Book Review: A Time of Angels by Patricia Schonstein
A Time of Angels isn't really about angels at
all. There is one actual angel who makes an appearance, and perhaps the
title is meant to refer to our main characters, but they are far from
angelic. The core of the book is the love triangle between Primo (a
psychic), Pasquale (a chef) and the lovely Beatrice, the woman loved by
both.
Some time long before the book begins, Pasquale and
Beatrice were lovers, but Pasquale was a well known womanizer, and Primo
loved her true. He proposed, they wed and lived happily enough. The
three of them maintained a strong friendship until one day when Primo
was away on a trip, Pasquale invited Beatrice over and she chose to stay
with him.
Primo responds like any sane man would - by casting
spells on Pasquale and summoning Lucifer. Ok, the last part was by
accident, but that's really the best part of the book. The main
characters and the side ones are all obsessive in their own ways except
perhaps Beatrice. She's probably the weakest character and doesn't do a
lot more than switch lovers. She's not entirely unlikeable, but the
other characters are far more interesting. They include Paschale's
sister who runs a brothel and another woman who specializes in bondage.
But you want to know about Lucifer, right? And all the evil he wreaks upon the town?
Actually,
he isn't evil. The real gift of the book is perhaps one of the most
interesting interpretations of hell, heaven, and Lucifer's role in the
universe. He is not evil, nor a torturer, but a gatekeeper. In the
afterlife, humans are either sent up to heaven, or if they are "bad" or
"evil", they are quarantined. Those who are bad exist in a pre-hell of
sorts that they can earn their way out of if they choose, while the
truly evil are locked away for eternity in a mysterious Tartarus.
The
drawback of the tale is the ending. A mark of a good story is one that
ends leaving you satisfied and yet still wanting more. Well this one
achieves the latter, but not the former. The book stops rather abruptly
and I actually flipped around the end seeing if perhaps I had missed a
short chapter or few pages or something.
Overall, it's a nice easy thought provoking read worth checking out.
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