Guest Reviewer – Cindy

TITLE: No Angel
AUTHOR: Daniel A. Kaine
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 200 words/62,731 words
BLURB: Born with a birth defect called Devil Syndrome, it is impossible for Josh Harper to hide the two small stumps of hornlike bone atop his head. If people also knew about his ability to create force fields with his mind, they’d lock him up for sure. Left to fend for himself on his eighteenth birthday, Josh tries to make it on the streets. When he’s attacked, he’s rescued by Sam Mitchell, who has an equally strange power—and a set of pure white wings.

Sam ran away from home a year ago, and the new life he’s built for himself includes living in an abandoned house and looking after three younger kids, all with Devil Syndrome. Then along comes Josh. After a rough start their relationship grows and the two young men find a haven in each other’s arms. But when tragedy strikes their newfound family, Sam’s hatred of regular humans spirals out of control, and Josh will have to make Sam see sense before everything he’s worked so hard to build is destroyed.

REVIEW:

As someone who reads a lot, I get excited when I see something with a unique premise and this story had a lot of great potential.

Josh has had a horrible life. Being born with “horns” had colored everything that has ever happened to him, from being bullied as a child, to losing his mother.

When he is forced onto the streets to live, it doesn’t take him long to figure out that it’s going to horrific. His good nature keeps popping up as he wanders around trying to figure out where to go from there, but life keeps kicking him in the teeth.

When he meets Sam, he can’t even begin to process how he feels but he comes to care about the other boy more and more, even as he worries about Sam’s attitude towards life.

The other runaway kids he meets get to him just as quickly and soon he finds himself part of a family, something he lost with him mother.

The kids encounter horrible treatment from the public at large and I hope that in real life, this would not be the case. I’d like to believe better about humanity.

The characters in this story are wonderfully built but could have used a little more fleshing out. In fact, I feel that way about the whole story. I could have used more of everything, but mostly time for the anticipation to build.

The horribly tragedy that befalls them that spurs the main characters on to the climax of the story would have been much more believable and motivating for the reader if we would have gotten more of a chance to know the character it happened to.

It felt like the author was rushing us through to the ending when I would have liked a little more time to spend with these excellent characters.

The small twist at the end of the story made me smile while once again making me wish I knew a little more about the people involved.

All in all it was a good story, but probably not something I would go back to over and over again. I give it 3.5 stars.

Cindy’s Rating:

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