My friend Marci gave me a hard time recently about my comments about Anne Rice. She said that Anne is now a Christian and has written fiction novels about Jesus. Once I picked my jaw up off the ground, I went straight to the library to get this mysterious book.I came home with “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt: A Novel“, the first in a trilogy (a book about Jesus is a trilogy – HA!) of books that tell the Christ story in the first person.

I have never been a fan of Rice since I read two of her “Sleeping Beauty” series which was essentially book pornography (I can’t resist reading something that’s been banned, but her “Sleeping Beauty” books were a bit different from “Catcher in the Rye” or “1984″). And I got sick of all the vampire books when that was all the rage. Could a woman who turned my favorite Disney movie into porn and who created the Vampire Lestat write a real book about Jesus? Can you tell that I was skeptical?

I was also dead wrong.

I thought the book would be total crap. It isn’t. While it’s not the best book I’ve ever read, it’s enjoyable, interesting and intriguing. She uses tons of Biblical references so I believe she really did her research (and she provides a great bibliography at the end for further reading). Can she possibly write two more books on this topic? I hope she does and I look forward to reading them.

If you enjoy Biblical fiction, “The Red Tent: A Novel” by Anita Diamant is fantastic. For completely weird and non-Biblical fiction (but on a religious topic), try “Pope Joan: A Novel” by Donna Cross or “The Da Vinci code: A novel” by Dan Brown. Both are fairly ridiculous but quick moving stories that have very creative premises.