ANGEL TIME: The Songs of the Seraphim
Anne Rice
Knopf
Metaphysical Thriller
ISBN: 9781400043538
When Toby O’Dare’s mother, brother and sister all die on the same day, the young man experienced more misery in that one day than most of us will in our entire lives. That day, Toby walked away from all he had ever known and left behind everything but his treasured lute, an instrument that brought him the only joy that would ease his pain. Music was the thing that always soothed his troubled soul. No wonder; Toby could make beautiful music. So good, in fact, that he might have been a famous musician one day. But the tragedy sends his life in a downward spiral, and instead of devoting his life to bringing something great into the world, he dedicates himself to taking things away by becoming a hit man.
After shedding his life as a young man poised on the edge of a career that promised him years of pleasure, Toby flees to New York, a city he knows he can disappear in, and sets about trying to forget his past. He tells no one his name, where he came from, or anything else about his past aside from his love for music. Eventually, a person known to Toby only as “The Right Man” employs him to eliminate special targets, always with the assurance that he’s working for the good guys.
Whether Toby believes that or not is of little consequence --- killing people, even for good reason, takes its toll on him. His conscience eats away at him and pushes him further into despair. Finally, not even his lute can minister to his pain. At merely 28, his ability to continue seems, at best, crippled: “The more Toby O’Dare became the contract killer of underground fame, the less he cared about who he’d been before…he drew further and further from the chain of humanity to which he belonged.”
However, one’s fate doesn’t have to be set in stone; sometimes we get a second chance. It starts to look like Toby might be one of the lucky ones, for at the height of his crisis, he encounters a guardian angel. This Capra-esque meeting dramatically affects Toby’s whole being. For if the angel can be believed, Toby has a unique chance to redeem himself, and it is possible that maybe --- just maybe --- his soul may not be consigned to the bowels of Hell forever. The angel has a mission for him; however, it is dangerous, and it puts Toby in more peril than he has ever been in. Furthermore, it is complicated by the fact that his salvation resides in England --- 13th-century England to be exact.
Is Toby too far gone for redemption? Or will he be a changed man by the novel’s end?
In ANGEL TIME, Anne Rice, author of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, makes a departure from the world of fangs and blood to one of halos and wings. A highly spiritual novel with beautifully formed characters --- characters so alive you will want to reach out and touch them --- Rice weaves a tapestry of wrong and right, of devastation and redemption, and of despair and, ultimately, hope. This book is sure to touch you in ways none of her other books ever have before. A perfect read for our times.
--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers
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