RATING GUIDE:
5 – A keeper!
4 – Very good
3 – Passable
2 – I’d rather read
a telephone book
1 – An absolute bomb.
Read at your own risk!
If you are one of those people
who still value Holy Week as a time for reflection and bonding with the Lord
(as opposed to those who use Holy Week as a time to go partying), then you
might want to take a look at Anne Rice’s book called Angel Time. And yes, your eyes aren’t deceiving
you. I did say Anne Rice. You know, the same Anne Rice who wrote The
Vampire Chronicles, from which the highly popular movies Interview With
The Vampire (starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt) and Queen Of The Damned (starring
the late actress Aaliyah) came.
If you read about Anne Rice on the internet, you’ll find
out that Anne Rice is known for her gothic fiction, her erotica (written under
pseudonyms Anne Rampling and A.N. Roquelare).
Not exactly someone you’d expect would write something spiritual,
right? But Anne Rice is actually
Catholic. For years, she was an atheist
(if I remember right, I saw a documentary where it was said that the death of
her child from leukemia triggered the total loss of faith). But a near-death experience brought her back
to the Lord. Not to say that Anne Rice
is back to being a practicing Catholic.
These days, Anne Rice stays away from any form of organized religion
(Catholicism included), but remains committed to serving God through her
writing. This commitment is evident in Angel
Time, one of the two books in her Songs Of The Seraphim series.
The hero in Angel Time is a young man named Toby O’
Dare, a sensitive soul and a brilliant lute player. Given his artist’s heart and talent, Toby should have gone on to
become a highly successful musician.
Instead, Toby has gone on to become a brilliant assassin called Lucky
The Fox (I bet you didn’t see that one coming).
Despite his (cough, cough) chosen career, Toby is still a
partly practicing Catholic. In between assignments, Toby tries to lead a fairly
normal (though anonymous) life at an inn and slips into church from time to
time. He prays the rosary and reads his
collection of spiritual/religious books, even though his heart has strayed so
far from its teachings. After one particularly
nasty assignment, which takes place right in his “home,” Toby gets the surprise
of his life when an angel named Malchiah shows up and invites him to leave his
life an assassin and be a special agent, so to speak, this time for God. Toby ultimately says yes, and Malchiah
whisks him off to 13th century Norwich, England and turns him into a
Benedictine monk (I bet you didn’t see that one coming!) for a special mission.
The characters and plot are fantastic, and yet it is
everyone’s story. Anyone who has gone
through the pain of broken dreams, a lost love, a disappointing family or
trauma will see themselves in Toby, who has gone through all of these. People who started out loving God, then
questioning His ways and even His existence, yet have a flicker of desire to
renew his or faith will also identify with him. Toby’s life before becoming an assassin is so heart-breaking, I’m
pretty sure it will leave many of you in tears.
As Holy Week is essentially a story that speaks about
God’s love and is also a call to reconcile with Him, Anne Rice’s book is an
unusual yet perfect choice to read during this Lenten Season for it is a story
of a lost soul who is never forgotten by God.
RATING: 5
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