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Book Summary and Reviews of Of Love and Evil by Anne Rice

Of Love and Evil by Anne Rice

Of Love and Evil

by Anne Rice

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  • Nov 2010, 160 pages
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Book Summary

"I dreamed a dream of angels. I saw them and 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 ... I felt love around me in this vast and seamless realm of sound and light ... 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 ..."

Thus begins Anne Rice's lyrical, haunting new novel, a metaphysical thriller of angels and assassins that once again summons up dark and dangerous worlds set in times past. Anne Rice takes us to other realms, this time to the world of fifteenth-century Rome, a city of domes and rooftop gardens, rising towers and crosses beneath an ever-shifting layer of clouds; familiar hills and tall pines ... of Michelangelo and Raphael, of the Holy Inquisition and of Leo X, second son of a Medici, holding forth from the papal throne ...

And into this time, into this century, Toby O’Dare, former government assassin, is summoned by the angel Malchiah to solve a terrible crime of poisoning and to search out the truth of a haunting by an earthbound restless spirit—a diabolical dybbuk.

O’Dare soon discovers himself in the midst of dark plots and counterplots surrounded by a darker and more dangerous threat as the veil of ecclesiastical terror closes in around him.

As he embarks on a powerful journey of atonement, O’Dare is reconnected with his own past, with matters light and dark, fierce and tender, with the promise of salvation and with a deeper and richer vision of love.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Readers who enjoy Rice’s larger-than-life tales and elegant writing will find much to appreciate here, and the cliff-hanger ending will leave fans eager for the next installment." - Booklist

"Though the plot is surprisingly similar to that of its predecessor, Rice's fans will easily succumb to the charm of her lapidary prose and a cliffhanger ending that sets up the next book in the series." - Publishers Weekly

"This metaphysical thriller will appeal to historical fiction fans and Christian fiction readers, but it still feels a little flat and will disappoint fans of Rice's vampire fiction." - Library Journal

"Starred Review. The plot's intense; equally so are Rice's meditations, while never breaking the seamlessness of the story line, on the nature of love and evil.A bullet of a book—and an absolute bull's eye." - Kirkus

This information about Of Love and Evil was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Anne Rice Author Biography

Photo: Becket M. Ghioto

Born Howard Allen O'Brien on October 4, 1941 in New Orleans, LA. Anne Rice chose the first name "Anne" as a child. She married Stan Rice in 1961, and their daughter Michele was born in 1966. Sadly Michele died of leukemia at the age of 5.

Anne wrote her first published novel, Interview With A Vampire, in 1973. A son, Christopher, was born in 1978 (now an established author in his own right). After living in Texas and San Francisco, Anne settled in New Orleans. However, after Stan died from a brain tumor she moved to California, where she currently lives.

She has written under three names: her own, Anne Rampling, and A. N. Roquelaure. Under her own name, she has written The Vampire Chronicles series, The Mayfair Witches, the New Tales of the Vampires series, and numerous single novels...

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