Bonus Content
Of Love and Evil
I DREAMED A DREAM OF ANGELS. I SAW THEM AND I heard them in a great and endless galactic night. I saw the lights that were these angels, flying here and there, in streaks of irresistible brilliance, and some as great as comets which seemed to draw so close the fire might devour me, and yet I felt no heat. I felt no danger. I felt no self.
I felt love around me in this vast and seamless realm of sound and light. I felt intimately and completely known. I felt beloved and held and part of all I saw and heard. And yet I knew I deserved nothing of it, nothing. And something akin to sadness swept me up and mingled my very essence with the voices who sang, because the voices were singing of me.
I heard the voice of Malchiah rise high and brilliant and immense as he said that I must now belong to him, that I must now go with him. That he had chosen me as his companion and I must do what he would have me do. How strong and brilliant was his voice rising higher and higher. Yet there came against him a smaller voice, tender, lustrous, that sang of my life on earth and what I had to do; it sang of those who needed me and loved me; it sang of common things and common dreams, and pitted these with faultless courage against the great things which Malchiah sought to do.
Oh, that such a mingling of themes could be so very magnificent and this music should surround and enfold me as if it were a palpable and loving thing. I lay upon the breast of this music, and I heard Malchiah triumph as he claimed me, as he declared that I was his very own. The other voice was fading but not conceding. The other voice would never concede. The other voice had its own beauty and it would go on singing forever as it was singing now.
Other voices rose; or they had been there all the while. Other voices sang all around me and of me, and these voices vied with angelic voices as though answering them across a fathomless vault. It was a weave, these voices, angelic and other, and I knew suddenly that these were voices of people praying, praying for me. They were people who had prayed before and would pray after and in the far future and would always pray, and all these voices had to do with what I might become, of what I might be. Oh, sad, small soul that I was, and how very grand was it, this burning world in which I found myself, a world that makes the very word itself meaningless as all boundaries and all measures disappear.
There came to me the blessed knowledge that every living soul was the subject of this celebration, of this infinite and ceaseless chorus, that every soul was loved as I was loved, known now as I was known.
Excerpted from Of Love and Evil by Anne Rice Copyright © 2010 by Anne Rice. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Of Love and Evil
Anne Rice’s Songs of the Seraphim continues with a lyrical, haunting novel that once again summons up dark and dangerous worlds—in our time and in centuries past.
Toby O’Dare, former government assassin, is summoned by the angel Malchiah to 15th-century Rome to solve a terrible crime of poisoning, and to uncover the secrets of an earthbound restless spirit, a diabolical dybbuk. What begins as a mission fraught with dark plots and counterplots is soon marked by a darker and more dangerous threat as O’Dare is beset by a veil of ecclesiastical terror closing in around him.
As he embarks on a powerful journey of atonement, O’Dare is reconnected with his own past—and offered the promise of salvation and a deeper, richer vision of love.
Hardcover : 192 pages
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc./Random House ( November 30, 2010 )
Item #: 13-155850
ISBN: 9781400043545
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25 x 0.43inches
Product Weight: 11.0 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Irresistible & Completely Enraptured 
December 21, 2010
I’m a fan of Anne Rice books. For me her style of writing, and the way she tells a story are irresistible. I find myself completely enraptured in her novels. Like most of her fans, I do miss the novels of the Mayfair witches and the Vampire Lestat that she is so famous for. In my opinion, she will continue to be a talented and skilled author, and as long as she keeps writing I’m thrilled to keep reading her wonderful novels.
From reading the book jacket cover, I’m excited to find that Anne Rice will be taking me back to Rome. For Toby O’Dare he will find himself torn between the future he could have with his son and the woman he once loved, and the future of being one of the Children of the Angels. Malchiah’s charge and the occasional help from Toby’s guardian angel, Toby travels through Angel Time. He will not only need to solve a mystery in order to answer the desperate prayers of a Jewish man, but he will face evil and a part of himself that could have been.
As always Anne Rice does a fantastic job, keeping me up all night until I finish it. She concludes the second book of her series with a perfect cliffhanger that has me wanting more, and wanting it now. You will too.
Reviewer: Jimmy W
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