My biggest unanswered question is: why doesn’t Daniel take Luce straight to a church where she can be baptised and her future incarnation secured? Does it have to do with the current Luce’s ability to see the Announcers?Īlthough the story is told in the third person, the vast majority of it is told from Luce’s perspective, so we get to find things out as she does and share in her frustration when answers aren’t forthcoming. It raises more questions than it answers and also refers to the frustration Luce feels over Daniel’s refusal to answer her questions (join the club, girlfriend). While her passivity may have been more justified in Fallen, she would have become difficult to like and respect as a character had it continued. In this book, at least Luce is asking more questions and being more proactive. Her roommate in Torment feels like an amalgam of Arianne and Molly from Fallen.

There, it feels like a bit of a repeat of Fallen because not only do the nephilim (half human, half angel) who grew up with the Daniel and Luce legend know more about her than she does herself, Luce is surrounded by a main female friend, another two casual friends and a nice male friend who’d like to be more. Torment, the second book in the series, covers the span of that truce so you know things won’t yet be resolved.ĭaniel and his demonic rival, Cam Briel, agree that Luce should be enrolled in a school for angels for her own protection, but that both must stay away from her and use the time allowed by their truce to kill Luce’s many enemies before they can kill her. In the aftermath of the events of Fallen (book 1 of the series) the demons and angels have agreed to an 18-day truce. She will not be coming back after she dies, so she is now in great danger because, in addition to the requisite teen angst over teh epic relationship, the outcome of Daniel and Luce’s love alters the balance of power in the war between angels and demons. Also, she has not been baptised, so this is her last life. In this incarnation, Luce is plagued by the sinister-looking shadows (I picture them resembling the Dementors from Harry Potter) that no one outside the supernatural world seems to be able to see. In every incarnation, Luce Price’s life draws her to the immortal Daniel Grigori, but the ending has always been the same.

Lauren Kate’s Fallen series is about a girl who falls in love with a fallen angel before she dies at the age of 17 and is reborn. A page turner that raises more questions that it answers-just the kind of torment to reel Decadence right into another series.

Torment by Lauren Kate