NAILSEA
PEOPLE
Review book Angels of Armour
by Nailsea writer AC Marsh
A Nailsea writer has published her first book which is planned to be part of a series of epic proportions akin to the Twilight saga with Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan and Buffy the Vampire Slayer but more sexy.
There is also a whiff of Michael the 1996 American fantasy film with John Travolta as the Archangel, who is sent to Earth to do various tasks, including mending some wounded hearts.
And in the 2013 gothic fantasy film Beautiful Creatures there are echoes of false memories, recurring nightmares and mind games also in this story.
But Angels of Armour is more a battle between good and evil spiced with servings of red-hot Latino love and longing.
The heroine of the Angels of Armour is a bookish, introverted American 20-year-old who works in her Italian family’s café and delicatessen.
Marcella ‘Ella’ Romana with her waist-long hair and Rueben belly acts like an angel except when she lusts after men, then she’s just a horny young devil.
Recently split from David, a ‘shitty’ boyfriend, Ella prefers to sleep with her Alsatian Ruby while she has a love/hate relationship with the boy-next-door Will Baker who is also best buddies with her overprotective big brother Leo.
So far so good. The scene is set for the 353-page opening chapter.
Towering Adonis Will is a muscleman of Jason Momoa proportions (including his undercarriage) and adorned with tattoos and battle scars.
Pulses (not pasta) race when Lucas the new librarian looking, I imagine, like a young Damian Lewis with his long red curly locks stops by the café for a cappuccino. Lucas is described as ‘startlingly beautiful’.
Grandma Elena is safe and ‘beautiful’ too and described as SPK but even Google couldn’t define that abbreviation.
Best friend Malikea is a pan-sexual African American party animal with big Afro hair and dubious family tree.
In fact, all the characters are ‘beautiful’, no Brontë-style plain Janes laying back between the pages or the bed covers.
Talking of between there is very little fanny fiddling as sex is more BJs and rough rides right from the first encounter and you must wait until nearly the end of the book for any real action.
Early thrills are instigated with some safe sex ass-grabbing moves and meanwhile something scary is lurking at the bottom of the garden…
The writing is modern with little trace of Yankee slang and I did wonder about all the tea drinking.
It is a complex well-told yarn which could do with a Who’s Who bibliography but then that might spoil the many surprises. As for genre I would say a coming-of-age survival fantasy-fuck.
Like any book of this size the proof-reading mistakes are smiley – ‘taught’ for ‘taut’ and ‘led’ instead of ‘laid’.
Book reviewer RaeAnne Palmer gave Angels of Armour five stars online at Good Reads.
She said: “This is such a good book!
“It flowed so well from chapter to chapter it kept my interest the whole time.
“I loved Will, oh my goodness.”
Andie Marsh is the author with a mega imaginative and fabulous way with words.
She lives with a bearded dragon called Freddie and a fiancé called Matty has already begun writing the sequence called Angels of Oblivion.
Update: Andie said: “Unfortunately we lost Freddie just a few weeks ago so he won’t be my writing buddy for the next book.”
And she tells us you can usually find her in the Royal Oak pub playing crib or curled up on the sofa reading or watching Netflix.
The paperback edition is on Amazon priced £10.99.
Carol Ann Deacon