Fallen by Lauren Kate
Published 2009 · 452 pages · 104,723 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Coming-of-Age, Fantasy, Romance
How hard is Fallen to read?
Fallen scores 21 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 22 out of 100
- Accessible YA vocabulary. Religious and angelic terminology is introduced gently. The prose is descriptive but never demanding.
- Sentence structure: 20 out of 100
- Abstraction: 20 out of 100
- Concrete and sensory. The theological implications of fallen angels are felt rather than analyzed.
- Information density: 22 out of 100
- Moderate world-building about angel lore and past lives. Information is parceled out slowly as mystery reveals.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- Linear first-person narrative with a clear mystery structure: who is Daniel, and why does Luce feel drawn to him?
- Symbolic density: 30 out of 100
- Shadows as manifestation of suppressed memory. The reform school as purgatory. Stone angels as foreshadowing. The symbolism is accessible and genre-conventional.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Completely sincere. The romance and the cosmic stakes are presented with earnest emotional intensity.
- Resolution withholding: 28 out of 100
- The curse is revealed but not broken. Series setup withholds full resolution of the angel war and Luce's destiny.
- Structural complexity: 18 out of 100
- Single POV, chronological, mystery-romance structure. Straightforward and well-paced.
How Fallen is regarded
Fallen holds a literary regard score of 37 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.