Tuesday, January 03, 2006

interview with a christmas card

Well, I finished the Anne Rice book. It's not bad. A little slow moving at first. But Rice actually manages to build some tension in the story (which is pretty amazing especially considering the novel starts when Christ (as) is seven-years old and only covers about a year.) The book is fleshed out with plenty of mundane historical detail to give the reader a good sense of what life was like in Palestine and Egypt of that era.

In the second half of the novel, Rice continues with more Smallville-ish moments where Jesus alludes to or has interactions with characters we know will play larger roles later in the story.

The other remarkable aspeect to the novel is the way in which Rice sticks literally to the most conventional elements of the story, from the Wise Men, to the star, to angels saying "Glory to God in the Highest", even to the length of saying it snowed in Bethlehem on the night of Christ's birth!

Given the job Anne Rice did with this first slice of the story, I think it will be interesting to see what she does with the later years.

see christ: the prequel

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've been meaning to read that--it's sitting on our bookshelf. I read a few chapters and was interested to see that she draws on some of the Gnostic infancy gospels for her descriptions of Jesus' childhood. For instance, the little boy he kills and brings back to life. It will be interesting to see where she goes with this series.