The Wine of Angels [Import] [Hardcover]

Phil Rickman (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Macmillan (June 5, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0333644859
• ISBN-13: 978-0333644850
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,381,110 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Perfect Blend of Mystery, Thrills, and Character!, October 27, 2003

By 

Robin Currier - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Wine of Angels (A Merrily Watkins Mystery) (Paperback)

I have just discovered the Merrily Watkins series of novels, and I couldn't be more thrilled. Phil Rickman manages to create the perfect blend: interesting characters with a lot of depth, mystery with a tinge of the supernatural, and charming recreation of English village life.

In this particular book, Merrily (a priest in the Anglican church) scouts out the village that will be her next post, and participates in a seemingly harmless ritual in an ancient apple orchard. Although the ritual is meant to embue the orchard with new life and increase the apple harvest, it is enacted by a yuppie couple who only intend to promote commercialism in the village and increase tourism. Something goes very wrong, and an old man dies in a particularly horrible and bloody way.

Throughout the rest of the book, we see this dynamic tension between the modern world and the darker, "old" ways of the English countryside. While all this is going on, we get to know Merrily and her feisty daughter who both have their own problems adjusting to small village life. Rickman does a great job of keeping us on the edge of our seat, as we wonder how Merrily will resolve her position in the church with the undeniably powerful dark forces that confront her.

I must say that I never saw the ending coming, and was pleased by the clever resolution.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Merrily, Gomer, Jane, you are real, October 9, 2004

By 

J. Angus Macdonald "bibliovore" (Concord, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wine of Angels (A Merrily Watkins Mystery) (Paperback)

I have a deep and abiding love both of realistic characters and true horror in books. The problem is that both are terribly rare commodities. Phil Rickman, I must take my hat off to you for handling both.

I have read books with characters who are admirable, heroic, likeable, believable, but that is not quite the same thing as realistic. Take Merrily Watkins for an antidote, however. Merrily is a very real woman. She's 35, a widow, a vicar in the Anglican church, mother to a 15-year-old daughter (who is a delightful and exasperating handful herself), and struggling with a serious appointment in a very small town. Yes, she smokes; yes, she swears now and again, but these are not affectations. Instead, Merrily is a complex person, one with private inconsistencies that make sense as time goes by as well as deep truths that both drive and guide her. Merrily is no superheroine, no master-of-all-situations, but rather a very real, very vulnerable, very tough, very reactive human being trying to make the best of the oddities life has thrown at her. Sometimes she chooses brilliantly, sometimes not. But when all is said and done, what actions she takes and what thoughts she has make sense for the person that she is. She is not a character who serves a plot, but rather a person caught with words on a page. Outside of "War & Peace" and "Crime & Punishment" I have not run across characters I love so deeply and react to on such an intense, human level as those created by Phil Rickman in this series.

Now on to horror...

Most "horror" writers use a lot of red ink. Blood is everywhere, torture abounds, and even ghosts throw things about with alacrity. In point of fact, most horror writers seem more interested in gross than in the tiny thrill of true horror, that moment when something is just a touch wrong, and you know it, but you cannot put your fingers on it, thus making it all the more terrifying for not being able to describe it. Mr. Rickman, conversely, understands this true horror. While many Big Things happen in this book, often the horror aspects are easily explained away -- a person with a psychological hang-up, a nasty public confrontation, someone fed a story about, say, rather nasty faeries in the apple grove at just the right/wrong time. You never actually /see/ a ghost, but you feel them. There is death and mayhem in this book, but that is not the real horror. The horror is a combination of the all-too-human side of reality that people often wish to deny and the subtle, very, very subtle misplacement of the senses, especially of what Is and what Isn't.

Of the books in the series, I give this one 4 stars, although I would probably give 5 stars to the others. There are a few times in this book that the writing weakens, leaving you to scratch your head for a moment or two over just which character is talking or exactly where the plot is heading, but then it gets back on track very strongly and directly. The later books feel more comfortable, confident and controlled -- I wanted to rate this one because it is where people begin the series, though I may get around to the others as well. In the end, this is very strong, very realistic writing and well worth the read.

Give it a try -- what could you possibly have to lose?

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Corrupted in the Bottle, January 1, 2007

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wine of Angels (A Merrily Watkins Mystery) (Paperback)

The Wine of Angels is Phil Rickman's first Merrily Watkins story. I don't know if Rickman already saw where these stories would go or if he simply set out to write an eerie tale of the woman who, short order would become one of the Anglican Church's rarest breed, a Deliverance minister (an exorcist, in lay terms) but all the seeds for the series are here. For someone who started in the middle, like me, it is fascinating to see how the characters began their development.

Merrily Watkins came into the church late. She started out to become a lawyer, then a mother, and then the widow of a shady solicitor who went a few steps too far. Now, with her daughter Jane, Merrily has begun her first big assignment as vicar of Ledwardine - a cozy British country town undergoing gentrification with more than a few dark secrets of its own. They find themselves housed in a rattling old vicarage which, if not haunted, still bears the echoes of a 17th Century vicar who became a tragic figure in a witch hunt and committed suicide in the nearby orchard rather than face trial. Or so it appears, anyway.

When a modern playwright decides to retell this as the persecution of a homosexual in a time that lacked any understanding the village erupts in a tempest. The argument pits newcomers against families that are centuries old and Merrily quickly discovers that there are more than a few skeletons in this particular closet. Even as this develops, Jane befriends a troublesome woman who, at the age of 16, has all the worldliness that Jane still lacks. When this woman suddenly disappears Jane, somehow psychically connected to the orchard, senses that this is no case of running away, but that something much darker lurks.

The stories intertwine, involving a musician who is subject to deep depression and an older woman of distinctly 'pagan' (as Merrily puts it) spirituality. As events hurtle to a climax, Merrily finds her faith tested time and again as she tries to overcome the hurdles must confront a woman assigned as vicar to a rural community and keep her relationship with Jane from exploding on its own.

I like Phil Rickman's horror well in general, but for some reason, his best writing happens in these stories of a woman facing challenges mysterious and spiritual. While these aren't really horror stories, many will generate chills as they confront evils that are partly spiritual, but mostly human. Rickman's characters read naturally as they confront both modern issues and dark corners of the soul that often have roots centuries in the past. This cross-genre mix works well under Rickman's control, creating 600 page novels that are impossible to put down.