Reviewed by Stephen K
TITLE: T.A.D.
AUTHOR: M.D. Neu
NARRATOR: Steve Conner
PUBLISHER: M.D. Neu
LENGTH: 5 Hours 47 Minutes
RELEASE DATE: May 18th 2021
BLURB:
Tad bounces around in time and watches mankind grow and change. He loves humanity and helping when he can. However, his job isn’t conducive to helping people—he’s an Angel of Death.
Doug is a fun-loving drama queen. He’s an amazing drag queen and hairstylist with big dreams, but despite his witty exterior, he has a dark history and is prone to self-destruction.
When Tad pushes the boundaries of his duties too far, his wings are stripped away from him, and he is sent to New York City to live as a human. Lost and alone he ends up meeting Doug, and they start a friendship that shapes them both and may last a lifetime. But nothing is simple when you’re dealing with a former Angel of Death and a Drag Queen. Could these two cause the fabric of our world to collapse or will they manage to keep the future as it should?
REVIEW:
I volunteered to listen to this and review it with a profound sense of trepidation. While it’s been 20 years since the events of 9/11, I was worried that they might not be treated with the respect that they deserved. I lost friends and co-workers in the attacks. In fact, if I’d gone into work early that day, I’d not be here now. My office was on the 94th floor of Tower One. All my co-workers that had already gotten to work were lost.
That said, this book uses that event as just an opening event in a whimsical and telling tale about angels and saving lives. It isn’t disrespectful of what happened on that day. In fact the tale revolves around an “Angel of Death” that is stripped of his wings for lowering the body-count that day. As a result of his punishment, the angel finds himself a homeless man on the streets of NYC. Now it’s a year after the fateful events and this tale revolves around the drag queen that took him in.
Doug is slightly overweight drag queen and hairdresser who takes in this fallen angel calling him TAD. Though Tad is beautiful, he’s asexual. He has no sexual desire and doesn’t quite understand human desire.
While this is partly an allegory it is also a tale of humanity. With the advantage of being partly from the viewpoint of an innocent, unworldly outsider, one can see and say things about the human condition that we insiders seldom realize. Who’s better to explore what it means to be human than someone who never has been?
In spots this is a poignant portrait of man’s inhumanity to man. In other’s it’s a portrait on just one man’s life. They say that “Fate works in mysterious ways”, but when Fate asks for Doug’s help in this tale, one questions where it will all lead.
This tale out of time lacked some of the cohesiveness of more standard plot-lines. At points it’s confusing and one feels like it should be better ordered. But then, that’s true of life as well.
This audiobook is narrated by Steve Connor in an upbeat manner that reveals his history as a children’s book narrator. The prose narrative is clear and well paced and the different character voices are distinct without being over-done. Connor’s narration style wouldn’t work for every tale, but it’s perfect for this one. It adds emphasis to the “moral fable” aspects of the story. This Audio-book is outside the norm in a number of ways, and won’t be to all tastes. But I enjoyed it, and I expect that those for a taste for things outside the norm will as well.
RATING: 
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