458 pages
English language
Published May 3, 2014 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
"The novel opens with the Vampire world in crisis ... vampires have been proliferating out of control; burnings have commenced all over the world, huge massacres similar to those carried out by Akasha in The Queen of the Damned ... Old vampires, roused from slumber in the earth are doing the bidding of a Voice commanding that they indiscriminately burn vampire-mavericks in cities from Paris and Mumbai to Hong Kong, Kyoto and San Francisco. As the novel moves from present day New York and the West Coast to Ancient Egypt, fourth century Carthage, 14th century Rome, the Venice of the Renaissance, the worlds and beings of all the Vampire Chronicles--from Louis de Pointe du Lac, the eternally young Armand whose face is that of a Boticelli angel; Mekare and Maharet, Pandora and Flavius; David Talbot, vampire and ultimate fixer from the Secret Talamasca, and Marius, the true child of the …
"The novel opens with the Vampire world in crisis ... vampires have been proliferating out of control; burnings have commenced all over the world, huge massacres similar to those carried out by Akasha in The Queen of the Damned ... Old vampires, roused from slumber in the earth are doing the bidding of a Voice commanding that they indiscriminately burn vampire-mavericks in cities from Paris and Mumbai to Hong Kong, Kyoto and San Francisco. As the novel moves from present day New York and the West Coast to Ancient Egypt, fourth century Carthage, 14th century Rome, the Venice of the Renaissance, the worlds and beings of all the Vampire Chronicles--from Louis de Pointe du Lac, the eternally young Armand whose face is that of a Boticelli angel; Mekare and Maharet, Pandora and Flavius; David Talbot, vampire and ultimate fixer from the Secret Talamasca, and Marius, the true child of the Millennia; along with all the other new seductive, supernatural creatures--come together in this large, luxuriant, fiercely ambitious novel to ultimately rise up and seek out who--or what--The Voice is, and to discover the secret of what it desires and why ... And, at the book's center, the seemingly absent, curiously missing hero-wanderer, the dazzling, dangerous rebel-outlaw--the great "hope" of the Undead, the dazzling Prince Lestat"--
Meh. A lot of rehashing of old stories. Skimmed through a lot of boring stuff. If I hadn't gone on a camping trip and needed something to read, I might not have finished.
Don't think there are spoilers, but just in case, there's a tag.
I adored the first few books in the series. I tolerated the next few, and fought hard to finish the remainder, don't think I even bothered with Blood Canticle.
'There's hope!' said the internet. 'Rice has regained some sanity and Jesus has let her know it's totally cool to write another sexy vampire book since she really needs that new jetski.' Well, alright! I'm in, baby. It's been over a decade since I last tried a Rice novel, more than willing to forget and forgive, let's DO THIS.
...and the book hasn't even begun and I'm starting to resent things. Do I really need a four-page section of definitions? Gorsh, what is an Mind Gift? Thank you for the capitals, but even had I not read any of the series before, I think I'd be able to work …
Don't think there are spoilers, but just in case, there's a tag.
I adored the first few books in the series. I tolerated the next few, and fought hard to finish the remainder, don't think I even bothered with Blood Canticle.
'There's hope!' said the internet. 'Rice has regained some sanity and Jesus has let her know it's totally cool to write another sexy vampire book since she really needs that new jetski.' Well, alright! I'm in, baby. It's been over a decade since I last tried a Rice novel, more than willing to forget and forgive, let's DO THIS.
...and the book hasn't even begun and I'm starting to resent things. Do I really need a four-page section of definitions? Gorsh, what is an Mind Gift? Thank you for the capitals, but even had I not read any of the series before, I think I'd be able to work out what all these silly terms are.
The silliness continues, however, and three quarters of the book is this incomprehensible word dump of introductions. Every vampire is the same; powerful, beautiful, cultured, tormented, well-dressed, and owns some sort of product that can be placed. They all speak in (and to) the same voice and are virtually indistinguishable, except for Davis, who is black. You'd miss it, only every time the word Davis appears it's coupled with black, dark, chocolate, of African descent, whatever. Good for you, Rice. That's totally not racist.
Then again, it may just be the lazy writing. Word count padding goes mad, every noun has a slew of adjectives and every name is as lengthy as it is ridiculous. Gremt Stryker Knollys, what what. Rice occasionally coins a phrase she finds delightful, high-fives herself, and repeats that phrase ad nauseum. Guys, life's a savage garden. The garden is savage. It's a bit savage, this garden of life. Yes, okay, noted, good one.
There are some bits that no one honestly expected anyone to actually read. Viz
"His Blood Wife, Zenobia, was a delicately built female with voluminous black hair and exquisite features; she brought into the house a universe of new learning, having been brought up in the palace of the Emperor of the East before being brought into the Blood by a wicked female named Eudoxia who had made war on Marius and ultimately lost."
There's one good chapter, the one about Rose. I enjoyed that. I turned pages willingly, to find out what happened. Might just have been Rice having a go at her church, though.
Once the painful exposition is done, finally, the novel crescendos into ... well, bugger-all, actually. Everything's repeated a few more times, reference all the other books again, something something Bose Speakers iPhone Pepsi, and it just sort of ends.
There is no plot. There is no character growth. There is nothing redeemable about this book for itself, the series, or author. A pointless and disappointing waste. Abandon all hope, ye who enter into this miserable excuse of a novel.
This is the first (and will probably be only) Anne Rice book I've read. I've enjoyed the films and thought this would be an enjoyable book, but sadly it wasn't. It was boring. The first half of the book was spent in character development, and the second half was spent with those characters acting against their developed characters. For a book to feel as long as this book felt, nothing much really happened. I almost stopped reading after the first few (LONG) chapters, but decided to stick with it, thinking it'd have to get better. The chapters got shorter, but the story never really took off. It's a very simple plot curve where it builds up to a climax, then the climax happens, then it fades out. No twists, no surprises, no mystery.
