Murder of Angels is a novel in two parts, and I've just finished the five chapters that make up Part One: Disintegration. (Since the previous update was Prologue and Chapters 1 and 2, what I have here is Chapters 3 to 5).

I've only read this book once before (unlike Silk, which I think I've read thrice or even four times in total), so there's a lot I don't remember about where it's going when I first began rereading. Having read this much now, I think I do remember how this ends. It oddly has to do with how the novel could end right here, on, um page infinity. (Actually, page + ∞ which is achingly beautiful, IYKYK.)

Part of me is now screaming, because I think I now recall what happened, but part of me of course is dying to fill in the blanks as to how how we'll get there, which is what Part 2: Wars in Heaven is all about.

All this isn't to say that what's left is merely a long epilogue. I guess it's somewhat close to what happens in the middle of movies like Mulholland Drive or Black Bear. And the latter parts of those movies and these novels will have to work hard(er?) given how easily audiences and readers can get invested in these characters from the start up to the end of the first half.

And again, this raises the issue of unlikeable characters doing unlikeable things. Readers of Murder of Angels must withhold judgment, I think, or they may end up putting this book down. I think it's best to read these and not think in terms of red flags but instead to ask why they are hurting and why they are hurting each other. That takes compassion, and I think, as hardbitten and tough as Kiernan's characters are, what they deserve is kindness and relief and consolation.

We more or less get the complete Silk backstory here—all you need to know—and if there's no more backstory in the second half, I think that's okay, even if there is more to say. (Revealing the mysterious figure in the prologue, for example.)

We also get a cosmology of a fantasy world that we don't enter yet, but which has been spilling over into Niki's reality. You may or may not choose to believe in the reality of these multiple worlds or stick to just the one. This novel supports both POVs.