De Bodard turns the fallen angel myth on its head, portraying them as still falling present tense and as members of a greater world of Furies and dragon spirits and other various immortals, setting them in a devastated AU version of Paris. The war is bloody and the dejected characters are interesting and dark and original. My only complaint is that de Bodard writes characters so cold, or stupid, or bitter, or naive, that you don't really care about any of them, so it's hard to muster up much interest when they are hurt. I did love that the head of both major Houses were homosexual, and that one of the main characters was from Vietnam and those myths were included as well.