All that title means is that I’m feeling a bit silly tonight.  Maybe because posting here buys me a break from the big re-drafting of my novel, a process I started about a week ago.  I wrote a new opening scene that I’m pretty happy with, but it’s hard people, hard!

In the meantime, I continue reading.  I recently finished Anne Rice’s ANGEL TIME, and I’ll share my impressions here.

A brief synopsis:  ANGEL TIME is the story of a hitman named Toby O’Dare who is visited by an angel and given a chance to redeem himself by traveling back to 13th century England to save a community of persecuted Jews.

My previous attempts to read Anne Rice were aborted after the first twenty or so pages.  Having gotten through ANGEL TIME from cover to cover, I’m feeling more positively disposed to Ms. Rice.  I think she’s at her best when she’s “telling” versus “showing.”  She writes long, introspective passages that at times achieve brilliance.   Against her LeStat series, ANGEL TIME is a comparatively slim volume, which is perhaps why I didn’t have as hard a time with it.

But on the whole, I could’ve done with less exposition and less of Toby O’Dare’s constant contemplation.  The first half of the book is almost entirely backstory – a compelling backstory for sure, but rendered at a pace that left me anxious for some action.  The second half, which deals with Toby’s mission to save a Jewish family falsely accused of murdering their daughter (a common circumstance during the Christian fanaticism of 13th century Europe), moves along with much more suspense and intrigue.   The story rings true, the characters come to life, and it makes for enjoyable historical fiction.

I do have a new appreciation for Anne Rice’s unique sensibility, which appeals to so many gay men.  Her toughened hitman Toby plays the lute!  I thought that was pretty damn cool.  Plus Toby cries, both in sorrow and happiness, through something like 25 percent of the story, and he has a deep emotional connection to his angel savior Malchiah.  One could imagine that something more than loving reverence could develop between the two (maybe it’s forthcoming in the series’ next installment).  Anyway, as a reader, I felt that somewhere in ANGEL TIME’s tragic, supernatural world, there was a place for me, and that’s big props to the author and quite unexpected.

It’s hard to evaluate ANGEL TIME without dealing with Anne Rice’s strident religiosity.  She has publicly and self-righteously announced that she has given up writing about vampires and witches in order to devote her literary projects to Jesus.  As such her portrayal of angels is literal, with few surprises, and gets a bit “message-y” for us non-Christian readers.  Let me qualify that.  I don’t mind novels with a message, but I veer away from stories where the message is accept Jesus as your lord and savior or perish in eternal hell.  There’s some of that familiar refrain in ANGEL TIME.  But the story also speaks to the possibility of redemption even for those who have done “unforgivable” things, an intriguing concept that I think resonates beyond the Christian community.