Psibabe, aka Ashley Perkins, at Game Vortex posted a thoughtful and beautiful review of my forthcoming novel BROKEN.
She wrote, in part:
Broken by Traci L. Slatton is both a story of supreme selfishness and selflessness. It centers around Alia, a beautiful fallen angel who has chosen to live life as a human in Paris right before the Nazi occupation during WWII. She willingly chose to fall when Ariel, another angel dear to her, fell from Heaven and she now spends her days enjoying the once forbidden fruits of sexual activity with humans, despite Michael the Archangel, who sometimes comes to persuade her to return to Heaven. Sex with humans is forbidden because angels are completely irresistible, and to do so takes away a part of the human’s free will, along with a portion of their “light,” leaving them with a need and desire that they can never again fulfill. It’s cruel, but Alia doesn’t care about any of that. She is merely trying to forget her angelic days and the pain she suffered when Ariel fell.
What, or rather who, she does care about is the young girl who lives next door, Cecile, who often comes to visit Alia. Cecile’s mother, Suzanne, is a Jew although they are both French citizens, and Alia, who is often beset by visions of the future, fears for Suzanne and Cecile as the Nazis approach and Jews are more and more persecuted.
Broken has some incredibly graphic sex scenes and these may take some readers aback, but they are meant to shock, as well as explain Alia’s selfishness, desperation and hopelessness after becoming a human. It took me a few chapters before the book really had its hooks into me, but Broken is incredible and, much like Immortal, had me in tears as I finished it.
I knew from our email exchange before she posted the review that she enjoyed the book even as it troubled her. I’m grateful that Psibabe expressed herself so eloquently, and that she took the time to think about what she had read. Readers like Psibabe keep me writing. They encourage me to take risks.
This is what it’s all about.
