Offering subsumed by exaltations of God

Cushla McKinney reviews Of Love and Evil, by Anne Rice, and Warm Bodies, by Isaac Marion.

Best known for her Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice has been writing gothic, erotic and religiously themed fiction since 1976.

Of Love and Evil is the second in a new series, ''The Songs of the Seraphim'', in which former assassin Toby O'Dare seeks to atone for his past in the service of a new master, the angel Malchiah.

In the first novel, Angel Time, Toby is sent to 13th-century England to defend falsely accused Jewish citizens. Now he must travel to 15th-century Rome to save a Jewish doctor from accusations of witchcraft and murder.

The doctor, Vitale, lives in a house haunted by a dybbuk, while one of his Gentile patients is wasting away in a most suspicious manner.

Toby must discover who is poisoning the ailing man and find a way to lay the restless spirit to rest before Vitale is condemned to prison or worse.

While there, Toby meets a mysterious man who seeks to persuade him that God, Heaven and Hell are mere superstitious beliefs that hold him back from further spiritual growth and learning.

However, he makes the mistake of attacking Toby's faith ''through reason, rather than [his] shaky self-control''.

Rejecting such arguments as invalid because the stranger (later revealed to be a devil) cannot prove the non-existence of God, Toby escapes the proffered temptation and returns to complete his mission, more certain of his faith than ever and determined to continue on the path to redemption.

Herein lies my biggest problem with the novel.

Although it returns to Rice's recurrent themes of good, evil and the search for meaning, it is florid, overblown and badly written.

Any semblance of story is subsumed by exaltations of God and the rejection of an atheistic world as barren, unconvincing and cold: ''I love You.
I love You who made all things and gave us all things and for You I will do anything, I will do what it is You want of me. Malchiah, take me. Take me for Him. Let me do His will!''

It may be that, having produced on average a book a year since the early '80's, Rice is writing on autopilot, or a reflection of the fact that in 2004 she decided to ''henceforth write only for the Lord''.

Whatever the reason, the end result is a novel that is not worth reading.

By contrast, Warm Bodies, by first time author Isaac Marion, is great fun.

Zombies are a familiar staple of B-grade horror fiction (World Zombie Day is celebrated in certain places), and one would expect that a novel told from the perspective of one would be, well, braindead.

Luckily, the narrator, R, is not your run-of-the-mill zombie.

Sure, he starts off normal, spending his time moaning, wandering around aimlessly (except when overcome by an insatiable need for food) and slowly decomposing.

But even though he has no idea who he is, how he died, or why he became a zombie, somewhere inside his turgid brain he still has questions and dreams.

And even he admits to an unusual facility for language; with difficulty he can string four syllables together.

One day on a hunting trip he bites into a freshly killed brain and in the few seconds during which his victim's life flashes before him, he relives the first meeting with a girl called Julie.

When he opens his eyes to see her staring terrified at him, he is overcome with an unaccountable desire to save her.

Thus begins a love story that will not only change them both, but also offers hope to the slowly rotting Dead and to the dwindling pockets of the survivors slowly losing their own humanity behind walls and barricades.

R is one of the most believable and genuine characters I have encountered for a long time.

A zombie and a gentleman, he is the perfect ambassador for the maligned and misunderstood beings so long parodied for the amusement of the Living.

Marion may be writing from personal experience, but one mustn't let prejudice get in the way.

Alive or Dead, I thoroughly look forward to what he offers us next.

• Dr McKinney is a Dunedin scientist.