There are angels, and they are not beneficent or loving. But they do watch over us. They watch our lives unfold, analyzing us for repeating patterns and redundancies. When they find them, the angels simplify those patterns, they remove the redundancies, and the problem that is you gets solved.
Carey doesn’t much like that idea. As a punk living in New York City, 1977, Carey is sick and tired of watching the strange kids with the unnoticeable faces abduct his friends. He doesn’t care about the rumors of tarmonsters in the sewers, or unkillable psychopaths invading the punk scene—all he wants is drink cheap beer and dispense asskickings.
Kaitlyn isn’t sure what she’s doing with her life. She came to Hollywood in 2013 to be a stunt woman, but last night a former teen heartthrob tried to eat her, her best friend has just gone missing, and there’s an angel outside her apartment.
Whatever she plans on doing with her life, it should probably happen in the few remaining minutes she has left of it.
There are angels. There are demons. They are the same thing. It’s up to Carey and Kaitlyn to stop them. The survival of the human race is in their hands.
We are, all of us, well and truly screwed.
The first book in the Vicious Circuit Series, Followed up by The Empty Ones and Kill All Angels.
This novel contains examples of...
- The '70s: Half of the story focuses on Carey and his accounters with the Tar monsters and the titular unnoticeables.
- Action Survivor: Carey and Kaitlyn are people who are facing off against some big odds... doesn't mean they'll take it lying down.
- Angelic Abomination: The Angels, ofcourse.
- Bittersweet Ending: Both Carey and Kaitlyn survive their horrible ordeals. But Gus (in the 1970s) has escaped to London and Marco is still alive and will seek revenge on Kaitlyn.
- Dirty Old Man: Carey in 2013 definately leans into this.
- Drives Like Crazy: Marco is a terrible driver, passing through red lights and nearly running people over. Justified as ALL Empty Ones seem to be like this.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The Angels. The Unnoticeables, Empty Ones and Tar men may be the main threat that Carey and Kaitlyn have to deal with but they view themselves as the Angels assistants, with the Empty One's forming a cult around the Angels as "Tools of the Mechanic".
- Hell Is That Noise: A sign that an Angel has arrived.
- Hero of Another Story: Sammy Six, a character in Carey's part of the story, has known about the Angels for a long time. He has gone far as to make it to "The Citadel" and has lost plenty of his friends along the way. He has even deliberately drove himself insane under the hopes that a piece of him will remain when the Angels turn him into one of them.
- Humanoid Abomination: The Empty Ones and The Unnoticeables fall under this category. The former are humans who have been stripped of all the things that make them human and will create Unnoticeables by infecting their prey with a hidden proboscis inside their mouths. The Unnoticeables are faceless beings with the ability to make people forget what they look like and even forget about them.
- Tar Men can also qualify, seeing as they are sapient living tar that can melt humans upon touching them.
- Kill It with Fire: A perfect solution for the tar men.
- Light Is Not Good: Angels may be living balls of light, but they are far from good. Their arrival usually involves HOLLOWING out a human before turning them into an Empty One, Tar Man or another Angel.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Empty Ones can take a lethal amount of punishment and they will not only heal from it but they will also continue as if nothing is wrong.
- The Nondescript: The titular unnoticeables have this effect. They're just regular "people" who have the ability to make people FORGET what they look like or makes them disinterested to dissuade any rescue attempts on their intended victims.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Safety Pins, Thing 1 and Thing 2 in the 1977 segment. The only thing that makes the thing twins stick out is their blue wigs.
- Sequel Hook: For Carey's segment of the book. Randall mentions how Gus had left America and has gone to London, And Carey vows to kill him.
- Wham Line: A moment where Kaitlyn goes to the police station to find help, only to be told that she was the offender and not Marco.
