In the early 1990s, Charles de Lint wrote and published three dark fantasies under the name "Samuel M. Key." Now, beginning with Angel of Darkness, Orb presents them for the first time under de Lint's own name.
When ex-cop Jack Keller finds the mutilated body of a runaway girl in the ashes of a bizarre house fire, he opens the door to a nightmare. For a sadistic experiment in terror has unleashed a dark avenging angel forged from the agonies of countless dying victims....
My Review:
Get ready to see a different side of Charles de Lint when you read this book. Just a warning, this book is graphic and has disturbing subject matter (sexual and violent). There is also explicit language. If that doesn't bother you then I recommend reading it. De Lint is known for using the power of music in many of his stories. It serves as a fountain of magic that can either help or hinder his characters. He employs the same theme in this book, but it plays a much much darker note.
In Angel of Darkness, the line of real/unreal and victim/criminal is blurred. De Lint's characters are never quite on steady ground and this feeling of uncertainty definitely transfers to the reader. His sense of setting, as always, is outstanding. After reading this book, my respect for him as a writer has doubled. He creates several characters that are ROTTEN. Awful, despicable, rotten. And de Lint's ability to get completely inside the head of someone like that then jump back to a "normal" character's point-of-view is pretty amazing. He nails everything, from the psychology of that character, their motivations and the thoughts running through their head. I wouldn't be surprised if he needed a long shower and a smudging after writing these particular sections.
More than anything, this book gives a voice to victims. It opens your eyes to the things they have to endure and how difficult it can be for some of these people to break away from that victimhood, no matter how hard they try. This, ultimately, gives the book a feeling of sadness. Read this book with the intention of opening your eyes to a side of this world that we usually prefer to ignore.
The Author
Favorite Quote: (from the Introduction) "Mostly, the darker sections of my novels arrive from the human psyche, with the magical elements playing against the shadow. But the Otherworld contains as much darkness as it does ambiguity and light, and to ignore it entirely strikes me as only telling half the story, hence the books I wrote under the pen name Samuel M. Key. Angel of Darkness originally had a working title of The Killing Time, and it wasn't a book I enjoyed writing- its shadows held on too long after the day's work at the keyboard was done- but I felt compelled to write it all the same. There's no other reason to write a book, as far as I'm concerned."
