ANGEL DOWN – by Daniel Kraus

‘Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War. . . . 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 Mans Land to euthanize a wounded comrade.’

Daniel Kraus’ writing style in ANGEL DOWN is not only unique but a perfect fit for the narrative of this supernatural horror story…

‘Bagger, already weighed down in mud and blood, further heavies in the dreary certainty that the shriek won’t ever end, just like the war won’t ever end, like the carnage won’t ever end, it’s a sentence in a book careening without periods, gasping with too many commas, a sentence that, once begun, can’t ever be stopped, a sentence doomed to loop back on itself to form a terrible black wheel that, sooner or later, will drag each and every person to their grave …’

Recommend!

Scheduled For Release – July 29, 2025 – Though Subject To Change

Thank you, NetGalley and Atria Books (Simon & Schuster), for providing me with an eBook of ANGEL DOWN at the request of an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing this digital advanced book! I am leaving this review voluntarily.

In the movie 1917, the director used a unique filming technique that presented the entire story in one continuous, long scene. I enjoyed this so much because I, as the viewer, felt like I was right there, the unbroken storyline creating an intimacy that made the horror of war even more alarming. This book reminded me of that.

This writing style was different and unique. From a letter written by Daniel Kraus’s editor, it is explained that this is the first manuscript presented by Kraus in this style. And I have to admit, it worked really well. I’ve always disliked reading Faulkner because I was turned off by the long paragraphs and run-on sentences. But this? This hooked me.

Let me explain. The story opens with the word ‘and’, continuing on in a stream of consciousness for the duration of the book. Please don’t let this dissuade you from reading this! While there was not even one single period in this book, I found the writing to be well-crafted and masterful. The message of the story, the deep-seated trauma and gore of war paired with shaking courage and hesitant friendship, towered over the more traditional presentation of syntax and grammar.

Let’s talk about the angel. It is a stereotypical image of angels throughout time: beautiful, lithe, ethereal, otherworldly. But there is something a little off about the angel, and as our characters discover throughout the novel, it might present a barrier to what we think we’ve always known about angels and religion in general. I feel Kraus wrote this angel creatively and cannily, exhibiting a new body of knowledge related to where we stand in the greater crux of the universe. He did well in making Bagger, the main character, feel as small as an ant against the churning machine of war and death, asking the question of what it means to be a soldier, a human, a willing friend, while balancing his more base instincts of protecting himself and his life.

Bagger tries so hard to dislocate his involvement in the war, his place in the disgusting and dirty grit of it but ultimately feels himself slowly broken open by a much-too young boy in Army fatigues who has no business in the trenches of France. It is this friendship that everything in the story hinges upon. It’s heartbreaking and touching. I found myself absorbing the story as I would someone verbalize it to me. I’m not much of an audiobook listener, but I imagine this story would be a great audiobook. Either way, it worked well for me and I truly enjoyed this one.

4.5/5 stars

A historical horror was not what I was expecting from this author but it was so disturbingly perfect! I read Whalefall in 2023 and have been itching for another Danial Kraus release that sounded up my alley. I didn't even release this was a thing until I saw this while browsing Netgalley. And this was sooo good, let me tell you, I was devouring this so quickly whenever I picked it up. The setting and atmosphere were very well written, the characters (Bagger, Arno, and Veck mainly) and their trauma all felt very raw and quite true to the ways war can destroy a person's life. One of the best part about this book was the writing, the style itself was so strange but weirdly fitting for the story, and the prose itself was stunning. I was continuously highlighting sections of paragraphs, and I NEVER highlight anything in books. I'm gonna be babbling about this for a while, sorry not sorry. Can't wait to get my hands of the finished copy!

This has to be a DNF for me. I've tried multiple times to get into it, but the way it's written is just a brick wall for me to actually appreciate the story. I get the intention, I get WHY it's written the way it is, and I think it'll work really well for certain people (it may even work beautifully as an audiobook). But as it stands, I just couldn't get a grip of it.

Absolutely heartbreakingly incredible. Best book I've read in ages. Kraus works a special kind of magic here, pulling you into a miserable, hopeless, horrible situation and makes you yearn for a happy ending, despite the despair and tragedy of war. And he does it in one brilliant sentence. I've never read anything like it. One of the most self-assured, unapologetic, unrelenting stories I've ever been pulled into. It's breathlessly done, you feel every moment of violence, every second of fear, every knock backwards and still you want to move on with Bagger and Arno and the rest of these doomed soldiers. I will recommend this to every single person I know, it's necessary, vital, inspiring, brutal, gorgeous.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this novel!

Due to the ‘unique’ format, one giant sentence with each section beginning with the word ‘and’. This approach made it tough to get into the story. I was unable to finish it at this time. However, once the audio becomes available I would like to revisit.

Thank you again!

Pub Date: July 29, 2025

A huge thank you to @atriabooks for the ARC!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (ALL THE STARS)

There is a sadness that I feel whenever I finish an extraordinary, phenomenal book; I’m aware that I won’t experience reading this book for the first time again and I get a bit worried that I’ll spend the rest of my life searching for another book that made me feel this way. This is exactly how I felt after reading @kraus_author WHALEFALL, and I am unsurprised it's how I feel after reading ANGEL DOWN; I know there’s me before reading ANGEL DOWN and there’s me after reading ANGEL DOWN.

ANGEL DOWN is a masterpiece; Kraus has written an incredibly unique and innovative novel that is heartbreaking, beautiful, brutal, brilliant, horrific, and yet still, hopeful. Even the structure of ANGEL DOWN is brilliant and works and I can’t imagine reading ANGEL DOWN any other way. To me, ANGEL DOWN is an unflinching examination of war, humanity, our desires, and what it means to live and be alive. The imagery of war in ANGEL DOWN is haunting and there are passages in this book that will forever stick with me. Incredibly smart and well written, ANGEL DOWN is the type of book that I’m always longing to read. Kraus is one of the best writers and ANGEL DOWN is a must read.

thank you to the publishers for the ARC! this was beautifully written, following the story of soldiers finding an angel on the battlefield. lot of commentary on war and the selfishness of man. this was very very well written, the prose was so impressive. the only thing that wasn’t really for me was the format! every paragraph starts with ‘and’, and there’s no periods, only commas!! but i still enjoyed this plenty

Kraus' Whalefall left me emotionally devastated and I have been chasing that in a book ever since. So I definitely jumped at the chance to read his new book coming out this July. Kraus did not disappoint! Set during WWI, deep in the trenches, this story is gritty, dirty, and gruesome and the main character, Cyril Bagger, is not a person you could typically cheer for. I don't want to give too much away, but, yes, there is also an angel in this story and I am always looking for books with angels as characters. There is a stylistic choice made in this book that may turn some readers off, but I personally loved it and felt it very much added to the story. I love how beautifully Kraus can turn a phrase.

I enjoyed my time with Daniel Kraus’s “Whalefall,” so when I saw “Angel Down” was available as an ARC, I quickly downloaded it, excited to visit another one of Kraus’s worlds. Unfortunately, this just didn’t do it for me nor did I enjoy my time.

While the description of a WW I soldiers stumbling upon a fallen angel — key to ending the war — sounded interesting in practice, execution on the other hand, is laughable. Kraus weaves together a story where each sentence starts with an “and.” What follows are run on sentences confusing and monotonous. It’s a shame beyond what I mentioned before because WW I rarely gets as much focus as WW II and a story of a group of soldiers struggling to survive in No Man’s Land sounded great. It’s just not the case here. Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC.

Cyril Bagger knows that he's lucky, and also that his luck is running out. He's supposed to be on the front lines of WWI, but he's mouthy and rude and gets himself assigned to burial duty--a terrible job, sure, but one he prefers to fighting and risking death. So when he and a few other career shirkers are assigned to find the wounded soldier shrieking incessantly, they're not excited. But the shrieker turns out to be an angel, a literal angel, and they know they need to bring her back to their commander, that she can help them win the war.

There's a lot going on here: the horrors of war (and Kraus, with his usual body-horror descriptions, shows these quite well), duty, religious faith, the unending violence of humankind. The book is one very long run-on sentence, which is a little hard to deal with but makes sense for the frantic unendingness of the character's thoughts and actions.theres a lot of character growth, but it doesn't feel like it somehow. Maybe it didn't slow down enough to give that space and that's the problem?

I've liked a lot of Krause's other work better than this one--I never connected with any of the characters, really; never felt truly invested in them. This seemed more an exploration of form over character--nothing wrong with that; it just wasn't for me this time.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC! This reading experience took a lot out of me. I could not get behind the writing style. When the paragraphs got too big, the run on sentences were too much to handle. I do realize it was a stylistic choice but it just didn’t vibe with me. The story was absolutely wild and I did enjoy the plot. I did not enjoy the graphic animal gore, I can handle a lot but kittens are my line I guess.

and let me say, l was mesmerized by this book…

The entire book is a run-on sentence with each chapter starting with “and.” Consider the topic, war! The history of the human race is war after war after war. It is a run-on reality of life and so this format is perfect for this book.

The setting is the trenches in France, during WWI. Cyril Baggers, the son of a Bishop and a self-proclaimed con artist, assumes burial and latrine duty to avoid getting into the fray. As the troops leave the area, he and four others are commanded to enter no man’s land and put a screaming, dying comrade out of misery. Cyril and a fourteen year old recruit he has taken under his wing, find it was an Angel caught in wire, not a dying soldier, who needs their help.

Carrying the Angel back to the trench, the remaining soldiers want to use the Angel for their own purpose. All around them, the war keeps going. The author never shirks in his descriptions of body parts, the dead, the dying, the horrors and realities of war and the evils men do. Kraus does an excellent job of depicting the mysterious abilities of the Angel. Are they mystical, fantastical, spiritual or supernatural? Each reader will choose for themselves.

In life and war, there are so many agendas and choices. Making them on the battlefield where decisions must be made instantly can show someone’s true character. Kraus’s character development never leaves you doubting,

and once you start you will not be able to put the book down

and thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for this ARC.

This book is a wild ride. A compelling story highlighting the gruesome realities of war. Written as one long stream of consciousness, the book is truly unique. The prose is exceptional, difficult at times to stomach, very dark, but fitting to the story. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy on acid might be one way to describe it, as the book goes to another level with dark religious fantasy elements. You can feel, smell, and taste the horrors of the story.

Daniel Kraus is an excellent writer and what he does in this book is very ambitious and I'm sure will have a ton of fans. Personally, it didn't completely work for me for a few different reasons. One, the chief conceit here is that the book is one continuous sentence, and this is definitely an interesting thing but mostly fades to the background as the book goes on to the point that I wasn't sure why it needed to be written that way. The main issue that I had with the novel is that it is ultimately an anti-war novel and a pretty good one but doesn't particularly say anything that hasn't been said before. There are some very memorable scenes and set pieces that definitely make it worth reading, but didn't quite get to that next level that I think it was capable of being.

Angel Down is speculative historical fiction that stretches the limits of genre and narrative into something fully unique. I honestly believe this book could become a classic; it is breath-takingly good, and I'm not 100% sure how to review it except to say that it blew my mind, and everyone should read it.

In the trenches of WW1, Cyril Bagger is only interested in surviving the war by any means necessary so he can return to his life of cons and card cheating. But when he and a handful of other soldiers discover an actual angel shot down on the battle field, a being who can grant wishes and alter not only their lives but the entire war, everything he thought he knew about the world and himself is derailed. As he fights to protect the angel and the only other person he truly cares about, Cyril is faced with the horrors of war, man's nature... and the holy.

Angel Down is a brutal deep dive into the trenches of World War 1 that doesn't pull any punches in its portrayal of the violence, trauma, and misery of that time. (There is some serious gore in this book; I don't normally get squeamish, but there were a few parts that made me squirm.) But while it is unflinching in both its depiction of the terrible realities of war as well as the dark sides of human nature both caused and revealed by war, this is a story that tenaciously clings to hope in personal redemption.

This book is paced like a thriller, with action that starts almost immediately and seldom lets up; but it is also character-driven, and the action is meaningful and even frightening because the characters are so well-written you feel like you know them. Seldom have I rooted for a main character like I was rooting for Cyril through this entire story; his character is heartbreakingly real, and his fight throughout the book is as much with himself as with the foes around him. I won't say anything further about his character arc to avoid spoilers, but I will say I definitely cried at points. This book blends action and emotion seamlessly, which is incredibly impressive.

And speaking of impressive- this entire 300-ish page book is one sentence. And you would think that wouldn't work, or would interfere with the story flow, but it doesn't at all; in fact, it contributes so much to making this story what it is. I love books that do creative or non-traditional things with the words and sentences themselves, so this was right up my alley; but I think even if you haven't previously read something like that, you will still enjoy Angel Down. It is binge-level readable, and the creative narrative adds to the story instead of distracting from it.

It's dangerous to claim a book will be one of your favorites of the year in March, but I can say with zero reservations that Angel Down is one of my favorite books of this year, and I will be doing my best to get everyone I know to read it; it's truly amazing.

I would recommend Angel Down to readers who loved WW1 historical fantasies like The Warm Hands of Ghosts or Brimstone, or books that push the limits of normal grammar or narrative like Ella Minnow Pea or House of Leaves. I would also recommend it to readers who love war novels, speculative fiction, and historical fantasy. But let me be real: I recommend this one to all readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atrium books for the arc! All thoughts & opinions in the review are my own.

I will tell you up front this book will not be for everyone. It is challenging, and experimental.
If you give it time to develop, and go along for the ride, you will find yourself getting lost in the structure and a hard time figuring out when the book ends and your life begins.

A masterpiece and a bold move from the author of Whalefall. With echoes of Clive Barker and Cormac McCarthy, Kraus has taken the war story and crafted something completely unique. Five misfit privates are sent into no man’s land by their commander to retrieve a downed soldier whose shrieks are haunting, even on the World War I battlefield. They discover that she’s an angel. The men are faced with a choice to use her power to end the war or to fulfill their own selfish desires.

Thank you to NetGalley for the early copy. And thank you to Daniel Kraus for writing this. I am simply floored by this book. It is unlike anything I have ever read. I have a feeling that many readers will DNF this book due to the writing style. I'm begging you not to. Give it a bit. Not only do you get used to it, but it seems to start to become lyrical. It starts to sing to you. The writing style is also propulsive in a way I have never experienced. It's like reading a movie filmed with only one shot. It reminds me of that one-shot scene in "Children of Men" - It's horrible, it's beautiful, and you're left wondering how they did it. This book is gruesome, and hopeful. It's filled with ugliness (past, present and future), and moments of joy. It's simply a revelation. I give it the highest of recommendations. You must read this book.

Going beyond the thematically resonant thrills and wonder of Whalefall, Daniel Kraus has set his sights on an ambitious work with this follow-up, bridging the gap between genre books and high-minded literature. I didn't know I was in for a challenging novel when I started Angel Down, and in general, it's not a description I would use for my favorite books. Many of the best novels of all time, though, would be considered challenging. Each reader will have an individual experience with this book, but it's a safe bet that it'll be a memorable one. Whether you feel challenged by the form, the vocabulary, the content or the message—or you're just thrilled by the vivid, heart-wrenching depictions of war—the story's visceral and provocative scenes will etch themselves into your mind like the crater left by an exploded ordnance.

In this haunting World War II tale of trench warfare, Kraus puts his allegorical and lyrical chops on full display, dazzling the reader with incandescent, concussive prose that glows like smoldering shrapnel. A few chapters into the book, I had completely forgotten the plot description that made me eager to read the book because I was so immersed in its characters and its military authenticity.

The story raises epistemological questions through the lens of Christianity, encouraging the reader to explore the implications of war. The fantastic events depicted may be apocryphal, but the story is a parable, serving a purpose suited to biblical study. Whether protecting yourself, your family, your fellow soldiers or your country, Angel Down insightfully addresses the ethical and moral considerations of combat.

It's no exaggeration to say that Angel Down is composed of one bombshell chapter after another, the breakneck pace culminating in a fusillade of literary fury that would rival any real-life firefight. The author delivers the penultimate chapter in a single relentless assault of a paragraph that more closely resembles epic poetry than prose, bringing a cinematic quality to the story that couldn't be achieved otherwise. The stylistic choice may seem strange at the beginning of the novel, but by the time the reader absorbs the intensity of the climax, it's clear that this format is the only one that could do the story justice. It reflects the great war literature of history and demands that the reader draw connections between the past and their modern lives from the grim realities illuminated by this book.


To anyone who yearns to read something substantive, creative and completely original, grab a copy of Angel Down.

A shell-shocked thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC.