Point of View

The point of view of the novel is a close third-person-past perspective throughout, though the narrator’s focal character shifts throughout. In the prologue of the novel, the narrator focuses in on Simon as a young boy. He watches Queen Rielle give birth to her daughter and then kill herself as the angel Corian comes to take the child away. The reader is thrown into an action-packed and climactic moment without any warning in these first few pages, and Simon’s young, innocent, and naïve perspective mirrors the reader’s own experience. There are a great many things Simon does not know about Rielle, Corian, and Audric, and neither does the reader.

After the prologue ends, the narrator switches over to Rielle’s perspective two years prior to the events in the prologue. The narrator gets very close to Rielle, examining her thoughts, history...