The secular angel in contemporary children's literature: David ...

This he exemplifies both in Mestraal, who has lost his way and has consciously rejected his
angelic mission and gift, and in Luke, who is a guardian and protector personified, in spite of
his own personal struggles. By humanizing angels, McNish is elevating humans, thereby
bringing the two on equal terms, and stating that as both are agents of free will, they are as
prone to weakness as they are capable of greatness.
But angels have one more significant function in the narrative and that is to shed light
on human behaviour, how it should be and most importantly what it can be. This attribute
becomes didactic for the book’s younger audience, and both Mestraal’s and Hestron’s
personalities exhibit characteristics that are both angelic and human, responsible and cruel,
good and bad. Their ability to choose who they want to be is an indication that what defines a
person is not origin but choice. In essence, Cliff McNish uses the two angels, as Jones
suggests, to talk about human beings, and reflect on human life, while critiquing it at the same
time. Thus, McNish presents his readers with four guardians, two angels, one part-angel, and
one human, who form two pairs: Freya and Mestraal, and Hestron and Luke. Although these
four characters exhibit different notions of guardianship, protection, dependency, resilience
and courage, they are all continuously defined and characterized by their consecutive choices,
a principle that demarcates the narrative and extends to all characters within it.
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