Reviewed by David Brzeski

Billie Sue Mosiman is not your typical self-published author on Amazon. For one thing, she has quite a pedigree. She’s been writing thrillers and horror novels for a long time. Her first book was published in 1984 and she has been nominated for Stoker and Edgar awards. I’d been meaning to get around to checking out her work for quite some time.

‘Banished’ was an interesting choice for me to start with. The protagonists are Fallen Angels. For the most part, books featuring Angels tend to be firmly in the supernatural romance genre. Not this one.

The Fallen can come to Earth by inhabiting the body of a human at the point of death. Angelique grasps at such an opportunity, but has the bad luck to find herself in the body of a ten year old native girl, on an island which would later become known as Haiti, in the 13^th century.

She rules the indigenous people of the island for two hundred years, before the Spanish arrive, affording her the opportunity to escape to Spain. For another two hundred years, she wanders the world, using human slaves to pose as her parents, or guardians, but the constant need to uproot & begin again, due to her never aging, becomes unbearable.

In England in the 1800s, she brings down another of the Fallen to aid her, but perhaps Nisroc hasn’t fallen as far as she’d assumed. Eventually Nisroc breaks free from her influence, but Angelique is never going to allow him to be his own master. She pursues him wherever he goes, taking terrible vengeance on any who befriend & help him.

This is an enjoyable page-turner of a book. Well-written, tightly plotted, with engaging characters. It has a satisfying ending, while leaving an opening for a sequel to follow.

For those who don’t own a Kindle, there’s a large print Createspace edition & an audio download version available.