An insightful read with similarities to C.S. Lewis
One has to be careful when dealing with angels - or demons, for that matter - because not much is given to us in God's Word, but Blamires does a good job in this work. He does not focus so much on the nature of those spiritual beings as he does on the nature of Christians' spiritual status today (as true in the 21st Century as it was in the 20th).
Lamiel, a Guardian angel, guides the nameless protagonist on a trip through Purgatory. The basis of the story is to contrast good and right Christian thinking with fallacious, nominally-Christian thinking as the angel Lamiel explains how a Christian should think and act. Questions concerning Man, faith, nature, angels and demons, as well as God Himself are raised and thoroughly discussed. One such discussion came at the beginning of the book, where Lamiel berates the protagonist for "vaporizing" spiritual beings - in essence, making them less than real by picturing them as transparent globules of mist - and states rather vaguely that he hopes the narrator hasn't gone so far as to vaporize God. It brings out in an ominous way how Christians often stress that spiritual beings don't have physical bodies, and, though that is a correct premise, come away with fallacious ideas.
Even if the reader doesn't believe in Purgatory, or at least Blamires' representation of Purgatory, the philosophy in the book makes it a worthy read. The writing is excellent, with a touch of satire added to the philosophical mix, and it makes one think. It's also a good book to read alongside C.S. Lewis' 'The Screwtape Letters', by which Blamires was very impressed.
