Angel Down (2025)
This is a book that makes me wish I could crawl into the author’s mind. Because it is clearly a wondrous (and maybe terrifying) place.
Daniel Kraus is clearly on another level of consciousness.
Angel Down is the story of a ne’er-do-well conman turned reluctant soldier, sent on a doomed rescue mission with four of his inept comrades. Rather than a fallen soldier, the mission recovers a mysterious biblical entity that may hold the key to escaping the Hell of the battlefield. But what are its terms?
I consider Angel Down to be in the same class of novels as the Southern Reach series by Jeff VanderMeer, Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie, and Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman. These are the kinds of novels that stretch my mind like a rubber band and ask me to question ideas & constructs I had never thought to question before.
The structure of the novel is extraordinary and exemplifies that Kraus is a master of not just horror writing but a master of the craft as a whole. It won’t be until the end of the novel that you’ll be able to fully appreciate the style of the novel, but I promise it’s mind blowing.
If there’s a superpower that Daniel Kraus possesses, it is his ability to juxtapose beauty alongside carnage. If you haven’t read The Living Dead, it’s such a great example of this and a forever favorite of mine. Kraus’s characters are real and whole and you don’t realize you’ve fallen in love with them until they’re in peril. By the ending you feel as if you’ve taken the journey alongside Bagger & Arno; you’ll feel all of the horror and whatever hope may still remain in a world such as this.
Angel Down is a modern masterpiece, a high point in any writing career. At the same time, it also feels as though Daniel Kraus is just flexing his knuckles, gearing up to give us so much more.
And I personally will let him take me to hell and back.
Again.
10/10 red leather bibles
Angel Down will be released July 29th, 2025!
Thank you to Netgalley for the early digital ARC and SS Atria Marketing for the physical ARC!
