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Years ago, I attempted Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy and DNF'd it, even though I found the concept of it absolutely fascinating. I had a similar experience with Angel Mage: though I was never compelled to DNF, I found the concept much better than the execution.

The core of this world is angel magic, a really intriguing system of calling upon what humans have come to understand as "angels," using painted icons. Each angel has a particular scope or ability, except for Archangels, the most powerful of them all, whose scope is geographic. Drawing on angels comes with a cost, however: it takes anywhere from hours to years off your lifespan, so that powerful mages, like Cardinals, often look decades older than they actually are. There are several tiers of angels, and the more powerful the angel and its scope, the more years are taken off your lifespan. The exception is Liliath, a uniquely powerful mage who has found a way to circumvent this rule.

It's a really fascinating magic system, and one I wanted to learn much more about. What exactly are angels? Where do they come from? How did the first humans call upon angels? What exactly is the connection between icons and angels? There is so much potential depth to this magic system, and yet it was all left entirely unexplored, replaced instead with a whole lot of useless information.

That was my main issue with this book; it's far, far too long, takes too much time to gets where it needs to go, and spends pages describing things that I just don't care about. In one scene the author spends three pages describing the set-up of a camp; where various factions are sitting and where the food is and all these tiny little details that contribute nothing to the narrative. There are several such scenes throughout the book, where the author is caught up on these details that clearly he enjoys because he likes the time period and setting, but that have little bearing on the actual story, and only serve to make the plot drag. (Which, you know, I get, I've totally done the same thing in my own novels.)

I also struggled with the narration, which was a very distant third person and served to create a kind of barrier between the reader and the characters, of which there were already too many! Four main characters was frankly unnecessary; only Dorotea - the most interesting of them, a kind of bizarre combination of Luna Lovegood and Hermione Granger - contributed significantly to the plot. I understand why the author wanted to have four main characters, since he was paying homage to The Musketeers. It's not that I didn't like Simeon, Angez, and Henri, and it's not that they weren't fleshed out, but I feel like I might have had a more memorable and rewarding reading experience if there was more focus on one character, and we had gotten a chance to be in her head more. Also, Dorotea has a budding romance with Rochefort, the scary lady captain of the Cardinal's Pursuivants, who has a soft spot for Dorotea, and it's adorable. I wanted so much more of this!

I also wish Liliath had been given a bit more nuance, and I wish we had learned more about her history as the Maid of Ellanda. I was very intrigued by her at first, but by the end she just came off so stereotypically villainous that she was nearly a caricature. I was fascinated by her obsession and single-mindedness, but they were basically her only traits, and I really wanted to know more about what made her that way, and (view spoiler)[her particular history and interaction with Pallaniel that convinced her she was in love with him (hide spoiler)].

I think the ending was sufficiently exciting and wrapped everything together nicely, but again, I don't think we needed 536 pages to get there. This could have easily been 2oo pages shorter, and I probably would have finished it faster and enjoyed it more.