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Summary
Summary
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * In this spellbinding novel, Lestat, rebel outlaw, addresses the tribe of vampires, telling us the mesmerizing story of how he became prince of the vampire world, and of the formation of the Blood Communion, and how his vision for the Children of the Universe to thrive as one, came to be.
Lestat takes us from his ancestral castle in the snow-covered mountains of France to the verdant wilds of lush Louisiana, with its lingering fragrances of magnolias and night jasmine; from the far reaches of the Pacific's untouched islands to the 18th-century city of St. Petersburg and the court of the Empress Catherine. He speaks of his fierce battle of wits and words with the mysterious Rhoshamandes, proud Child of the Millennia, reviled outcast for his senseless slaughter of the legendary ancient vampire Maharet, avowed enemy of Queen Akasha, who refuses to live in harmony at court and who threatens all Lestat has dreamt of....
Author Notes
Anne Rice was born Howard Allen O'Brien on October 4, 1941 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received a bachelor's degree in political science in 1964 and master's degree in English and creative writing in 1972 from San Francisco State University.
She published her first short story in 1965 called October 4, 1948. Her first book, Interview with the Vampire, was published in 1976. It was made into a film starring Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, and Tom Cruise in 1994. She wrote various series in the same genre including the rest of the Vampire Chronicles, the Mayfair Witches books, and The Wolf Gift Chronicles. Her novel, Feast of All Saints, became a Showtime mini-series in 2001. Her other works include Cry to Heaven, Servant of the Bones, and Violin.
In 1998, Rice returned to the Catholic Church and for some time only wrote for Christ or about Christ. These works include Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, and Called Out of Darkness.
Anne Rice died on December 11, 2021 at the age of 80.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A furious battle with an implacable enemy of the vampire Lestat energizes the plot of this new episode in Rice's sprawling Vampire Chronicles. Upon returning to his court in France, vampire Prince Lestat is informed that the ancient vampire Rhoshamandes, bound by a truce forged following his murder of the vampire matriarch Maharet, is once again antagonizing members of the vampire hierarchy. When Rhoshamandes begins picking off members of the court one by one to avenge the death of his lover, the stage is set for a grisly final face-off between him and Lestat. As in Rice's previous books, this story is distinguished by the sensuality with which she describes her vampires and their way of life. This installment stands out in particular for showing the transformation of Lestat, over time, from the brash "Brat Prince" to a lover and protector of those whom he now thinks of as "my people, my tribe, my family." Fans old and new will find this book an effusive celebration of a saga now more than 40 years in the making. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
The so-called Brat Prince returns to his kingdom after the events chronicled in Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016), but all is not well. Lestat is riding high as a strong ruler of the court as his brood flourishes under his domain. But not everyone is happy with Lestat's control. An ancient vampire named Rhoshamandes has always despised the court and was only allowed to live through Lestat's mercy. When Rhoshamandes' life crumbles, he seeks to enact revenge on Lestat, kicking off a series of events that will terrorize the confident prince and shake up his rule. Rice's latest thrilling installment of the Vampire Chronicles, a memoir written by Lestat himself, shows a different side of the prince. The always-cocky vampire faces personal grief and tough decisions that will affect his court for decades. It's his queer-friendly family of advisors and friends that give him the strength to move on and rebuild his decadent empire. Readers will enjoy this new perspective on Rice's series and will talk about it well after the last page. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This latest incarnation of Rice's seemingly immortal and unceasingly popular Vampire Chronicles is right in sync with today's issues and will be a title of desire for myriad fans.--Amy Dittmeier Copyright 2018 Booklist
Guardian Review
Steven Erikson, better known for his high fantasy, tackles the well-worn SF trope of first contact in Rejoice: A Knife to the Heart (Gollancz, £18.99). When a trinity of alien races sends an AI emissary to Earth, the fabric of reality is altered. Force fields manifest to protect flora, fauna and vast areas of wilderness from human depredation: they also make it impossible to despoil the planet or slaughter animals, and humans can no longer harm each other. At a stroke, violence is a thing of the past. Meanwhile, an SF author named Samantha August is abducted by the aliens and spends much of the novel aboard a starship in orbit above the Earth, as an AI persuades her to act as the trinity's spokesperson. What follows is a leisurely, philosophical disquisition on the nature of the alien intervention and the post-capitalist future of the human race. Rejoice rejoices in satirising capitalism, dumb US presidents, greedy media moguls, impotent military high-ups and much more. The nameless narrator of Bartholomew Bennett's first novel, The Pale Ones (Inkandescent, £8.99), is a washed-up thirtysomething whose girlfriend has left him and fled to Japan. Trawling charity shops for valuable books and selling them online, he meets a fellow dealer and is drawn into an ambiguous relationship with the obnoxious Harris. They leave London and head north, ostensibly to collect books from charity shops and split the proceeds. But Harris has a mesmerising hold over people - our narrator included - and takes more than he gives. Bennett's short novel is notable for the gradual, creeping unease with which he imbues a series of apparently mundane events, bringing to mind the subtle horrors of Robert Aickman 's short stories. The leisurely, unsettling narrative includes some startlingly graphic images: "The helix of his left ear partially eaten away by a sore the colour of a waterlogged raisin." The Pale Ones is an impressive debut. Bram Stoker always intended Dracula as a work of non-fiction, though the first 101 pages of the original manuscript, claiming the story was factual, were dropped by its publisher who was worried about public reaction in the aftermath of the Jack the Ripper murders. This, at any rate, is the starting point of Dracul (Bantam, £12.99), a collaboration between Bram Stoker's great-grand-nephew Dacre Stoker and JD Barker. The authors have extrapolated from the excised pages and incorporated Bram Stoker himself into the text to explain how he came to write Dracula. We open with Stoker's childhood in Dublin, nursed by the mysterious Nanna Ellen, who cures him of illnesses only to vanish when he's seven, yet is still impossibly youthful when she reappears years later. Told through letters, third person narrative and fragments of diary and journal entries, the novel charts Stoker's relationship with Nanna Ellen and his flight across Europe on the trail of a truly evil Count Dracula. The book culminates in a gripping finale - though loose ends are left dangling for the possibility of welcome sequels. The former magician and stand-up comedian John Ajvide Lindqvist 's horror novels have been earning him a reputation as Sweden's answer to Stephen King. His 2004 novel, Let the Right One In, was a bestseller in Sweden and made into a film directed by Tomas Alfredson, in 2008. Lindqvist's seventh novel, I Always Find You (Riverrun, £20), seamlessly translated by Marlaine Delargy, is set in 1980s Stockholm. Teenage narrator John Lindqvist leaves home to set himself up as a magician, renting an apartment in a rundown tenement building that is occupied by decidedly strange neighbours. Drawn to these people, and to the gruesome secret they share in the communal shower room, Lindqvist embarks on a mind-altering journey that changes him from a lonely teenager to a borderline psychopath. The strength of the novel lies in the author's calm, unhurried reporting of increasingly supernatural events, and his decision to have a fictional version of himself as narrator, which lends an unsettlingly autobiographical element and grounds the story in reality. I Always Find You is a compelling treatise on loneliness, alienation and the evil that lurks in every heart. In 1976, the bestselling Interview with a Vampire launched the debonair Prince Lestat on to the world stage. Twelve books later, with a few longueurs along the way, we reach volume 13 of Anne Rice 's Vampire Chronicles with Blood Communion (Chatto & Windus, £20). Almost a quarter of this short novel retreads old territory as it brings new readers, and forgetful fans, up to speed with what has gone before: the tortuous tale of how Lestat became Prince of Vampires. But now his dominion is under threat from fellow vampires and he must muster all his resolve to do battle against a horde of enemies old and new. The book takes flight in the second half, and Rice offers up lashings of blood in a few skilful set pieces. Fans will love it; new readers are advised to start at the beginning. - Eric Brown.
Kirkus Review
Of crunching bones, collapsing veins, and nicely coordinated outfits: Rice's Vampire Chronicles gets a fresh transfusion.Alas, poor Rhoshamandes: He was about the only character to breathe any new life, so to speak, into Rice's pallid vamp saga thanks to some stately if gory moments in Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016). And nowwell, like the series, old Rosh has seen better days. Meanwhile, the longtime ringmaster of the sharp-toothed show, Lestat, is consolidating his power while taking an increasingly evident interest in aesthetics that, in lesser hands, would likely translate into a barrage of product placement. As it is, a few brand names slip through: Wouldn't you just know it that a vampire wouldn't be seen dead with an Android? It's not just that, as Lestat observes, "Almost all vampires are beautiful," but that the good stuff gets called out, from "English Chippendale chairs" to "rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires everywhere that one looked, or ropes of pearls and barrettes and pins of gold and silver." And why so much attention to the things of the world? Perhaps because, as it seems, Lestat doesn't have much to occupy himself with apart from a literal rock-star moment and all that politicking with Rhoshamandes, who, it has to be said, had more than a shot or two at making things good with Lestat and company. The story takes some time to gather momentum, a shame for a book that's so short, especially as compared to others in the series. Still, while most of the proceedings seem a familiar footnote to the larger series as it's unfolded over the decades, there are some nicely icky passages that would give Stephen King pause: "I threw the headless body onto the coverlet, tossed the smashed and empty head on top of the body, then gathered up even the heart and what I'd vomited of the brain and the eyes, and flung them all together."Just the bucket of blood for die-hard Rice fans. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
This 15th volume of the "Vampire Chronicles" opens with Lestat skeptically organizing the Court and the Council of Elders in France. As he's trying to determine the focus and sustainability of a ruling class of vampires, and the Court is debating whether to pursue the destruction of one of their own, the ancient and angry -Rhoshamandes, they are fatally raided. Three founding vampires are casualties of this assault, forcing Lestat to decide as prince whether vampires can coexist peacefully with one another. As he debates this question and seeks creative solutions to restore order and peace to the Court, the history of the menacing vampires is revealed with Rice's epic storytelling flair. Each nugget of vampire history propels the action-filled scenes and positions the main characters for strong plot contributions later on. VERDICT A solid addition to the "Vampire Chronicles" full of blood-drinker mythology and complicated interpersonal relationships, this is Rice at her best. Devoted fans will devour this, as there are numerous nuggets about minor characters, and new readers can use this volume as a launching point to explore the series and characters. [See Prepub Alert, 4/30/18.]-Tina Panik, Avon Free P.L., CT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.