I don’t even know how the hell to describe this, except amazing. Apparently my unintentional theme lately is biblically accurate angels—see Pet, see Freydís Moon. Here, Cooney made the mythology its own thing and the worldbuilding is fiendishly clever. A refugee crisis in the midst of a celestial city with bloodthirsty angels who must be overthrown by two secret saints, a newly-sprouted godhead, and a family of filmmakers and waste collectors—that’s the best stab I can take at the plot. What makes it sing is the sheer originality, the dialogue (the dialect!), the relationships and alliances, the comfort, the justice.
It’s dedicated to Rosemary and Gene Wolfe, and rightly so. Although at the risk of blasphemy, the way Cooney writes her spiritual elements is way more appealing to me. (Less heavy on the Catholic overtones, and more deeply humane.)
BRB, off to read everything else that she writes.