The next book in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles is out, just in time for Halloween!
In this latest installment of Lestat’s adventures, the Brat Prince is doing a lot of soul-searching as he wonders about his place in the universe and in the Vampire Court.
That right there is at least three-quarters of the plot.
Sure, there are dangerous old vampires plotting the Court’s destruction, and dangerous new friends who pose a risk to the entire world. There are revelations about vampire nature, several deaths, and at least one fledgling vampire created. But for the most part this book is all about our favorite vampire adjusting to life as the Monarch of the fantastical Blood Drinker paradise he seems to have created by sheer accident.
The great hall where my family and I had once dined, quarreled, listened to the demands of villagers and farmers, and hovered around the single fire we could afford was now a great palatial ballroom with ample space for an orchestra of vampires, which soon came to be, and some five thousand or more dancers.
And by accident, I don’t mean there wasn’t a lot of hard work involved. Lestat’s plan to recreate the de Lioncourt castle and the surrounding village has involved hundreds of craftsmen, mountains of supplies, and a crazy amount of logistics, plus dozens of vampires who are happy to work as servants in the castle if it puts them within genuflecting distance with Lestat. (And if all of that sounds a little hard to coordinate, don’t worry, there’s a new vampire introduced who lives to organize and clean things.)
It’s just that Lestat gets all of this done the same way he’s done pretty much anything in the last few books; on a whim, with lots of enthusiasm and no real plan, and by being surrounded by vampires who adore him and who take on the pesky details and let him get on with falling madly in love with at least one character per chapter.
The story (which at 255 pages is one of the shortest in the Chronicles) is narrated by Lestat, who gives a sorry/not sorry for the format of the book; he mentions that there will be digressions and boy howdy, are there ever. The pacing is uniquely Rice. A long leisurely trip to New Orleans centers around a fascinating new character who stays in the sidelines for most of the rest of the book. A major plot point is introduced and whoops, never mind, resolved off-screen. Crises happen and trickle away, Lestat spends a good part of two days catatonic with grief, and characters make huge life-altering decisions for reasons I can’t quite understand.
…the worst pain of the Devil’s Road was seeing others drop by the way and not being able to save them.
All of your favorite characters make an appearance, sometimes just a cameo during one of two, no wait, three roll-call scenes. At least one vampire finally lets out just how enraged they’ve been at their Prince for centuries, because let’s be honest here, Lestat can be annoying. He feels everything intensely, he acts impulsively, and as a leader his decisions don’t always make a lot of sense. Renegade young blood drinkers killing the wrong human (as opposed to the thousands of humans killed by vampires over the course of centuries)? Executed for the greater good. A powerful older vampire terrorizing an entire race, killing the oldest vampire in existence, and generally threatening revenge with every breath? Oceans of patience.
It doesn’t surprise me that Anne lets Lestat run amok though. Anne is Lestat’s creator after all, and at the same time Lestat played a big part in making Anne’s career. There’s definitely a maker/fledgling relationship between the two, much like the vampire Pandora and the ever-angry Arjun and it can be hard to deny someone anything when you’re responsible for bringing them into the world.
(Quick digression, I’m not sure what to think about what Pandora’s become. Yes, abusive relationships can happen to the strongest people. That said, I really loved the book Pandora as well as the character’s appearance in Blood and Gold, and I don’t see much left now of the daughter of Rome who faced down a group of soldiers and walked out on Marius’s ass when he wouldn’t make up his damn mind, and it all just makes me a little sad for her. Okay, digression over.)
“…don’t ever be crippled by believing that you cannot live without one other being, and only that being. You must have more than that to love, because loving, loving keeps us alive, loving is our best defense against time, and time is merciless. Time is a monster. Time devours everything.”
And behind all this navel-gazing and occasional violence is the cinematic backdrop that only Anne Rice can create. The entirely rebuilt castle with all the modern conveniences (a recurring daydream of wealth that the author indulges in with every one of her books), a forgotten mansion in the wilds of New Orleans, the lovely velvet and satin costumes being worn by the even lovelier undead, all if it is described in the tiniest detail, right down to what the sumptuous chair Lestat is sitting in feels like. The ending takes place during another one of Rice’s gloriously beautiful Christmas celebrations, and most of the shocking violence in the book takes place in the ballroom with a vampire orchestra providing the soundtrack.
Some people have theorized that this is Anne Rice bringing the Vampire Chronicles to a close, but I feel like there’s too much left unresolved right now. The scene where an old friend told Lestat exactly why he hated him was an incredibly powerful moment, and I don’t want that to be a plot development that’s dropped when the author decides it isn’t convenient to keep it going.
The Replimoids (sorry, still can’t get used to that word) have way too much dangerous potential to be left as-is (and a throwaway comment from one of them made me very nervous), and there’s a development in how the vampires provide for themselves that’s either very practical or could damage the soul of everyone involved. Lestat’s revelation about what vampires have to embrace about themselves, and about what having the Court actually means, will go a long way towards keeping everyone united. And Lestat has one more thing going for him. Immortals in Anne Rice’s world have always been terrified of living for so long that they become bored with everything, and life with Lestat will always be anything but boring.