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When you hear the name Anne Rice, more likely than not, you think of vampires. In recent years, however, Rice has finished her vampire series and her recent work has been exclusively religious, including a duet of novels about the life of Jesus, and a spiritual memoir chronicling Rice's troubled relationship with Catholicism. WithAngel Time, her newest novel, Rice begins with a familiar archetype for her: a handsome but troubled male protagonist. This time we have the hit man Toby O'Dare who, after performing an assassination in his favorite place on Earth, feels he has defiled the sanctity of not only this location, but the Earth. Enter Malchiah, Toby's Seraph guide. While Anne Rice's new novel is interesting on a religious level, narratively, it is not her most interesting work.
The first two or three chapters of the novel were really interesting, in that Rice presents Toby before his Angelic visitation. Here we see him as the murder-for-hire. His voice is meandering yet atmospheric, though lacking the charm of Rice's most famous narrator, Lestat (played by Tom Cruise in the movie adaptation of Interview with the Vampire). After Toby comes to believe in Malchiah, the Angel narrates a very long chapter (one chapter that is about 25% of the book's total length) of his viewing of Toby's life and what brought him to be a killer. This chapter is a bit reminiscent of It's A Wonderful Life, or at least it was for me.
Toby and Malchiah spend the rest of the novel traveling back to 13th Century England, time traveling through Angel Time, an interesting notion of time being simultaneous for angels. Malchiah's explanation of what Toby is to do is vague, to allow Toby to figure it out for himself. One thing leads to another, and Toby finds himself in a monk's garb, coming to the aid of a Jewish couple who are accused of murdering their daughter after a Catholic woman took her to a Christmas mass. Through a few interviews, Toby discovers that the girl is in fact dead, but that she succumbed to an illness. The rest of the novel consists of a plot to exonerate the innocent Jews.
I found it very interesting to see the historical juxtaposition of Catholics and Jews in England's middle ages, and I found Toby's intervention by Malchiah equally interesting. The problem with this novel is that I found its scope a bit limited. This is one of Rice's shortest novels, and as a result I felt that some of the plot might have been a bit rushed. Having said that, Rice did a fairly good job at characterization. The sudden religious devotion is explained well, in a way, but I did feel that after ten years as an assassin, Toby would have needed a little more convincing. Similarly, Toby's instant love for the Fluria, the accused mother, was somewhat off-putting.
Anne Rice fans who are accustomed to her vampires might be a bit disappointed in this novel, even though I found it worth reading. I'm sure fans of religious fiction will be split by this one. Some will applaud its innovation of religious ideas and redemptive qualities, while others will frown upon the novel's protagonist and untraditional treatment of religious matters.
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