Anne Rice, most widely known for her grotesquely haunting novels involving vampires and witches, once again explores her notion of the connection between theology and the paranormal in her twenty-ninth novel. Her new tale, Angel Time, focuses on an intensely crafted internal battle involving morality and the individual’s quest for redemption and salvation. This novel deals with Rice’s personal views influenced by her sense of Catholicism, and Angel Time is in many ways a strong Biblical allegory. However, fans of the Vampire Chronicles will still be able to sink their teeth into the story, with Rice’s characteristic agonizingly disquieting tone, leaving readers with a sense of eerie silence.

Originally set in New Orleans, Angel Time tells the story of a habitual assassin Toby O’Dare, known as Lucky the fox due to his stealth and ability to avoid capture. Toby, although overtly admitting his lack of remorse and feelings of power and immortality attained through the act of murder, internally struggles with a sense of sorrowful culpability.

With his personal prayers, Toby unknowingly calls on Malchiah, a seraph, and Toby’s guardian angel. Through a series of intense and loving persuasion, Toby agrees to abandon his life characterized by violence and accept God’s grace and forgiveness. Malchiah then transports Toby to the English Middle Ages, where he assumes the role of a Dominican Priest and is given the duty of helping a Jewish family subjected to persecution, as a way of repenting his sins.

With Rice’s uniquely crafted style, she masters the use of dichotomies both as a writer and within the plot of her stories. Angel Time deals with the classic literary archetypes of angels as spiritual messengers and the common separation between good and evil and God versus demonic energy. The use of dichotomies can also be sharply used in a discussion concerning her writing history and past novels. This is evident in her shift from subjects involving demonic vampirism to her more recent work with Christian texts. However, both her Christian and gothic horror texts focus on the protagonist’s quest for enlightening purpose and forgiveness from a higher power.

Although Rice’s views concerning salvation through belief and faith may serve as a source of comfort for many (and the concept of guardian angels is placating and irrevocably soothing), Angel Time seems highly propagating and indoctrinating. Through the course of the plot, Rice is essentially asking her readers to believe in the possibility of ultimate forgiveness for all, even those who commit horrendous crimes in the repeated cessation of life. Rice’s religious fervency is sincerely portrayed through Toby, and the novel reads more like a sermon than a dramatic thriller.

Despite its overtly preachy purpose and intent, Angel Time does possess some redeeming qualities in its exploration of medieval lore, Catholic history and a strongly developed message dealing with the needed Christian acceptance and tolerance of the Jewish community. Thus, if reading the novel with these positive aspects in mind, Rice’s Angel Time is worth the effort.