Charlotte Kersten

“Love is a gift that’s given. Trust is a coin that’s earned.”

Year published: 2016

Categories: Novella(s), urban fantasy, historical fantasy,

LGBTQIA representation: M/M, main character and his love interest

Summary: Diago Alvarez, a singular being of daimonic and angelic descent, is pulled into the ranks of Los Nefilim in order to protect his newly-found son. As an angelic war brews in the numinous realms, and Spain marches closer to civil war, the destiny of two worlds hangs on Diago’s actions. Yet it is the combined fates of his lover, Miquel, and his young son, Rafael, that weighs most heavily on his soul.

Lyrical and magical, Los Nefilim explores whether moving towards the light is necessarily the right move, and what it means to live amongst the shadows.

My Thoughts: It’s clear that these novellas are very well-loved by a lot of people whose literary opinions I really respect, and now that I’ve read them myself, I can definitely see why. My final rating is 3.5 stars, and it isn’t higher for those mysterious, inexplicable reasons that some books just don’t entirely resonate for some people.

There are a few things that bugged me- a lot of really important explanations about the world are only revealed in the third book, which leaves some things feeling rather vague until then. For instance, we learn about the Key, angels’ vocal words, how angels and daimons feed on the emotions of mortals, and the principalities in the last part of the last book, and I wish I had known these things earlier. I was also itching to learn more about all the immortals’ past lives, because we get occasional mentions of really dramatic things like Guillermo killing Diago in his past incarnation and how drastically things have changed between them and how Diago and Miquel met, but they’re only touched on lightly. Maybe, hopefully, there will be more about these things in the future books.

I love that there’s an incredibly solid and established gay couple at the heart of this story, and the development of their little family with Diago’s son is incredibly sweet. I would say that the romance itself feels like it mostly consists of Miquel constantly reassuring and taking care of Diago.

I think this book’s exploration of Diago’s rape is really interesting. Miquel is actually the one who first identifies what Candela did to Diago as rape, and previous to that, Diago simply blamed himself for losing control and betraying his partner. There are a lot of people who still fail to categorize being forced to penetrate as “real” sexual assault, just like Lucia in this story, and many of the male survivors I talk to struggle to label their experiences just like Diago does. It’s a tricky thing to write about, and I think the author did a good job handling it.