Black Angel (Dangerous Spirits #3) by Kyell Gold
- Mar 15
- 5 min read
With Azure City coming out at the end of March, I thought it was high time I review the three books in Kyell Gold's Dangerous Spirits series. I find this to be one of Kyell Gold's most recognizable works alongside Out of Position, and it's easy to see why. It's has a unique concept, great structure, queer themes, and beautiful artwork by Rukis. Last week I reviewed Red Devil, so, without further ado, it's time for Black Angel!
Genre: Magical Realism
Age Rating: PG-13 for some sexual content
You might want to continue this series if you:
Want to discover what this whole series has really been about this entire time
Want to read about one of my favorite characters in all of furry fiction
Are interested in or curious about historical voodoo and vodou
Can relate to the struggle of figuring out your sexuality (particularly asexuality)
Are a cult leader looking for some messed up ideas
Black Angel is my favorite book in the Dangerous Spirits trilogy. You might not have expected that. After all, relatability, or lack thereof, is a big part of why many people like or dislike a book. I'm a gay, male reader and thus far have been easily able to relate to the main characters, Sol and Alexei. But Black Angel follows Meg, a female otter with an undefined sexuality who so far has seemingly only been a supporting character. So, I worried that I wouldn't enjoy this story as much since I'm not part of that same demographic. Clearly, I need not have worried. As it turns out, Black Angel is the key to unlocking a true understanding of this whole trilogy. Because you see, whether you knew it or not, this was always Meg's story.
At the end of Red Devil, during Alexei's confrontation with his own ghost, you might have noticed that Meg was losing her nerve. As she tried to convince everyone that what was happening before their eyes wasn't supernatural, she began to sound panicked. Desperate. As if there was more behind her denial of the paranormal than simple armchair skepticism. It was brilliant foreshadowing of what Black Angel is about to dive into: the intriguing reason Meg is actually such an insistent skeptic.
Black Angel picks up a few months after Red Devil, with Sol moving out for college, and Alexei leaving for a few days to do some green card interviews. That leaves Meg alone for a while, and that period of loneliness, perhaps compounded with her recent paranormal crisis, seems to trigger a spiral. For the first time we get to see Meg's inner world and discover that she's a nervous, frustrated person who struggles with being alone. As an apparent depression takes hold, we find out she's been off her antidepressant medication for several months and has taken to self medicating with weed instead, which works great... until she runs out of it. As soon as the pot's gone, Meg begins experiencing hauntings from her own dangerous spirits.
Yes, "spirits" plural, because there are three of them, and they're more bizarre than any we've seen so far. One is a voodoo priestess who seems to be speaking to her from inside the comic she's drawing, the second is a 16-year-old Christian cultist who shows up in her dreams, and the third is some kind of entity who occasionally emerges from the shadows in the waking world to tell Meg she's going to die alone. It's ironic that the person who is aggressively skeptical about ghosts would be the one to experience not only the most ghosts of any character, but also the most creative hauntings. Importantly, the mere presence of these many ghosts dredges up a traumatic event from Meg's past--one that, on top of being a formative event in her sexuality, perhaps indicates she's been burdened by the supernatural since long before ever meeting Sol or Alexei.
And of course, all this is going on while Meg is trying to juggle art commissions, avoid alienating friends from a local cafe, ward off concerned parents, and understand where she lies on the sexuality spectrum. All difficult things to do while stressed out by multiple hauntings. So, if you could relate to how overwhelmed Sol was in the first book, you might again relate to how overwhelmed Meg is in this one, especially if your own everyday struggles more closely resemble hers than those of Sol or Alexei.
As I discussed in my Red Devil review, when the bar is raised like this, it can push characters to their limits and show us more of who they are. We saw how effective that was in Red Devil. Well, Black Angel takes it so much further that the whole narrative perspective had to be flipped to accommodate. Kyell Gold makes the choice to tell this entry in first person instead of third, which I think is brilliant. It not only has a likely meaning within the meta, which you'll have to puzzle out yourself, but it also helps to better portray Meg's inner world. I don't think it's a story that could have been told the same way if it remained in third person, and seeing clearly why a certain perspective was chosen for a story is always cool. Plus Meg has had such an interesting voice as a side character so far. Getting to read a story told in that voice is something I didn't know I needed.
The character brought out by that bar raising and change in perspective was clearly effective, because it made Meg not only a great character, but one of my favorite characters in all of furry fiction. I could relate to the way she stresses about her life's past traumas, present struggles, and future challenges (each of which is reflected beautifully by the three different hauntings, by the way). Her frustration with and uncertainty of mental health treatments. Her depression and anxiety that limit her ability to get things done. And if I couldn't relate to something, the story does a great job of portraying it in such a way as to make me still empathize with her. So if you're a fan of great character development and want to see what I consider one of furry fiction's best characters, be sure to check this one out.
But what I most appreciate about Black Angel is how it chooses to broaden your horizons. The first two books feature the gay, male experience, so this third one not being about the same may feel inconsistent. In reality, it's bringing the Dangerous Spirits series beyond just one gender and sexuality and into the greater queer space. Transitioning from his gay specialty into this greater queer experience is something Kyell Gold does to great effect in much of his work, and that's once again true here. It presents opportunities for the reader to learn about and empathize with others in their queer community. I love a book with something you can take away from it, and I think there's a lot about the queer experience here for readers like me to broaden their horizons with. I know it certainly broadened mine.
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