Audiobook Review: Angel-Seeker by Sharon Shinn

Angel-Seeker
Author: Sharon Shinn
Narrator: Tamara Marston
Series: Samaria (Book 5)
Publication: Audible Studios (July 20, 2010)
Length: 18 hours and 35 minutes

Description: The award-winning author returns to Samaria in this richly romantic tale that begins where Archangel left off. In that time, the women who craved the attention of angels were known as angel-seekers, a term used with awe by some - and scorn by others.

My Thoughts: The fifth book set on Samaria focuses on roles of women. It tells the story of Elizabeth who begins the story working as a cook on her cousin's farm and longing for more. She travels to Cedar Hills which is a new city being constructed near a new angel hold. 

Elizabeth longs to be loved and cared for and begins the story as a sort of vain, superior sort of woman. She goes to Cedar Hills in the hopes of attracting the love of an angel because women who have angels' angelic babies are cared for. But there are many, many young women who have come to Cedar Hills for the same reason and the competition to attract an angel is fierce. 

She does begin a sort of relationship with an angel, but her real career begins when she meets a healer named Mary. Mary takes Elizabeth as an apprentice which gives her a skill of her own. Elizabeth also meets a Edori man who, once freed from slavery, became a worker in building the new Cedar Hills. However, her focus on gaining a home by having and angel baby means that she is overlooking any other sort of possible relationship.

The second woman the book focuses on is Rebekah. She is a Jonsai which means that she is kept in seclusion and under the rule of her father or brother. She meets the angel Obadiah when he is shot down by some sort of weapon and is in danger of dying in the desert. Rebekah has been sent to the oasis to get water for her stepfather's traveling caravan. She nurses the angel even though she knows that her stepfather and the other Jonsai would prefer that he die. 

Obadiah becomes Rebekah's secret. When she returns to her family home in Breven, she sneaks out to continue her relationship with Obadiah who is there to treat with the Jansai for the angels. Obadiah wants to take Rebekah away with him to Cedar Hills, but she is afraid to leave the life she knows. But when she becomes pregnant, her time among the Jansai becomes impossible. Women who transgress - and becoming pregnant out of wedlock with an angel no less is a major transgression - are dealt with harshly. She has already seen her cousin who had an affair with another kind of traveling merchant beaten, stoned, and left in the desert to die. 

When her pregnancy is discovered, the same fate is meted out to her. But her brother has slipped her a waterskin and she was left wrapped in a blanket which gives her a chance for survival. Only being discovered by Elizabeth and her Edori man saves her life and gives her a chance at a new one with Obadiah.

This was an engaging story about two women looking for love and finding it though in very different ways. It is the final book in the Samaria series. 

I bought this one March 12, 2022. You can buy your copy here.