Angel Down - Daniel Kraus

Definitely a book worth reading. It's an ambitious book. Its additive style does an excellent job capturing what I imagine is the freneticism of war. The pace. The madness. The scale. It will make you cringe, and I mean that as a compliment.

In some ways it reminds me of Catch-22. Mostly in the sense that it captures war through its absurdity. Maybe that's the best way to communicate war to a layperson. Or maybe it's the only way for anyone to make sense of something non-sensical.

And then there's the fallen angel. She's a good mechanism for pulling back some of the insanity, which allows Kraus to push it right to the edge. Maybe even a bit further. In the back of your mind you're always thinking "The angel can fix this". But she doesn't always. Sometimes she makes it worse. She's just a messenger, but you're never quite sure what she's in service of.

I don't know if there are any big takeways I'm supposed to have from this book. Maybe they flew over my head. But one thought I'm left with is that death doesn't always beget life. That takes effort. Under the right conditions, it's much easier for death to beget death. So let's avoid those conditions.

Summary

Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War through his wits and deception, swindling fellow soldiers at every opportunity. But his survival instincts are put to the ultimate test when he and four other grunts are given a deadly mission: venture into the perilous No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded comrade.

What they find amid the ruined battlefield, however, is not a man in need of mercy but a fallen angel, seemingly struck down by artillery fire. This celestial being may hold the key to ending the brutal conflict, but only if the soldiers can suppress their individual desires and work together. As jealousy, greed, and paranoia take hold, the group is torn apart by their inner demons, threatening to turn their angelic encounter into a descent into hell.

Angel Down plunges you into the heart of World War I and weaves a polyphonic tale of survival, supernatural wonder, and moral conflict.