Warfront books always seem so much more brutal and emotional. This book really took that and upped it. The writing was beautiful and unique, and the atmosphere so vivid I felt it with all my senses. This was my first book by this author, but I will absolutely be looking for more.

Thank you for the eARC in exchange for an honest review

Angel down is another strange, thought provoking, and wonderful reading experience by kraus. Set in ww1, the novel follows Cyril beggar, a grifter in the war. He and four of his fellow comrades are sent on a mission to euthanize a fallen soldier after hearing horrible shrieking coming from the battlefield. What they find however is not a soldier but what appears to be an angel trapped in barbed wire. Believing that she holds an answer to ending the war, the men are intent on rescuing her but they have to suppress their human desires and work together to find the answer they are seeking.

This is a strange journey and it is written in a stylistically different form as one long sentence. However, I know this may not be for everyone, and it did take me about the first third to really get into it but I loved it. I thought it was creative and different from many other books other there! I loved the premise and the deeper meaning on war, mortality, humanity, greed, etc. I read it in one day and would like to re read it again. Now that I have the flow of the prose choices he is making, I could probably pick up on the deeper questions and themes embedded.

Thanks to the publisher for providing this arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Daniel Kraus continues to impress. I read the premise for his first novel and wondered how on earth he could sustain a narrative set inside a whale, and was shocked and delighted to find that Whalefall was masterfully done. Angel Down is similar in that it takes a strange premise and widens it to meditate on humanity, good and evil, and warfare. I loved it and especially relished Kraus’s delicious prose. I predict these will also be taught in classrooms one day—they are rich with thematic significance as well as entertaining.

The nitty-gritty: Powerful, visceral and immersive, Angel Down explores war and angels, life and death, desires and miracles, in a surprising format that echoes the chaos of war.

After being blown away by Daniel Kraus’s last book, Whalefall, I was so curious to see what he would write next. Angel Down blew me away too, but it’s a much different beast. Kraus has taken some big risks with this book, and I can tell you it’s not going to work for everyone. First, there’s the format, which is almost a stream of consciousness style narrative with the entire story told in only one sentence. His writing style has more of a literary flair and mostly focuses on the internal dialog of the main character, and because of the setting—France during WWI—there’s a frantic edge that made this a rather exhausting reading experience, to be honest. This is a tough read, full of excruciating emotion and very graphic depictions of life in the trenches during wartime, and yet it’s both cleverly written and full of very dark humor. I suspect you will either love it or hate it, and luckily I fell on the side of “love,” especially when it comes to Kraus’s amazing writing skills and his ability to convey emotion through his characters and their experiences.

The plot itself is rather simple and takes place over the course of only a day or two. Private First Class Cyril Bagger signed up to serve in the war after seeing a poster of Uncle Sam, who looked suspiciously like his late father, Bishop Bernard Bagger. Now he’s fighting along side the Butcher Birds of the 43rd, although he’s mostly been relegated to burying the dead, which keeps him out of harm’s way. One day, a loud shriek pierces the normal sounds of war, a neverending sound of someone in pain. Major General Reis assigns Bagger and four others to investigate and “take care of him,” thinking the shrieker is a dying soldier who needs to be put out of his misery. But when they eventually arrive at the source of the horrible sound, they’re shocked to find not a man, but a woman tangled up in barb wire.

Giving off a bright light and sporting an actual halo, they decide that the woman must be an angel, and they decide to save her. And so begins a terrible journey, as the five men—Bagger, Arno, Popkin, Goodspeed and Veck—struggle through the war-torn landscape to safety. Each man, though, has different ideas about what the angel’s presence means and what they can gain from her, and so their journey back to General Reis is one fraught with danger.

Kraus’s story isn’t really about the angel at all, but instead is an intimate character study of Bagger and the other characters. Bagger is a conman who brings his grifting skills with him to France, giving him an edge when it comes to observing other people’s body language, and there are several times during the story, life or death moments, when these skills save his life. Kraus meticulously inserts personal bits of Bagger’s history into his story that are carried throughout, for example he has brought his dead father’s red leather Bible with him, not for spiritual comfort, but because it’s the only thing tying him to home. The Bible pops up over and over in surprising ways and becomes an emotional touchstone for Bagger. There’s also a wonderful element involving the book The Son of Tarzan that Kraus cleverly threads throughout his story. Bagger has a battered, mud-stained copy that he reads to Arno (a boy of only fourteen who can’t read), and I loved the way these passages show Arno’s innocence and the tender father/son relationship between them.

Kraus immerses the reader in the horrors of war and doesn’t pull any punches describing injuries from howitzers and mortar shells in excruciating detail (blood, viscera and body parts) as well as the horrible conditions of foot soldiers—lack of food, and mud-, urine- and feces-filled trenches. I loved the contrast of the angel, who appears to Bagger wearing an immaculate red dress and a blue cape, porcelain skin free of mud, and a dreamy, sleepy expression on her face. At first the angel is a figure of innocence in the midst of so much pain, although she changes into something else later in the book, as the author explores various versions of the angel in literature, art and the Bible.

There is a lot I haven’t mentioned and won’t, so you can experience it for yourself. But I will say you’ll never think about the game Rock Paper Scissors in the same way after reading this book...

I loved the way the angel’s story plays out in the end. Is she there to save humanity and end the war? Or is her purpose much darker? The last chapters have a surreal quality and don’t necessarily answer all the questions, due to some confusing and very weird scenes, but at that point I was willing to go wherever Kraus took me. Angel Down isn’t an easy book to read, but it’s an experience I won’t soon forget.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

I usually avoid books set on a warfront because regardless of how much brutality and gore and despair they show, there's still at least a little bit of glorification and patriotism. That's not the case here -- what Slaughterhouse Five did for WWII, this book is doing for WWI. I was surprised at how quickly I got used to the run-on sentence structure and I really do think it added to the relentless, urgent tone of both the plot and the setting.

It’s clearly not you, Daniel Kraus. It’s me. Lots of people love your books and I keep thinking that I will love your books, but they continue to be mediocre reading experiences for me. (Confession: I never even finished Whalefall.)

I can see that this man is incredibly creative. His ideas are innovative, which makes them alluring, but I don’t seem to be as captivated by the stories he tells as I am by the ideas that initially sparked them. It took me quite some time to get into Angel Down, and even when I did, I never felt more than neutral toward it.

I bet a lot of people, whether they love it or hate it, will observe this, though: Angel Down feels like it was written for study, or written specifically to gain classic status as the years go by. I felt, at the same time, that there wasn’t much to speculate on here, as so much intent is spelled out for the reader. That said, Kraus does well enough conveying what lies beneath the ribcage of many men*, giving us a biblical sense of their own destructive tendencies.

Had I not found the beginning of this never ending sentence so bland, I may have been more enamored with the horror and philosophical elements that followed. I think Kraus lost me before I got there, though, so my read through was a half-hearted affair. I made it to the end and and and and and and

I consider myself lucky. 🙂

I’m sorry, Mr. Kraus. I think I’ll leave your books behind for other people to pick up in the future.

I am immensely grateful to Atria Books and NetGalley for my copy. All opinions are my own.

*Men are the main occupants of this novel, so it seems only fair to make this generalization.

There’s something intense and brutal about war stories, and Angel Down takes that to another level with a unique and thought-provoking twist.
Vivid, compelling, and haunting, it blends the raw brutality of World War I with a supernatural element that feels both strange and strangely fitting.

A war novel unlike any I’ve read before, with an original writing style. Different yes, but powerful and truly hard to forget. It’s definitely not your typical war story, and that’s exactly what makes it so memorable.

Daniel Kraus dives deep into the horrors of war through a single, run-on sentence in this harrowing tale of a group of soldiers who find a fallen angel in the middle of No Man’s Land during World War I. When an otherworldly shriek rings out across the battlefield, gravedigger Cyril Bagger and a group of the army’s lowliest soldiers must extinguish the shriek at all costs. But what the group finds may just change the course of the entire war—and humanity itself. In Angel Down, Kraus details a descent into madness through a single, unending sentence, highlighting the cyclical, unyielding march of war. It’s an often slow-paced, relentless, and immensely tense read that takes a little bit to hook you, but once it does, Angel Down grips you by the collar and never lets go.

While you might think the notion of a novel told in a single run-on sentence might be daunting, rest assured that it’s easy to fall into the rhythm of Kraus’s writing. The very structure of Angel Down only goes to further Kraus’ point about the relentlessness of war, the constant agony, the total hopelessness, and the notion that things just keep happening and keep happening and they never, ever, ever stop. Angel Down offers a horrific mirror of humanity at its worst—the pain we inflict on ourselves and each other, the horror of living in utterly hopeless times, and the cynicism that rises from such an unending cycle of trauma. It may just be Kraus’ magnum opus, though it certainly won’t be for everyone. But there’s nothing quite like Angel Down, and it’ll stick with you long after you turn the final page. (4.5/5)

Note: A review copy of Angel Down was provided by the publisher.

WWI novels with a theological gloss are having a mini-moment right now - first *The Warm Hands of Ghosts* last year inserting the literal Christian Devil into the mix, and now with this book, which features a group of five soldiers who go out into no-man's-land and come across what seems to be a literal Christian angel.

No, not in the memetic "biblically accurate angel" sense of a profusion of wheels and eyeballs, but the online discussion around that often includes the common angelic greeting to "be not afraid," and here Kraus does incredible work: this angel is *scary*. Not at first, no, but as the novel unfolds Kraus slow-walks a dawning menace around this being who somehow got stuck in barbed wire, yet keeps showing glimpses of unfathomable power - you begin to ask yourself, what is the game here?

Kraus is quickly becoming a real author for me to watch in terms of prose styling and, at least here, some degree of formal experimentalism - this novel is structured like one continuous run-on sentence, though it's got copious paragraph breaks that makes it less intimidating than that sounds. It's damn well-written, and I need to go check out some of Kraus's backlog beyond *Whalefall*.

This book certainly won't be for everyone, if you get bored with books that are just vibes and beautiful sentences. This was more than just vibes to me; finally literary fiction that explores something other than sexually promiscuous sad girls in unhappy marriages or professors sleeping with students.

This book also wasn't beautiful sentences, plural, but one long beautiful sentence, singular, and yes you read that right. This book is a love letter to the Oxford comma, which authors always love to defend as if it is endangered.

I also wasn't sure I could read one long sentence that starts every paragraph with "and," and in this case I was grateful to have a physical ARC for the formatting. But I loved Whalefall so I was willing to give this author my trust, and boy did it pay off. This was kind of like reading a novel in verse, and the prose was lyrical and poetic as well.

It was also visceral in that it was frequently disgusting in the vein of Full Metal Jacket as it perfectly captured the unending ugliness of war.

Cyril Bagger is a swindler and a preacher's son who was forced into the infantry in the First World War. He has continued those activities as a soldier. One day in the trenches the men hear continuous shrieking, and they are tasked to investigate. The band of army rejects on this suicide mission finds a woman on the battlefield and they each see something different. A 14-year-old orphaned soldier whom Cyril takes to sees his mother. From that point they now find a mission bigger than themselves or the war in which horror mixes with the brutalities of war.

The long sentence also brought home the monotony of war punctuated with the everyday brutality and I had never seen this styled this way before. Above all else I was impressed that I not only hung in but dug in to this incredible sentence and the transformation of Bagger from a selfish con man to an unlikely hero.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This is one of the most graphic war novels I've ever read.

Five soldiers save an angel and try to get her back to safety. But what does that even mean in the context of war itself? While I understand the author's mission on this one, I really struggled with the book. I thoroughly enjoyed Whalefall, but this fell flat for me. I could see certain students really clicking with this though--but it's certainly not for everyone.

There are no words for this book. You've got to experience it. Its fantastic!

I loved Whalefall so much last year and was very excited for Angel Down. I kept hearing that its written in one sentence. Intriguing, right? It is. It works so well. Kraus is truly a masterful writer.

This a weird novel. Not so much for the story itself, though it has its own kind of strangeness, but on the prose side. The only is only one run-on sentence. I understand the choice of device, it gives a very breathless tone to the narration. A sort of chant tone too.
If the choice of a run-on sentence was fun and interesting at first, I found myself getting tired of it as the chapters passed.
Similarly, the bleakness and atrocity of war are well portrayed, whether regarding the mud, the anguish, body parts and the choices one has to make. But at some point, it became too blank. Probably because I got used to it. It might even be something the author did on purpose.
Interesting reading experience, a historical horror seeking to catch your breath and control it until the end.

I can't speak to the quality of this book because I did not finish it. But I can say that I did not finish it because... why is this entire book one sentence?!

I have a really hard time with that stylistic choice, so this was DOA for me, unfortunately.

Angel Down was spectacular. In all fairness, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did, simply because war books really aren’t my cup of tea. Is the book written strangely with every paragraph starting with the word and? Yes. Is the book one giant sentence (or lack thereof)? Yes. Did it drive me insane? Yes, but only until I got used to it.

The book was so complex and atmospheric, that the formatting worked perfectly. This is definitely one that will stick with me for a while.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Kraus has gone from writing about being Jonah'd while searching for your dead dad's remains at the bottom of the ocean to writing an angel being shot down into trench warfare in WWI. He already had a hell of a premise, especially with the shitty battalion he ends up sketching out for us, but then he decides to take it further and write it as if we're watching it happening, complete with each new paragraph starting with "and", and written in fully present tense stream of consciousness. The stylistic choice can make it hard to follow at times, but this is still a hell of a book. Comes out at the end of this month (July), and highly recommended when it does.

Interesting book but not for me. I find it difficult to write a review because I didn’t enjoy much in this book.

Every time I read a new novel by Daniel Kraus I think to myself has anything ever written anything even close to this? And Angel Down is no exception.. A fantastic genre blend this story reads like a epic of grand scale that is perfect for summer reading. I can't wait to recommend this one to my war-interested readers and families members I think this book is going to introduce a whole new audience of readers to someone that I consider an "instant read" whenever I hear of something new he is working on.

I read Whalefall by Daniel Kraus last year and was very impressed by it. This book feels different, and this story will not be for everyone. From the start, we know this story is told in one breathless sentence. The entire story…one sentence. I went in skeptical (experimental writing structure is hit or miss for me), but within a few pages, I was hooked.

Cyril Bagger is a shifty con artist that uses his talents to survive the front lines of WWI. Reluctantly sent out to No Man’s Land with a small group of misfits to relieve the suffering of a fallen solider, he instead discovers an injured angel whose presence affects those she encounters in both good and bad ways. This story is all at once visceral and dark and brutal and hopeful. The fever pitch intensity of the narrator telling the story in one breathless rush of words became the perfect tool to amplify the absolute horror of WWI. The seemingly chaotic writing structure became rhythmic to read. I could picture the narrator taking big gulps of air and starting each sentence… AND….

I cannot wait to see what Daniel Kraus publishes next! Thank so much to NetGalley and Atria Books for the chance to read and review this book!

Delighted to include this title in the July edition of Novel Encounters, my column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section of Zoomer, Canada’s national lifestyle and culture magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)