Laurie Penny

This is a short story about angels and demons that work in a call center. About an angel in particular, that is our narrator. The premise is really good and I thought this was going to be a comedy, but it turns out it had serious moments and surprising sex scenes too.

The story starts with the line “All prayers are answered, but sometimes the answer is no” and with a depiction of how it’s like to work in a call center. Having worked in two of those myself, those scenes were particularly funny. Besides those moments, the narrator also tells about their past sexual involvement with humans and how all of those ended.

I really enjoyed this story but it felt very much like a draft of an idea instead of a complete work and that is a shame. The characters and themes weren’t fleshed out enough and there was very little world building. I seldom have that last complain about anything, but by the end of this story I had so many questions about how this call center worked and how it came into existence and what was the actual purpose of it all. I really wish this story was longer.… (meer)

I love goodreads. I hadn't heard about this novella before a review by Alice showed up in my feed. Thanks to her review I got to read this thought provoking SF novella.

There's a lot of ideas to think about, the one that struck me while reading, is how the powerful have always stolen the time of the less powerful, be they the slaves, peasants, factory workers or just the working class. In reading the acknowledgments the author points out a real world inspiration As I write, a public inquiry into the misuse of powers by undercover police officers in the United Kingdom is ongoing. Which I hadn't considered.… (meer)

Angels work. Of course we do. We’re all on zero-hour contracts. Time, after all, is a human idea.

We get twenty-five minutes of it for lunch, with deductions for any bathroom or smoke stops we might have taken. Hating your boss is also a human idea.

The day everything changes, I spend my lunch in the break room with Gremory. There are many rooms in my Father’s house, but only one with a functioning coffee machine.

Meh. (FWIW, angel fiction is generally meh, from my perspective.) If angels and demons working a call center following a heavenly merger (and all that that implies) sounds good to you, YMMV. Available free from Tor:

http://www.tor.com/2016/03/15/your-orisons-may-be-recorded/… (meer)