PositiveThe Millions\"Satan and Death could easily make for very heavy-handed, or at least awkwardly earnest, characters. But in these incarnations they’re suavely funny and combative, and they mostly escape the danger of becoming painful clichés. These are not Biblical characters, but literary ones ... We still want climactic resolution from our novels, literary or not, and The Angel of History doesn’t even make a pro forma attempt to build the kind of narrative tension that could ever lead to that satisfaction ... But this novel doesn’t need to have an exciting plot, shouldn’t have an exciting plot, because that would distract from the important work that needs to be done, both by Jacob and by the readers: to remember the dead ... a fierce, unapologetic wake-up call.\
