Rating: 
Summary: Great- slightly confusing.
Review: Okay; enter character one: Altair Jones, a tough young woman, raised as a guy in a Venice-like street setting. She does a little smuggling, has a few friends. No father- mother's been dead for a couple years. Runs the 'buisness on her own.' A little late to pick up her 'cargo' one night, she catches a bunch of hooligans dumping somebody over a bridge. Altair saves the man's life. Enter Thomas Mondragon. Handsome, suave- rich. Of course, Altair falls in love with him. He treats her right- she helps him to get back to 'his' side of town, only to have to dig him out of scrape after scrape. Though Altair originally feels herself at a disadvantage around Mondragon because of her upbringing, it's her unique childhood- if it could be termed that- that gives her the skills to pry him out of his mistakes, and gives her the street savy to recruit others to their cause- namely, getting Mondragon back where he belongs. I'm not going to spoil the rest of the plot for those who want to read this book, but I would suggest it for anyone just tentatively dipping their toes into Science Fiction. Cherryh manages to keep a fantasy like style without much tech. talk- Angel could easily be set in medieval Venice. The confusing part comes toward the end- Mondragon's fate is kind of shaky, not too clearly defined to the nail-bitten reader, and the Sharrh and various religious groups are never fully explained. To balance these minor deficiencies, Cherryh has- possibly without intending to- done a wonderful job of portraying characters that exist in an enviorment that she most likely has never incountered- no, I'm not refering to the poverty. Many writers have come from families that weren't exactly rich. But the street-tough, futuristic, religious enviorment- and the people that come out of it- are entirely believeable. Anyhow, I would suggest that you read Angel, if only for the tough talking heroine and the incredibly realistic characters.
Rating:
Summary: Ummmm? What was the main plot?
Review: This book, though I gave it a good rating, was laking a few things. The first thing it was laking was complex characters. They were good or bad, beautiful or ugly, smart or stupid. Second, was that the descriptions of both the sceneries and the characters weren't believable. There were also thing that were over complicated. Like the plot. There couldn't just be a thing happening, or even a thing inside of a thing. No, it was a thing, inside of a thing, inside of a thing inside of a thing, et cetra. I meen, come on, do you really need all those plots and scheems to write an interesting story and keep a plot going? Other than that I loved this book. There were quite a few moments in the book where I wanted to [hit] one of the charcters on the head and scream at them "What were you thinking!..." There were also time when I felt sorry for them, were proud of them, and pleased that they had done something I wanted to happen. The plot, though complicated, was understandable, and you knew exactly what was happening, when it was happening, and whom it was happening to. Not to mention that you were yelling at all the characters at the time! I loved this book, for all that I hated it, I think everyone who loves fantasy should read this marvelous book!
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