A Hope in Hell by Molly Church

[reviews_and_ramblings]

It's not the first time that I read a fantasy romance regarding Angels and Demons, but usually they didn't effect me too much, I didn't find any fascination in them. Instead this short novel by Molly Church, only 29 pages, has the feeling of a longer novel and it appealed to me in a strange way, since it mixed another element usually I'm not fond of, the D/s role play.

Yare'ach is a warrior angel, mortally wounded during a battle. The female Hellborn who finds him, instead of pitying killing the angel, decides to take him to her lord, Ayve. Ayve is a demon, a fallen angel, and he has a sadness inside of him that nothing seems to soothe. The Hellborn feels that this wounded angel and the demon have something in common and maybe she hopes to please her master with a new toy.

But for Yare'ach being used to live in Hell is not simple. As an Angel he was incorporeal, his body had no needs, nor for food or sex, and so he is totally unprepared when it slowly start to make request apparently without consent from its own owner. Yare'ach and Ayve start a D/s relationship where Yare'ach learns to be the perfect submissive, since it's in the Angel's nature to follow the orders of a superior lord. I like Yare'ach's character since his uncertainty and unsteadiness seem true, even if, in a way, he is not a full grown or independent man: he doesn't discern between good and evil, he doesn't know what they are, he is happy only when someone else could tell him what to do and give him directions and a safe place. Ayve is a complex character not fully developed in this short story: we know he is a brooding man, that he is sad and not happy, but that he finds comfort in Yare'ach, in taking care of the Angel, sometime more like a father than a lover.

I like also the setting, a medieval fantasy world, Hell is an huge stone castle without any of the modern comforts, always surrounded by an eternal night. Other than some hint on the characters having wings, there is nothing that make this a fantasy novel, no magic, no paranormal events, and also for this I liked the book.

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