Katherine’s parents met singing opera and started taking her to choir practice when she was six weeks old. She attended four elementary schools and four high schools before getting master’s degrees in art and library science. So naturally she works in IT, abusing SQL Server for fun and profit. When she’s not working or writing, she’s probably playing the Sims or spoiling cats. Her greatest ambition is to rule the world.
Ezra Friedman sees ghosts, which made growing up in a funeral home complicated. It might …
Did you like my book? You'll like this one!
5 stars
Deep dive into Jewish customs? Check. LGBTQIA rep? Check. Wholesome romance? Pets? Grief? Check.
Didn’t read my book?
Well, you’ll still like the sweet romance between a Jewish trans man and the cute boy next door… who is also his rabbi’s son’s widower. When Ezra is furloughed and his family’s Jewish funeral home is unexpectedly short-handed, Ezra has to pitch in… even though he can see ghosts. Awkward!
After her grandmother is murdered in a home invasion, Tamsin Culver leaves her cushy programming …
Weird but fun
4 stars
This was a weird book. Space opera, very Buck Rogers but with kink. It was odd enough that I didn’t fully commit to it and kept setting it aside and reading other books, but… overall, fun.
If you’re looking for deep or heavy, or are offended by sexual content, this is not for you.
If you’re looking for silly metaverse adventures with two dommes fighting over the California grad student sub… 🤷🏻♀️ Honestly, it’s weird enough that I hesitate to recommend it to EVERYONE. Hopefully it’ll find its people. (Are YOU its people? I hope so!)
"The novel opens with the Vampire world in crisis ... vampires have been proliferating out …
Prince Lestat
4 stars
I struggled to really get into this book. I ended up liking it a lot! But also she introduced A LOT of new characters with little five to ten page chapters dumping their backstories. So many characters! So many backstories, before I’ve grown to know them!
But in general, if you’re the kind of fan who will squee that Antoine finally gets a chapter of his own… you’ll like it.
So, I love epistolary novels, and do appreciate An Attempt To Be Art, so stylistically I’m down for this! I also enjoyed the historical periods, and the casual reference to “the Harkers.” Also, I do like the concept.
But psychologically…
1. Too much insta-love. Honestly, it’s off-putting. 2. As someone whose parents are both dead, I would have expected more grieving from Constanta.
The emotion Constanta is feeling when Dracula rescues her and enables her to take her revenge? That’s gratitude, or should be, rather than love. Am I supposed to read this as Dracula’s gaslighting? He’s manipulative enough, but I expect more self-awareness because this isn’t written in the moment, but after she’s murdered him.
Er, after the one with the aliens I wasn’t sure I was ready to read this, but… I liked it! I might have been over-generous because it’s the last and also not as cracktastic as the previous one, but…
There were a few minor points of things I didn’t like, but… in general, I (sorry) appreciated the shipping. It tied up the series as a journey from isolation to community.
Things I didn’t like (in a good way): Benedict’s death—genuinely horrific. People thinking Gabrielle, Louis, and Marius were dead (but if Alessandra and Magnus came back, surely Anne wouldn’t do that to us in the last book!).
Things I didn’t like (in a bad way): Lestat famously preferred drinking evildoers until the previous book, where Amel hounded him for “innocent blood” and now that Amel is gone he’s still preferring “innocent blood” now? Boo!
I’m torn on Lestat having to …
Er, after the one with the aliens I wasn’t sure I was ready to read this, but… I liked it! I might have been over-generous because it’s the last and also not as cracktastic as the previous one, but…
There were a few minor points of things I didn’t like, but… in general, I (sorry) appreciated the shipping. It tied up the series as a journey from isolation to community.
Things I didn’t like (in a good way): Benedict’s death—genuinely horrific. People thinking Gabrielle, Louis, and Marius were dead (but if Alessandra and Magnus came back, surely Anne wouldn’t do that to us in the last book!).
Things I didn’t like (in a bad way): Lestat famously preferred drinking evildoers until the previous book, where Amel hounded him for “innocent blood” and now that Amel is gone he’s still preferring “innocent blood” now? Boo!
I’m torn on Lestat having to make the hard decisions, provide evildoer humans for his new baby vampires to drink, order deaths, etc. Anne was always pretty insistent that they’re monsters, though. I was most dismayed by Kapetria (sp?) offering her almost will-free offspring as eternal lunch. I…. Oh boy. I… am not certain this meets my ethical standards.
I’m honestly not sure what to say about this one. I think I need to sit with it for a while.
I will say: Anne seems to love all her characters unconditionally, even when doing so doesn’t seem to make sense.
[Edited to add]
Okay.
Anne Rice loves to retrofit. It’s kind of her whole thing.
Louis: Lestat is awful! He’s a shallow snob who only cares about money and music. Lestat: I can’t believe my ex wrote a book to splash all our messy drama everywhere! I’m actually quite deep! Armand: Lestat made me out to be diabolical but let me tell you my tragic backstory!
It’s not just characters: The original origin of vampires! Bet you didn’t see this coming!
Etc, etc. By the time you get to book 11, it’s
Allesandra: I know I was a morally questionable old lady vampire who threw herself into the fire …
I’m honestly not sure what to say about this one. I think I need to sit with it for a while.
I will say: Anne seems to love all her characters unconditionally, even when doing so doesn’t seem to make sense.
[Edited to add]
Okay.
Anne Rice loves to retrofit. It’s kind of her whole thing.
Louis: Lestat is awful! He’s a shallow snob who only cares about money and music. Lestat: I can’t believe my ex wrote a book to splash all our messy drama everywhere! I’m actually quite deep! Armand: Lestat made me out to be diabolical but let me tell you my tragic backstory!
It’s not just characters: The original origin of vampires! Bet you didn’t see this coming!
Etc, etc. By the time you get to book 11, it’s
Allesandra: I know I was a morally questionable old lady vampire who threw herself into the fire rather than give up on the Satanic Cult that ruined Armand’s life, but not only am I alive again because no one scattered my ashes, I’m now young and hot and acting like I was always a beloved good guy! And everyone else is also acting like this!
So… okay. Sure. It’s a thing.
So… Amel. Her most ambitious retrofit.
He was introduced in book three as an evil spirit who liked the red-haired twins Maharet and Mekare, Akasha is made out to be quite evil as well.
BUT WAS SHE?
In Prince Lestat, is Akasha exonerated by Amel’s actions? Is her murderous rampage of other vampires solely motivated by the spirit of Amel trying to reduce the number of vampires in the world because he’s painfully overextended? That’s what’s implied. I mean, okay, she’s also super offended by cannibalism. That… sounds aligned with modern cultural mores.
(I mean. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the moral inversion aspect of making a taboo holy. It was interesting. But sorry, no, not holding that against Akasha.)
The absolute weirdest part of Prince Lestat is Lestat telling Amel, someone who wasn’t even sentient for the previous books, that he loves him. I… the guy who made someone kidnap your son? The guy who made old vampires murder young ones? Really…? Okay? Sure, love your shadow and self-actualize, I guess?
I mean. It’s a business book. It’s a good business book, and his main idea that customer service is what sets businesses apart is sound. It’s geared at businesses bigger than my sole proprietorship, but I suppose a girl has to start somewhere.
It loses points because at one point I felt like if he used the words “zombie loyalists” one more time I might punch a hole in a wall, and for his horrifying vision of the 100% privacy-free online future. I’m in IT. My restaurant and bar and airline habits being publicly available to all my friends without my intervention is just ripe for criminals to come in and exploit that data. I foresee a future where criminals hack your feed and extort you to prevent false information about your whereabouts going public under your name. Don’t get me started on domestic abusers.
So I spent the last …
I mean. It’s a business book. It’s a good business book, and his main idea that customer service is what sets businesses apart is sound. It’s geared at businesses bigger than my sole proprietorship, but I suppose a girl has to start somewhere.
It loses points because at one point I felt like if he used the words “zombie loyalists” one more time I might punch a hole in a wall, and for his horrifying vision of the 100% privacy-free online future. I’m in IT. My restaurant and bar and airline habits being publicly available to all my friends without my intervention is just ripe for criminals to come in and exploit that data. I foresee a future where criminals hack your feed and extort you to prevent false information about your whereabouts going public under your name. Don’t get me started on domestic abusers.
So I spent the last ten to twenty minutes of the audiobook with my skin trying to crawl off my body. Worse than the worst bits of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires! Can I please go back to hiding under a pile of moldy clothing with a homicidal maniac hunting me and a roach crawling deep into my ear canal?
It’s an interesting book. A grimdark chosen one! With an interesting French Catholic feeling setting. I liked it but it took me a while to engage because I’m not big on grimdark. I got it from my library and couldn’t renew it, so I started ebook and finished audiobook. I… it took a while for the female characters to really come into their own, too, but this is remedied if you wait long enough. (Avoiding spoilers.)
