Jovah's Angel by Sharon Shinn

When the Archangel Delilah is so badly injured in a freak storm that she will remain unable to fly and therefore, unable to carry out her duties on behalf of the people of Samaria, the two remaining Oracles gather together to ask Jovah who will succeed her as Archangel. The surprising choice is Alleluia, a serious and studious angel who is more at home in a library than leading the other angels. But she is also willing to do what Jovah asks of her, and she takes over the duties of Archangel even if she feels that she is not the best choice for the job.

It is now over 600 years since the original colonists came to Samaria and settled on the planet, and the wonderful technology of the Aerie is starting to break down, such as the machines that play the wonderful music recorded by Uriel and Hagar, the first Archangel and his Angelica. Now only two are left, and another one breaks as Alleluia is listening to it. Since one of Alleya's few comforts is listening to music, she asks the blacksmith at the Aerie who would be best to repair it. He recommends a man named Caleb Augustus, an inventor and artificer.

Caleb, meanwhile, is somewhat alarmed that his Edori friend Nicholas is so wrapped up in a woman. In truth, she is a singer at a club called Seraph, and she is also an angel. She calls herself Lilah, but it is an open secret that she is really the former Archangel, Delilah. Unable to fulfill her tasks as an angel with one wing badly injured, she has become both bored and self-destructive. But her voice is still beautiful, and Nicholas has become deeply enamoured with her. He would do more than just sit around and listen to her, but that is all she allows him to do.

When Alleya shows up to have Caleb repair the music machines at the Aerie, she tells the woman who keeps his rooms only to tell him that she is the Archangel, and Caleb at first thinks it is Delilah who has come to him. He is surprised when it is the actual Archangel, and finds himself drawn to her, and agrees to come take a look at the machines. He is able to repair one of them, but only by hooking up a noisy motor to it to generate power to run the machine.

In fact, the Samarians have invented many new machines, and have a dam generating electrical power as well, but the Angels are uneasy with all the new technology, Alleya included. The population explosion in the past 200 years has also meant that the Edori can no longer wander over Samaria, and they are now limited to fixed reservations decided on by the non-Edori. But this is killing them as a people, and many Edori have moved away from their roots and live in cities. Those that remain on the reservations are losing their unique language, and since some of the land that the reservations sit on are wanted by those who ceded them the land in the first place, they want to push the Edori off the land yet again.

But the Edori have tales of a land called As'rai, and they are planning on building a fleet big enough to find it and sail there, even as everyone else calls them fools and mad for throwing their lives away. But the Edori are already dying, and they would rather die as a people than be absorbed into the society of other Samarians and lose their identity as a people. Nicholas plans to go with his people, and Delilah plans to accompany them.

Caleb, in addition to being a scientist, is also an atheist. He no longer believes in Jovah, since he cannot see evidence of the God with his own eyes. And with the powers of the Angels steadily diminishing, he has plenty of reasons not to believe. For it is true that Jovah no longer listens to the Angels. He does not seem to hear their pleas when they pray on behalf of the people of Samaria. Only Alleluia seems to be able to reach him, and even she sometimes fails. But the people refuse to believe that Jovah isn't answering his people's prayers, and think that the angels are punishing them. Only when Alleya is nearly killed herself by a storm do they begin to believe that the greater number of storms is not some punishment by the angels.

Alleya is desperate to find out why Jovah seems to be abandoning his people, and travels to the site of the most ancient of the Oracles, now abandoned when the Oracle there died without naming a successor. She finds a book there with information on Jovah and the early colony of Samaria, and slowly begins to learn the language of Jovah's oracles, and comes to the conclusion that she must reach Jovah herself to petition him.

But as she and Caleb slowly fall in love, and Jovah decrees she must find the son of Jeremiah as her Angelico, will Alleya keep her faith when she finally does find her God and finds out the truth behind her religion? Or will she become as much of an atheist as Caleb is? And if Caleb succeeds in returning function to Delilah's injured nerves, what will happen to he and Alleya? Is there any hope of happiness for her and him?

Well, as a third book in the series, and the last book of the projected only trilogy, this was definitely an interesting ending to the stories of Samaria. In it, we finally learn the truth about Jovah and where the colonists came from, that was promised but not carried out in the first book. It was interesting to see that Caleb's atheism came out of his scientific mind, and not vice-versa, as some religious people would like to claim today.

The book allows us to see Alleluia or Alleya, as she is called for most of the book, as a most unsuitable Archangel. She'd rather be doing more intellectual things than dealing with duelling factions of Samarians, but she tries her best to live up to the job that Jovah has entrusted her with. But it is precisely this intellectual turn of mind that enables her to find out what is really wrong with Jovah and bring to him the one man, Caleb, who has a chance of fixing the problem without going insane from finding out what his God really is. But in the end, even Caleb finds faith, as having Jovah watching over the people of Samaria is just as good as having an actual God, and it does have the welfare of the people in mind.

In addition, I liked the love story between Alleya and Caleb. Both so tongue-tied in each other's presence, and yet, in the end they were able to find happiness with each other, and in duties they know they would enjoy. The book ends happily for everyone, and in a way that ends with each character and faction happy. I enjoyed this book a lot, and it lived up to a great deal of the promise of the series implicit in the first book. I'd recommend this one whole-heartedly.