Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim (Anne Rice) [AUDIOBOOK] [UNABRIDGED] (Audio CD)

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A Q&A with Anne Rice

Question: You’ve written about many kinds of immortal or supernatural beings. What inspired you to turn to angels in this new book?

Anne Rice: I have always been fascinated by the idea of angels--these perfect beings who are God’s messengers, sinless, bold, and unfathomable to the human mind. I was deliciously challenged to be biblically correct about them, and theologically correct: to present Malchiah as truly perfect, yet sent to interact with my hero Toby, and commissioned therefore to take a human body and reflect human emotions and respond to Toby’s human emotions.

Question: How did imagining a character like Malchiah the angel differ from creating one like the vampire Lestat?

Anne Rice: Well, again, Malchiah is perfect and sinless. And to make such a character appealing is a challenge; he has to reflect God’s love for human beings, God’s compassion. He’s not sent to judge Toby; he’s sent to guide him to salvation, and to enlist Toby in working for the angels on earth. He must feel things; he must have a personality, but with marvelous theological constraints. Doing Lestat was entirely different: Lestat is sinful and ferociously human, a rebel who wants to be good at being bad; a rebel who is seeking redemption but turning away from it all the time. There is a certain joy in writing about Malchiah because he is sent from God. There was never a perfect joy in writing about Lestat: Lestat suffers too much and does too many bad things with relish.

Question: The hero of Angel Time is Toby O’Dare, a boy who had a tough life growing up in New Orleans and who goes on to become a skilled assassin before meeting Malchiah. How does Toby compare to your past protagonists? What is unique about him?

Anne Rice: Well, Toby is deeply flawed, much like the vampires. He’s an assassin, and he has done terrible things, and questionable things. But he turns around in the very first book of the series and sets out to do the bidding of the angels in helping others. I think of all those characters I’ve created, Toby is most like Michael Curry in The Witching Hour. But Toby has done things Michael would never do. Toby is a deeply flawed human who is offered a chance to be saved; and he takes it. Maybe he’s a first among my characters in that he is given an opportunity to redeem himself through the mercy of God, and then to do good to make up for all the evil he had done before. Toby is also a crafty character. He’s pragmatic. Having been a clever assassin, he knows how to plot to do good. That was interesting to me, to have him struggling to save people from harm, and having to figure out a somewhat complex way to do it.

Question: People who have read your memoir Called Out of Darkness will recognize some elements of your own life in Toby’s story. Did you identify with him as a character?

Anne Rice: Yes, I did identify with Toby, though my life has been nothing like his. I know what it is like to struggle with an alcoholic parent; I know what it is like to care for younger siblings in an alcoholic household. But of course Toby suffers a family tragedy that I didn’t suffer, and he turns to evil in a defiant way, whereas I only turned to writing about evil.

Question: How did you imagine the concept of Angel Time (as opposed to Normal Time)? And what sources did you reference while reading about angels?

Anne Rice: I came up with the concept of Angel Time through meditating on it; really, figuring that from God’s standpoint there is no linear time. I felt certain that the angels would be able to move back and forth in our linear time, and to grasp how some one can be lifted from one century and put down in another to work a solution that then becomes part of the very future from which the original person came. I think meditation led to this definition of Angel Time, more than any actual reading. It seemed logical to me that the angels could do this. I did read theology about angels, of course, including St. Thomas Aquinas and books by Catholic writers who have studied angels and all the biblical references to them. It all starts with the Bible, of course and how angels appear in those pages. But the scholars Pascal Parente and Peter Kreeft help me to cover the sources. I stayed away from other writers’ more fanciful conjectures about angels. I wanted the biblical facts, and the way that the theologians interpreted them.

Question: People are clearly fascinated with angels. Why do you think even those people who do not consider themselves religious are so drawn to the idea of angels?

Anne Rice: People are drawn to angels because there is a deep seated instinctive belief that they do exist, that creatures from Heaven are here on Earth looking out for us and playing a special role in our care. Of course we read of this in the Bible. And it is a very seductive idea. It’s sometimes easier to pray to one’s guardian angel than to pray to the saints or even to the Lord. It’s easy to imagine that our guardian angel is right here with us. In my novel, Toby really does believe this, though after he suffered tragedy, he blamed the angels in charge for not stopping it. And he lived as a cursed human being for ten years.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by Lloyd Rose "There were omens from the beginning," Anne Rice's "Angel Time" begins. It's a nice first sentence for a mystical thriller: forebodings of doom, promises of supernatural happenings to come. The first-person narrator is the melodramatically named Toby O'Dare, a preternaturally gifted hit man with a black hole where his soul should be. Yet Toby isn't sadistic or pathological. The blackness is despair. "Who I am was nobody," he tells us, on the way to his next kill. Toby lost his moral self years ago in New Orleans (naturally, this being Anne Rice). He was corrupted not by vampires but by ordinary horror: a suffering family that he, only an adolescent, couldn't save. Raised a Catholic, he abandoned his faith and discovered a talent for murder. As the book opens, he's cut back to a single client, someone he calls The Right Man, who tells him, "Kid, you're working for The Good Guys." Toby idly speculates that this might mean the FBI or Interpol and that, just possibly, what he's doing might be "meaningful." But he doesn't really believe this. "I committed murder. I did it for a living. I did it for no reason at all except to go on living. I killed people. I killed them without warning and without an explanation as to why I did it. The Right Man might have been one of The Good Guys, but I certainly was not." Shortly after this confession, armed with a gun, two syringes and a thin, sharp piece of plastic, he enters a hotel and disposes of a guest, probably a German Swiss banker, but Toby doesn't really know and certainly doesn't care. At this point, an angel shows up. Turns out that first sentence wasn't ominous after all. This is a book of good omens, and Toby is on his way to salvation. The argument can be made -- Rice herself has made it -- that almost all of Rice's previous work was about souls lost in evil and looking for a way out. That sense of desperation was what made her books more than just soft-porn vampiric fun. (In the movie of "Interview With the Vampire," Brad Pitt was so glum with guilt that he almost ruined any fun there was.) She dared to use pulp fiction to treat the most serious matters, even the death of her young daughter. Her fictional world was perfectly realized in the overripe, decaying beauty of New Orleans with its sensuality of rot. The skull beneath the skin in Rice's books isn't a matter of horror-movie scares, it's a true memento mori, a warning. Toby O'Dare heeds the warning and finds his way out. But even when he's still a killer, he's less interesting than Rice's previous hero-villains -- depressed and dry, with just the occasional flicker of pleasure, and this derived only from non-fleshly beauty such as flowers and architecture and playing the lute. Once redeemed, Toby succumbs to a problem as old as "Paradise Lost," in which Milton's Satan nearly steals the epic from Jesus. However preferable they are to deal with in life, virtuous characters in literature tend toward the dull. It doesn't help "Angel Time" that Toby plunges into what seems to be a completely different novel when he's sent to 13th-century Norwich to help the city's Jewish community, victims of blood libel. He meets good Christians and bad Christians, a beautiful Jewish woman and her religiously rigid father, a monk with a scandalous past. There is a great deal of worthy conversation about the necessity of fellowship between Jews and Christians. Almost everyone is well-meaning and trying hard to do his or her best. The earnestness is deadly. By the time Toby accomplishes his mission, the life has drained out of the book. Save your soul, damn your art. It's impossible to doubt the sincerity of Rice's religious feelings or to ignore a new authorial serenity. But it's the grind of conflict that energizes a good novel. "Angel Time" isn't a story so much as a message: Fear not, even the most depraved human being is loved by God and can find peace and purpose in accepting Him. Thus endeth the lesson. [e-mail]
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Random House Audio; Unabridged edition (October 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739316087
• ISBN-13: 978-0739316085
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #18,739 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

116 of 123 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Listening for the Songs of the Seraphim, August 6, 2009

By	Cissy Rae (North Central Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim (Hardcover)

I just finished an advanced reading copy of Anne Rice's "Angel Time." I've never read an Anne Rice book before, and almost passed it by, but I was intrigued by the medieval aspect mentioned on the jacket blurb.

I literally held my breath throughout the entire book. It was "unputdownable." The suspension of disbelief necessary to accept the concept of an angel or "heavenly being" in an earthly reality is not so farfetched with Rice's masterful development - I could easily imagine the "songs of the Seraphim" from her detailed descriptions. The senses of character, place and time enveloped the reading. The dénouement was amazing and showed perfect symmetry; I didn't imagine - much less predict - the fantastic ending. Toby O'Dare's personal quest was the most compelling aspect, and Rice's Catholic background and research is reflected in his every thought, word and deed.

I'll make a point of reading Rice's books now, and will encourage others to do the same. Recommended for Rice fans, those interested in medieval England and France, Catholic history and concepts, angels and heavenly beings and - in an understated but very present way - the relationship of architecture to the spiritual journey.

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Anne Rice - Angel Time, October 4, 2009

By	DJ Deathwish (Tucson, AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim (Hardcover)

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I really like the story here and how the first and second halves of the book tied together, seeing as how they were so different. Those most familiar with Rice's earlier works may have some issues with the material being so preachy, and it didn't bother me too much, but it does hurt the story a bit in my eyes. If you are of a religious persuasion, you may enjoy it, but I'm not and it did come off a tad bit trite from my viewpoint. It is expertly written and extremely vivid, much like her earlier, more Gothic pieces, so that's definitely another plus. The pace of the book is nothing short of brilliant for the first half but it did start to drag in the second, not too bad but it was noticeable. Overall this is a great book and allows the imagination to flourish but I just couldn't get into all of the religious aspects.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring and Clever, October 8, 2009

By	Conrad Alan "con" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim (Hardcover)

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Angel Time is a pleasantly short read. A nice side-step from her previous novels, though staying somewhat in the periphery of her vampire classics. This novel is the first of the metaphysical thrillers that sets up a new saga (The Songs of the Seraphim).

A bit of a redemption story, the main character (Lucky the Fox) is in a constant battle of moral reflection and introspection. A contract killer by trade, his guardian angel offers a chance to redeem himself. Then comes some history (in the form of time-travel). A bit "awkward" for my taste, but the storyline remained interesting nevertheless.

The story of Lucky somewhat mirrors a similar tragic history as her other main character (ie. Louis of Interview with the Vampire). The life of an innocent young child raised by a devout catholic family, the sudden loss of family members, fighting through a wrecked and violent childhood, the temptation of dark forces, eventually succumbing to the lure that changes them into creatures of darkness (vampire or assasin).

I found the storyline to be a bit disjointed at times. Other than that, I enjoyed reading this book, and anxiously looking forward to the series.