Book Review: UNEARTHLY

Unearthly by Cynthia Hand

Unearthly, as its title suggests, is a book about unearthly creatures – angels. The protagonist, Clara, appears to be a normal human at first. At fourteen, however, she is told the truth by her mother, Maggie: that Maggie is in fact a Dimidius, a half-angel, which makes Clara and her brother “quarter-angels”, Quartarius, and that, as beings with angel blood, they will have a “purpose” to fulfill, sent by God.

And that is where the story starts off, with Clara getting her first dream about her purpose. Slowly, she begins to find her purpose: to find a boy called Christian and save him from a forest fire. In order to fulfill her purpose and find Christian, their family moves to Wyoming thus starting a new life.

I think one thing Unearthly did well is in setting up two male leads as viable partners for Clara. One of them, Christian, is her purpose and is later discovered to be of angel blood as well. It is revealed that Clara and Christian are, in a way, meant to be, and are perfect partners. However, when Christian seems to push her aside initially in favour of his girlfriend, Clara turns to Tucker Avery. Tucker, unlike Christian, is a normal human boy. Although Clara and Tucker seem to share a hostile relationship at first, they gradually fall in love with each other, with Tucker teaching her normal things like fishing, making her feel like she is a normal human, giving her a sense of belonging. Both boys are suitable for her, and it’s understandable why she’s so conflicted.

However, I feel that the book is a little lacking in depth. Unearthly has an entire world waiting to be explored – Hand briefly touches on the War between the Angels, where there are the protagonists, the Angel-bloods and the antagonists, Watchers (Angels who fell from heaven after falling in love with humans, and constantly feel an unutterable grief because of it). I think the War is an extremely interesting premise – there are many possibilities Hand could have explored, like the background of the Watchers, the difficulty in living their lives, whether having Angel-bloods and Watchers fight each other is difficult (since they are essentially of the same kind). However, instead of focusing on the War and the conflict between Angel-bloods and Watchers, Hand focuses on the love triangle between Clara, Christian and Tucker, making more than four-fifths of the book about the love triangle. This makes the book rather draggy, as not much action happens and we essentially spend most of the book on Clara’ dilemma she wonders whether she should choose Christian or Tucker. For a book with such an interesting premise, this is actually rather disappointing.

In conclusion, I think that Unearthly, despite being a book with an extremely interesting premise, is essentially unfulfilled in its potential. There are other books with equally interesting premises (The Infernal Devices and The Night Circus to mention two) that manage to tap into their potential a great deal more and are therefore worthier of your time.

Rating: 2.5/5

For ages 12 and above

By TCH