and era the part is taking place, like below.