Leigh Kramer's Reviews > Archangel's Blade

I figured out why the MMCs in this series aren’t working for me thanks to two recent Substack articles. First, a brief aside in Culture Study by Anne Helen Petersen. Celeste Davis then expanded on it in The men who like women and the men who don't. Yes we can tell.

Dmitri doesn’t like women. Nor does Raphael, for that matter. Dmitri doesn’t have any platonic relationships with women, nor does he respect them. Women are to be used for sex and discarded. He sexually harasses women, including Elena and Honor, even if they tell him they’re not interested. He doesn’t care about anything other than his own needs. Some of the toxic masculinity can be attributed to the erroneous ideas about what it means to be an “alpha male” that are put on steroids in PNR, especially series at the time this was written. Only men are part of the Seven. While there are female archangels, Raphael views them all as snakes who cannot be trusted; he doesn’t trust the male archangels either but there is one who is an ally of sort and his reasons for not trusting any of the men aren’t laden with misogyny.

It’s difficult to reconcile this with the flashbacks we get of Dmitri with his wife before he became a vampire. At one point, he did like women or at least, he liked his wife. Any lingering compassion and empathy was leeched out of him over the centuries since his wife and children were killed. His grief is tangible and not just because of the book’s reliance on flashbacks. He’s never moved forward, nor has he ever talked to anyone about how he feels. What happened to his family is a tragedy but it doesn’t justify how hard and cold he’s become. His misogyny was hard to take, as was the way he treated Honor, who is a fellow survivor. You would never know Dmitri experienced something similar based on the way he treats her. There’s no understanding of trauma whatsoever. He decides to track down her abusers but that doesn’t make up for the way he talks to her. I did not care for him one iota.

Honor needs therapy, not a relationship. Certainly not a relationship with Dmitri. I got my hopes up when she actually met with a therapist but then she almost immediately left the session. She eventually writes in the journal the therapist gives her but that’s really not enough to heal from what she went through. I don’t know mental health is so stigmatized in this world!

There are high stakes between Dmitri and Honor even amidst the case they’re investigating. She was tortured and assaulted by vampires and can’t stand to be around them, while he lost his wife and doesn’t want to lose anyone again, much less get involved with a mortal who will die. Perhaps if Dmitri hadn't been such an asshole, I could have bought their relationship more but they didn’t have any chemistry. Nor do they relate to each other in a healthy manner. I didn’t feel this did the story of a survivor justice, particularly not one attempting to give sex and a relationship a try for the first time since the attack. They can barely kiss without her being triggered and stabbing him (accidentally) but somehow they rush straight to sex. It wasn’t at all realistic.

Then there was the supposed reason behind their relationship. I have read my fair share of nonsensical PNR plots but this really takes the cake. (view spoiler)[Honor is actually Dmitri’s reincarnated wife Ingrede. Kind of?? They are still two separate people but Honor has Ingrede’s memories and can even speak their language. BUT HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?! Ingrede was just a regular farmwife. How on earth did she save her soul for almost 1000 years and then plop into Honor? When did it even happen, for that matter? Honor was abandoned as a newborn; did she already have Ingrede’s soul? Why Honor and not someone else sooner? None of it made sense.

Related: why did Kallistos wait almost 1000 years to avenge Isis? Heavy sigh.

Anyway. Dmitri immediately believes Honor about the reincarnation thing, which is wild since I sure don’t get it. Then they decide to get married and Honor says she wants to be Made into a vampire so they can be together forever. Dmitri and Honor only known each other a week or two! This kind of fast pace only makes sense if Honor and Ingrede are the same person but the book takes pains to tell us that’s not the case. What in the world?! (hide spoiler)]

I’m going to give this series one more chance or I’m bowing out.


Characters: Honor is a 29 year old vampire hunter and ancient culture and language expert with light brown skin. Dmitri is a white vampire and Raphael’s second who is almost 1000 years old. This is set in NYC.

Content notes: PTSD, dissociation, nightmares, flashbacks, past catatonia, intimate partner violence (view spoiler)[MMC holds FMC in the same position that her abusers did and almost bites her to punish her which triggers a PTSD episode and she beats him up, FMC pulls a gun on MMC, other trauma responses [e.g. FMC stabs MMC while attempting to kiss him because it triggers memories], image-based sexual abuse (FMC’s abuser took videos and photos of her and hung one in his bedroom), past rape, torture, and imprisonment of FMC by vampires (used her as their blood pet); past rape, physical abuse, and imprisonment of MMC by angel; implied incestuous relationship (or else inappropriate), between secondary characters (mother/son), sexual harassment of FMC and secondary character by MMC, off page attempted rape of secondary character (she killed him; he was a rapist out on parole), past child physical abuse and attempted sexual abuse (FMC stabbed her foster father to protect herself), MMC was Made into a vampire against his will (past), murder, attempted murder, torture, dismemberment, murdered missing women, secondary character attempted to murder her son, physical assault, past drug assault, mind control (secondary character), broken angel wings (secondary character), resuscitation (secondary character), corpses (some with maggots), lacerations, blood, blood-drinking, past castration of prisoners, MMC cut out the brand on his skin that was forced on him (past), Mentally Ill Villain trope, mental illness stigma (not countered), misogyny, toxic masculinity, fatphobia, past torture and murder of MMC’s wife and children (view spoiler)[vampire fed from infant, vampires raped wife and then burned down the house with her in it, vampire attempted to turn MMC’s son into a vampire but he was too young so MMC broke his neck to end his suffering (hide spoiler)], past massacre, medical privacy violation (MMC accesses her medical records and tests her blood for vampirism potential without her knowledge or consent), past orphanage and foster care (FMC found abandoned as a newborn), secondary character in wheelchair, vampires agree to be enslaved by angels for 100 years in exchange for immortality, unsafe sex practices (no condom for penetrative sex without discussion of STI and pregnancy prevention; unclear whether vampires are capable of either), on page sex, impact play, food play (honey), road head, biting, sex dream, past bondage, alcohol, casual ableism, gendered pejoratives, gender essentialism, ableist language, hyperbolic language around addiction, casual use of colonialist language (hide spoiler)]