Brush of Wings

Fiction by Karen Kingsbury.


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This is the third book in the "Angels Walking" series, and sequel to Chasing Sunsets.

It was a pretty good story, but it suffered somewhat from I've-Gotta-Draw-This-Plot-Out Syndrome.

This is a problem singular to series books, but it's similar to I-Can't-Tell-the-Truth-or-the-Story-Will-End-Here Syndrome, which happens a lot in romance novels due to lack of enough plot to sustain the story. (Click here for an example of that if you're interested.)

Series novels often have plenty of plot for one book, but not enough to sustain them over several books; hence, I've-Gotta-Draw-This-Plot-Out Syndrome starts. You have the main character basically sitting in a holding pattern waiting until it's time for the next book, doing useless things that do not advance the story and dithering over decisions that are already foregone conclusions.

For example, books two and three of the Twilight series can be summed up thusly: "Bella loves Edward but Jacob loves Bella but Edward is dangerous so Bella isn't sure what to do." FOR TWO WHOLE BOOKS!

Now to be fair, much of real life is like this. We spend years of our lives not advancing the story and doing useless things. But that is NOT what I want to read about. The whole POINT of fiction is to be able to skip the boring parts. That's why no one goes to the bathroom in novels.

All that is to say: this book was okay, but it should have been a lot shorter. And probably this whole trilogy should have been just one book. And that one book would have been really good!