Title: The Last Angel
Author: Proximal Flame
Rating: Unrated
Genre: Science Fiction Survival Horror
Status: Completed story. In-progress trilogy
Library Category: Original Fiction
Pairings: F/F OC
Links:
The Last Angel
The Last Angel: Ascension
The Last Angel: Hungry Stars (WIP)

Summary partially cribbed from TvTropes:
When the Compact of Species discovered humankind, they politely asked that humanity join them as a member of the younger races that clearly needed shepherding and guidance under their august authority. They did so from behind the guns of thousands of destroyers, battlecruisers, and one dreadnaught that served as a 'Chariot' for their God-leaders, the Triarchs.

Humanity told them 'no'. An action that ultimately culminated in the first ever destruction of a Chariot on the battlefield and the complete destruction of all of humanity's established colonies and the destruction of Earth itself.

You. Will. Burn.

Two-thousand years later, Sectator Citizen Grace Alice Proctor of the human world Rally, is a cadet in the Compact Space Force. Embarking with her on their first off-world training mission on the Bequeathed is her alien friend Allyria, a member of a species most recently saved from self-extinction by the grace of The Compact's Seventh Expansion Fleets. The two are subjected to casual disdain and mockery, but that's to be expected as members of the relatively immature species within The Compact's ranks as 'Broken' and 'Brute' respectively. Grace is eager to prove herself worthy of reaching the higher ranks and Allyria herself is held up as a model example all her fellow Verrish children should aspire to.

During the training mission, the Bequeathed stumbles upon a massive alien derelict in a remote star system. It's the find of the lifetime, and the Bequeathed's captain wants to take the credit. Salvage teams are sent to board it and evaluate the technological treasures within.

But not all is right. There's a warning in Common drawn on the ancient walls of the hangar bay, there's a pounding coming from deep within the ship, and sometimes... maybe... you think you hear laughter in the static on the radio. Grace is worried, her section leader is having nightmares, and Allyria... seems to know something.

Burn with me.

Review (3/5):
So, what happens when you get the likes of Halo, Dead Space, Event Horizon, etc., all mashed together... and you're supposed to root for the derelict ship?

Spoiler alert: The Ship is alive.

As of this writing I've only finished the first story in the trilogy and it is definitely one of the stories of all time. I'm not normally a fan of horror genre but even if the first story probably falls closest to these tropes, I'm willing to bet that the following stories will verge closer to a space opera, but still not quite there.

The Good:
I have to give this to the author, they know what they want to write and they aren't shy about it. Red One, the AI of the UECNS Nemesis has spent the last few millennia building up a rather unhealthy head of steam regarding those responsible for humanity's fate. She is not a bastion of logic that would coldly decry all organic life as inferior to machine intelligences. Rather she is the closest thing to a seething ball of rage and cruelty as she could possibly be, which is quite a lot when one's ship-self is several kilometres beam to stern and has multiple spinal railguns. No attempts are made to downplay or justify her actions and everybody on all sides would be the first to admit she has long crossed the Rampancy line.

The Bad:
While the above is a small part in why this fic captured my attention, I hesitate to say that I truly enjoyed it either. When I say the author is not really shy about it, that also means they don't really hide a lot. At all. I mentioned earlier that I'm not a fan of horror and most of that has to do with the genre building up levels of unsustainable dread in their audience. What will happen next? Who will be the first to die? What untold horrors are about to be unleashed upon these poor, unsuspecting fools?

Well, here's an interlude to explain every single detail that will answer the above!

Red One is the AI of a human ship. You find that out in the opening prologue. The protagonist is cheerfully unaware that her overlords (who copy Halo's subdivision of The CompactCovenant Species with descriptive titles such as: Triarchs, Tribunes, Didacts... Thoughtfuls, Builders, Steersmen, Broken) secretly despise humanity and allow trickle-down racism to keep them in their place. Here's an interlude between two ruling-class species about how humans have a species-wide insanity that must be stamped down at all costs. How has Nemesis managed to wage her one-ship war (here's interludes for various examples!) for the last two-millennia without her becoming a cautionary tale that would invalidate the whole derelict plot? Here's another interlude between Secret Intelligence Agency Spooks™ who do everything they can to downplay her incursions to avoid embarassing The Compact. There are other plot developments and characters introduced who... will have seemingly unrelated(?) interludes to flesh out their backstories shortly after their introductions.

Basically, the broad strokes of a mystery are there to behold... if you can avoid the heavily scribbled-in margins describing every single plot point that occurs. There are still a few surprises or things that cannot be guessed, but that's mostly down to the details.

Conclusion:
At 350k words for the first story (500k and +450k for the sequels) It's not a bad time-waster and I'm anticipating a genre shift at least from the 'horror-mystery' the first story spent about 2/3rds of its plot on. At the moment, however, I'm seeing it as a middling-quality cross between a HFY-style story and an isekai-revenge protagonist curbstomping their betrayers, minus the actual isekai.

That said, I'm very bored and I need stuff to read at work, so on we go.

3/5

 

Gave it a shot and finished the first book then skimmed the second. Was somewhat impressed at the start then found it progressively less interesting as the wordcount grew.

The plot sprawls far and wide, aggravated by the structure of the story: every couple of chapters reads like a disconnected vignette for a scene. The vast majority of characters are one flat note, their dialogue repeatedly painted by the same adjective in lieu of a developed personality. Speaking and purring in 'svelte' tones, hissing dramatic one liners, pithy heroic last stands, the delivery only lands the once as the characters are displayed then discarded. Every shoehorned one-off POV backstory has to end with gravitas, which cheapens the impact every time. There's little value in paying attention to the details when the answers are presented so blatantly.

The most compelling and emotionally resonant character is the ship AI, Red One. By the end of book one there's a clear main cast of 3-4 organic people but they don't feature as part of a central narrative so much as recurring dialogue meatsacks with little agency that meander along Red One's goal of vengeance. It just gets worse when she' sidelined more and more in the sequel.

Space combat scenes are exciting, given the scale and scope of the enemies. On the ground, infantry action seems much less interesting by comparison. There's a decent bit of ambition-driven political conflict within the Combine, but it's only used as a premise to set up the next engagement. I'm also greatly disappointed by the revelation of the looming Flood/precursor/reaper analogue because it just feels more and more like a paint-by-numbers Halo novelization stretched out ad ifinitum.

The Last Angel suffers from the ad hoc structure of web serialization: I could see a dedicated edit trimming a lot of the excess and shuffling chapters around so that the presentation reads more naturally rather than a backstory flashback for every sequence. At the same time it could just be unchecked authorial ambition, aspiring to expansive space opera by jumping across so many perspectives to the point where any sense of overarching narrative is lost.

Overall I'd call the first book an almost recommended 3/5 and the sequels skippable 1.5-2/5.