Rice Queens - The Anne Rice topic

Most everyone who knows me knows that I am a big Anne Rice queen, so naturally the last two books I read, on vacation last month, were Merrick, the new Mayfair Witches/Vamp Chronicles edition, and then the charming Pandora, which I had missed thus far.

I have nothing but admiration for this great modern writer, and if you have somehow missed her books all these years, start and you will have years of catching up to do. The Vampire Chronicles are riveting and justly famous, but for johnny and I she has never topped the Mayfair Witches books, especially the first of them, the masterful Witching Hour.

I also adored The Feast of All Saints, which is fascinating for all the detail on New Orleans and the Free People of Color, the connections between haiti, Paris and New Orleans, and the intricate quadroon mistress system that was so much a part of N.O. life.

In the same vein... (sorry )

Does this prove the existance of Vampires?

http://www.fvza.org


XXXOOO
Satori

a friend gave me Interview with a Vampire, and it sat on my shelf for over a year. one night i casually started reading it, and immediately wanted to know what happens. i have since read everything she has written, most recently Vittorio the Vampire. i believe there is a hard cover out now on Marius, Lestat's fabeled mentor.

i too think The Whitching Hour was nothing short of epic. Rowan Mayfair is a fascinating character, but for me, and seemingly for Anne, Julian is the key to the mystery and power of the Mayfairs. i keep hoping she will go back to his era, and give us some more of him, as well as old new orleans.

i also think that Gabrielle (Lestats mother) is worth a story.

i have told many a friend that i think tranny's are so vampiric, coming out at night to feed their feminine lust. Anne's vampires, living on the fringes of society, are beautiful, powerful, and tragic. on many levels, the same can be said of "the girls".

i missed Queen of the Damned in the theatres, but how could it equal the book. i will, however, go rent it at the video store as soon as it is available!

love, kim.

I am an avid Anne Rice reader. She is one of my absolute, favourite authors becuase she writes about sexual identity and eroticism (while telling a complex and [often] supernatural story), without confining her work to the social norms of our dull society.And so it may be due to that, that I disliked the Movie version of Queen of the Damned. I thought as a movie it fit the expectations of movie go'ers but for those that read the book it was just ridiculous. The ommission of important characters and the twisting of other characters altared it so much, that in my opinion it should have had a different title. At any rate, I just thought I would be a yenta and share my opinion.
Much Luvin,
Andro

When you really begin to delve into the Mayfair Witches books, you may also become obsessed by the Talamasca, the secret society of vampire/witch protectors and researchers that permates the books, and eventually spills over into the later Vamp Chronicles as well.

Their motto:

Investigators of the Paranormal
We watch
And are always here.

There are certain similarities between the Talamasca and our extended tribes-

From a Talamasca site

quote:

---

The Talamasca, meaning "Animal Mask" from the Latin, are a secret society, set up, as their calling card says, to watch the paranormal in action. The name Talamasca was also an old term to describe a witch or a shamen. Their basements are filled with records of phenomena such as Witches, Spirits, Werewolves and of course Vampires.

Welcoming people with paranormal powers to visit them, occasionally they become aware of individuals with particularly strong powers, these people are investigated and offered a place with their group, but are not obliged to accept the position, though almost invariably they will.

The Talamasca demand complete obedience, loyalty and devotion from their members.

---

I have heard that Anne plans to do a whole book on the Talamasca someday! Meanwhile, fellow followers of Dutch 16th-century Talamasca legend Petyr Von Abel may be interested in attaining this doll, available on Anne's site.



http://store.yahoo.com/annericecollection/mayfairs.html


More Mayfair:

If you are obsessed by the Mayfair dynasty, you'll enjoy this geneology site on the Mayfair clan-

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~stst/genealogy/Charts/Witches/

Caveat-
DONT visit if you haven't gotten through at least Taltos - it gives too much away.

First of all let me just say the Vampire Chronicles are GORGEOUS. So sensual, and when reading the passages in Queen of the Damned involving Armand and Daniel (the human interviewer of Interview) I still get so hot that I have to throw down the book at some point and jack off. I confess I've only read the first three: Interview, The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned. Of these three, Queen of the Damned is my favorite, because its like those special issue comic books where all the superheroes come together to fight some larger enemy. I also love the ongoing bickering-husband-and-wife relationship of Louis and Lestat that carries through from book to book. I agree Gabrielle RULES and deserves her own book. Rice creates such mystique, such otherworldly intrigue and makes New Orleans seem like the most exotic place on Earth.

Kimmi - your comparison of the vampires to the trannies is so apt and brilliant. Glamourous creatures of the night that come out only after dark, living on the fringe of society, and alternately feared/loved/hated by the mainstream populace.

It is extraordinary, and I believe it is AR's favorite of the Vamp Chronicles. The ending is so revelatory, it stays with you forever and re-appears at times in your mind. The Vampire Armand is also well worth reading, though not the same kind of masterpiece.

Of her related works, I also enjoyed Pandora - she is one of my favorite characters in any AR (I also adore Marius and agreeing with kimmi - Julian - my absolute star among the AR stable.)

I would like to report here, among friends, that I seriously think my husband is a vampire - we all know he is ageless and I have also seen him fly in Lestat-like through my upstairs window, most notably in Greece last year!

I'm the "One Who Must Be kept"

Yikes, honey! I will have to read it now after your recommendation. A read that will undoubtedly take me down to the very depths of HELL. I've just embarked on a Carson McCullers tangent, but afterward I'll turn back to Anne ....

this will apply. This ALWAYS comes to mind when I have dealings with less than pleasant people. As this refers to The Webster Hall madness, but comes from an Anne Rice book, I wasn't sure where to post. I post it here because if you read it here, it might mean more:
"...She was a lady to the tips of her fingers, having imbibed the principles of gentility for the very best and most profound of reasons: that gentility makes life graceful and good. That gentility depends in its truest sense upon respect for others, love of others, it is the daily practice of charity refracted into manners..." - Anne Rice from The Feast of All Saints

Which Anne Rice character (any book) would you most like to sleep with and why.

Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas are not Anne Rice characters by the way!

A three-way with Armand and Daniel, the mortal interviewer. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Their erotic scenes from Queen of the Damned are the sexiest in the whole Vampire Chronicles if you ask me.

I wouldn't mind going down on Akasha, the Queen of the Damned herself. If she really looked like Ailiyah did in the movie.

Though I may get caught up in the foppish romanticism of the vampyres, I have never found them to be my sexual turn on. However, I do find Michael Curry- Rowan Mayfair's beau, husband, and father of her child in the Witching Hour- to be the total dream(boat); he was the one who had to wear leather gloves because otherwise he could feel all the emotions within the objects touched by those before him. Who wouldn't want a 48 year old curly-haired rich Irish construction worker daddy who is rough and ready, but very into his lady at the same time, and most importantly he smokes cigarettes without any shame. Somewhere in the book there is a passage that describes how when they had sex, his cross was hanging right above her head as he was pounding her. So hot for the witch Rowan...and for the reader!

quote:

---

It was swift and violent, the way she loved it, the giant mahogany bed sturdy as if it were carved in stone.
p. 845

---

Mine, from first mention, with an increasing attraction for the charachter as he has developed throughout the series, would be Marius.

Why? All the obvious: artist, intellect, master/keeper, mystery ... But I guess it all boils down to a David Lee Roth lyric: "Hot for teacher"

Lestat, Louis, all ofthe Paris coven and of course for marius to fly me away to his island lair and nusre me back to health in his caring loving arms.

Beauty!!

and Di Too!



T

I agree, Michael Curry (Mayfair) is the one. Rowan had it right with blue-collar sex. And, a bonus for me, he is the one least likely to run off with another man.
Lastly, he seems to be the one that is the hardest to get in bed (aside from some of the All Saints characters). Challenge for me!

funny...
Michael Curry (Mayfair) is the character closest to Robert Flowrider.

I have many great things I wish to accomplish today (as every day). But I wanted to share my copy of Pandora with Mother's Rice Queens -- especially in timing with this coming event.

This book means a great deal to me. In addition to it's amazing beauty, the purchase of it taught me one of the most valuable lessons in my life with regards to appreciating the quality of my life.

Like most actually, I grew up quite poor. The year before I went to college (1989), my mother made $2000 for the year, the whole year. The few things we had, she cherished beyond belief and like most children, I constantly ruined most of these possesions just being a child.

I went through college on academic scholarships, but the awareness of my low social significance was exemplified when I arrived at Boston University -- the most expensive private college in the country. I won't bore you with the details of how I got through that first year, I'll sum it up with this: pity from rich kids and the faculty mostly.

I now earn, thanks to this education and not necessarily because of it, a fair wage for using skills I enjoy flexing. But I am not wealthy, in fact, I am no where near it. I'm 30 and I still don't have a enough money to open a savings account. ... But, when in New Orleans, I came across this book for $175 and I wanted it. I really, really wanted this book in particular.

I have credit, but rarely use it. I decided after a rather agonizing hour and half (poor D.), that I could not afford it. I went home quite beaten, but the beauty of the city comforts the poor and after an enjoyable evening in the quarter, I had that night a sound night's rest and the most wonderous dream -- immediately, first thing the next morning, I returned to the store and I bought the book.

And finally, the very important point of my sharing all my financial details with you: Not a day goes by, that I don't look at this book and think -- "I own art. I actually own art. Me. I've reached this point where I actually own this unique one-of-a-kind creation of an artist that I have my whole life adored."

That feeling, which hasn't diminished a day since owning this book - is worth so much more than the $175 I spent for it (which was easier to pay back than any bill or trendy fashion tag I've used it for) ... The value of art and what it adds to your self-worth and your quality of life; I urge you -- buy art. You can afford it. It's not just for the rich anymore. Don't let your friend give you their CD -- buy it. Underground films starring artists you know (from these very rooms) are online for sale -- buy them. Williamsburg truly full of talented young artists in the midsts of exploring themselves -- visit the galleries: but stop at a restarant on the way home. All the walls are stocked full of art you probably can afford. If you like it, it's worth taking a look at what it costs and the artist who made it.

Rice Queens -- I hope this didn't disrupt the chatty and fun banter ... Perhaps, this I can try to restore, what I really want to know, is if anyone is into any of the female charachters? and why?

[This message was edited by TonyaKnudsen on 10-20-02 at 03:57 PM.]

Julien Mayfair

An extraordinarily powerful warlock, strikingly handsome, bisexual, Mardi Gras enthusiast, dandy, bibliophile, descendant of Petyr Von Abel, lover of his sister Katherine, later his niece Mary Beth, and a man fifty-odd years his junior.

Among his many gifts were an ability to bilocate, and to show himself at any age he chose. He rode a chestnut mare up St. Charles Avenue even into old age, and taught sonnets to the children of Storyville ladies he visited. Divoon!

Brad Pitt...
Definately.

The new book is fun. It's alot like "The Witching Hour". (my fave) It has ghosts, witches and spooks as well as vampires! The main character has gay sex with himself and has panic attacks. It has New Orleans, Julien Mayfair, The Talamasca, Lestat, Mona Mayfair, an ancient Italian vampire, Rowan Mayfair, Michael Curry and did I mention that the main character has gay sex with himself?

I adore Anne Rice, and can't wait to read the new one. However, the guy who has gay sex with himself is not that exciting. I have gay sex with myself all the time. Technically speaking, I am a girl having sex with me, a girl. I don't talk to myself or anything, though. And I do usually roll over and fall asleep or just get up and leave when I 'm done. I'm such a pig.

I don't want to give away too much but this is different.

I was teasing.

I FINALLY have gotten around to reading Blackwood Farm, Im about halfway done with it but it is definately among her great books, and a must for Rice Queens everywhere because it takes over the whole Mayfair/Talamasca threads that were so strong in The Witching Hour through Taltos, as well as updating Lestat and more of the Vamp Chronicles bunch.
The book is much more epic and developed than recent works, the writing more consistent and the new dynasty- The Blackwoods - filled with great new characters.

Highest recommendation - but dont even think of reading it without The Witching Hour first (and hopefully Lasher and Taltos too.)

ANNE GETS HER BITCH ON FOR THE MEDDLING RICE PICKERS !!!

Those Amazon.com critics trashing her latest book best be careful .... she might hex 'em! Check out the photo -- Love her quietly seething rage.

quote:

---

The People Have Spoken, and Rice Takes Offense
By SARAH LYALL
Published: October 11, 2004
The New York Times

Lestat, the vampire narrator of Anne Rice's most recent book, "Blood Canticle,'' begins the novel with a harangue against its readers. "What the hell happened when I gave you 'Memnoch the Devil?' " he asks crossly, referring to an earlier novel by Ms. Rice that some readers, to put it mildly, did not like. "You complained!"

Many people did not care much for "Blood Canticle" (Knopf) either, as Ms. Rice found to her mounting horror when she began scrolling through dozens of virulently negative reviews of the book on Amazon.com.

"I cannot stress to you how bad this book is, and I have been waiting for it for so long!'' wrote a reviewer from California.

Wrote another reviewer, "I have read almost every one of Anne Rice's novels, and I have to say this is the worst one.''

A third was more specific. " 'Blood Canticle's' biggest problem,'' that reviewer said, "is that it is seriously lacking in creative writing, sense of continuity and character development.''

Ms. Rice, the best-selling author of 25 books, including the lush and original "Interview With the Vampire,'' has a passionate following and an unusually intimate relationship with her audience. She reacted to the criticism with shock and horror, although when the positive and negative reviews were averaged, Amazon gave "Blood Canticle" three stars out of five.

Many authors are upset by the snide tone of some Amazon reviews; Ms. Rice decided to do something about it. She posted a blistering 1,200-word defense of her book on the site, laying in to those critics who, she said, were "interrogating this text from the wrong perspective."

"Your stupid, arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander,'' she wrote. "You have used the site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies.''

Ms. Rice seemed particularly incensed by reviewers who implied that she had not worked hard on the book, the 10th in her "Vampire Chronicles'' series, or that she had written it merely to fulfill a "contractual obligation,'' as one reviewer said.

Nor was she thrilled by the suggestion - often made by people who adored earlier books in the series but said they felt that the quality had deteriorated - that "Blood Canticle" might have benefited from some tough love. "Anne, you really should have an editor, or at least someone that would read your book before you send it off to print,'' one reviewer wrote.

No way, Ms. Rice replied.

"I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself,'' she wrote. "I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me.''

In a telephone interview, Ms. Rice elaborated on the point.

"People who find fault and problems with my books tend to say, 'She needs an editor,' '' Ms. Rice said. "When a person writes with such care and goes over and over a manuscript and wants every word to be perfect, it's very frustrating.''

She added: "When you take home a CD of Pavarotti or Marilyn Horne, you don't want to hear another voice blended in. I feel the same way about Hemingway. If I read it, I don't want to read a new edited version.''

Writers like Ms. Rice, who produce many books and consistently bring in a great deal of money for their publishers, are often given far wider editorial latitude than other authors. Ms. Rice has been a best seller for Knopf since 1976, when it published "Interview With the Vampire.''

Later Rice books have not done as well as "Interview,'' but they still sell about a half-million copies apiece in hardcover, said Paul Bogaards, a Knopf spokesman. He said that "Blood Canticle'' had sold about 375,000 hardcover copies and that Ms. Rice always "has a built-in audience waiting for her next novel."

An executive at a rival publishing house, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said publishers often took a hands-off editorial approach with stars like Ms. Rice and Stephen King, another prolific, best-selling author, particularly as their careers matured. "Ultimately it's the author's book,'' the executive said. "With an author of a certain stature, they're the artist; we're the amanuensis.''

Ms. Rice said that she had been moved to respond to the Amazon postings because many of them included personal attacks on her health; on her state of mind since the death in 2002 of her husband, Stan; and on her writing ability. She said that she received hundreds of e-mail messages of support, many from writers with their own stories of being "savaged and trashed'' on Amazon.

Although reviews of "Blood Canticle'' were not universally glowing, Ms. Rice said she was pleased with the book, and a number of readers gave it lavish praise on Amazon.

"She has such a built-in fan base; that's why controversy ensued,'' said Sessalee Hensley, the fiction buyer at Barnes & Noble, where, Ms. Hensley said, "Blood Canticle" had sold 20 percent more copies than Ms. Rice's previous vampire book, "Blackwood Farm."

"Everyone is so passionately involved that if, for instance, it's not the way they thought Lestat would act, they are going to say 'It's the worst book I ever read,' '' Ms. Hensley said.

Ms. Rice said that her work was headed in a new direction and that "Blood Canticle'' was definitely the end of the vampire series. "Yes, the 'Chronicles' are no more!'' she wrote in her Amazon posting. "Thank God!''

---

Yes 'thank God' the diarreah is over.
A bloodie editor is precisely what she needs. But then the books would only be half as long, and sell for alot less.

"Your stupid, arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander,'' she wrote. "You have used the site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies.''

See the overwriting at work!

"me and what I am doing"
"as if it were"
"public urinal"
"falsehood and lies"

All of it redundant. Hire me now!

Stan's Edit:
"Your arrogant assumptions concerning my work slander me. In publishing such lies, you have used Amazon.com as a urinal."

Lex's version:
"Not only are your arrogant assumptions about my work false, but you have used Amazon.com as a urinal to publish slander."

As attractive as the word "urinal" is, I don't think it's the real point of the sentence. I would let the reader hear "slander" or "lies" last, since that's the real incendiary bomb she's trying to drop. But perhaps my version compromises her voice too much, as Ms. Rice contends no editor should. Maybe it sounds too much like me talking. Oh well. I'm content to let her ramble on in any case. (what do I know? My writing hasn't sold a penny .... yet) I love how outspoken she is.

You better work "Queen of the Damned"!!!
I love Anne Rice but I have to agree, she needs you.

Daddy's edit:
"Your stupid, arrogant assumptions...
fuck you!"

Agreed S'tan... I have to admit I am fascinated by this whole thing. So fascinated, in fact, that I, too, actually looked up her response on Amazon.com.

In it she likens her writing to a "virtuoso performance." That is simply hogwash from an over-stroked ego. Very few artists have the strength of a Picasso to edit themselves.
Another part of the problem of course is that she has dug her own grave by creating the Vampire Chronicles in the first place-- thereby doubly inviting those "it's not as good as" comparisons.

Another oddity from her post:
"And you have strained my Dickensean principles to the max. I'm justifiably proud of being read by intellectual giants and waitresses in trailer parks,in fact, I love it, but who in the world are you?"

The word Dickensian (spelled like that, Anne,) I believe is generally used as an adjective describing the social and economic conditions illustrated in a Dickens novel. As in, "The working conditions at K-Mart were almost Dickensian-- employees were paid a substandard wage and not permitted to use restroom facilities during working hours."
Rice, however, uses the word in a new way-- touting the fact that she, like Dickens with his serialized offerings, is read and appreciated by prince and pauper alike.
An editor, indeed...
I love also how she almost demands that everyone contact her not only by email, but at her very home address. And offers to personally refund the price of the book if any reader is dissatified. Nuts!

The picture is gorrrrrgeous though!

Hatches I went into Amazon.com too, to try to read that stuff and couldn't locate it. Can you tell me where to go, hons?

Love your comments... Anne's "Dickensian" principles in truth put her on the side of the bad guys in those novels - the rich folk, who run industries that trample the little guys!

Lexx your edit works 'cause you made it all one sentence; concision is her #1 problem. Putting 'slander' at the end of the sentence is better too, as I agree her use of "urinal" is a dangling metaphor she doesn't work well enough. She ought to have yellowed up her vitriol with 'spew' 'rank' 'gush' or 'stinking' etc. to bring it all up to a grand smelly displeasure.

Calling even a few of her fans "stupid" because they dare to criticise her is another aspect of a mentality that's suspect. She reminds me of these wannabee Dominatrices on Max Fisch who announce they are 'the greatest' and the 'most beautiful.' Just because you say it's so doesn't make it so. Giant paychecks notwithstanding!

Her saying she has 'achieved the status' of NOT being edited shows she's deep in the adolescent fantasy that she is some kind of 'perfect' artist. I feel being an author, even a great one, isn't something you 'achieve' and then that's that. Like being an athlete, dancer, or musician, it's a craft with a phalanx of muscles. We do sadly deteriorate with age and disuse and have to work hard to keep it all humming.

If even one of your lowly fans dares to make a suggestion, you should at least pretend to give them a hearing. I believe that is only gracious. Hundreds of folk on a website all saying the same thing ought to make some dent in her armour. I do not admire her raving nastiness.

Concerning editors however, I think one of the worst problems in this day and age is not so much that big ol' hogs like King and Beans n'Rice aren't edited... but NOBODY much is being edited. I've asked whenever I have the opportunity if someone knows of a nice, decent hard-ass editor at some publishing house who would like to read something pretty good, and work with me on it! To the end of being published. But such a thing as an in-house workng editor just doesn't seem to exist anymore. Even the small press who most recently published me told me "We never edit anyone." I think that blows.

Not editing the big ol' whales is doing their posterity a disservice. These gross things won't be republished 100 years from now, or, sorry to say Beanie, you'll be edited down for anthologies, to pleasure the even shorter attention spans of the mutant readers of the 2100s.

Warning, mouthful ahead!

I was so stunned by the post, and because it was so bloody long, I cut and pasted it, so I could read it at leisure. So... rather than hunt for the blinkin' page again (the posts are rapidly approaching the 300 mark,) here it is-- allegedly from "Potatoes" O'Brien to her readers:

-----

Reviewer: Anne Obrien Rice (New Orleans, LA United States) - See all my reviews

"Seldom do I really answer those who criticize my work. In fact, the entire development of my career has been fueled by my ability to ignore denigrating and trivializing criticism as I realize my dreams and my goals. However there is something compelling about Amazon's willingness to publish just about anything, and the sheer outrageous stupidity of many things you've said here that actually touches my proletarian and Democratic soul. Also I use and enjoy Amazon and I do read the reviews of other people's books in many fields. In sum, I believe in what happens here. And so, I speak. First off, let me say that this is addressed only to some of you, who have posted outrageously negative comments here, and not to all. You are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective. Indeed, you aren't even reading it. You are projecting your own limitations on it. And you are giving a whole new meaning to the words "wide readership." And you have strained my Dickensean principles to the max. I'm justifiably proud of being read by intellectual giants and waitresses in trailer parks,in fact, I love it, but who in the world are you? Now to the book. Allow me to point out: nowhere in this text are you told that this is the last of the chronicles, nowhere are you promised curtain calls or a finale, nowhere are you told there will be a wrap-up of all the earlier material. The text tells you exactly what to expect. And it warns you specifically that if you did not enjoy Memnoch the Devil, you may not enjoy this book. This book is by and about a hero whom many of you have already rejected. And he tells you that you are likely to reject him again. And this book is most certainly written -- every word of it -- by me. If and when I can't write a book on my own, you'll know about it. And no, I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself. I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art. Back to the novel itself: the character who tells the tale is my Lestat. I was with him more closely than I have ever been in this novel; his voice was as powerful for me as I've ever heard it. I experienced break through after break through as I walked with him, moved with him, saw through his eyes. What I ask of Lestat, Lestat unfailingly gives. For me, three hunting scenes, two which take place in hotels -- the lone woman waiting for the hit man, the slaughter at the pimp's party -- and the late night foray into the slums --stand with any similar scenes in all of the chronicles. They can be read aloud without a single hitch. Every word is in perfect place. The short chapter in which Lestat describes his love for Rowan Mayfair was for me a totally realized poem. There are other such scenes in this book. You don't get all this? Fine. But I experienced an intimacy with the character in those scenes that shattered all prior restraints, and when one is writing one does have to continuously and courageously fight a destructive tendency to inhibition and restraint. Getting really close to the subject matter is the achievement of only great art. Now, if it doesn't appeal to you, fine. You don't enjoy it? Read somebody else. But your stupid arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander. And you have used this site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies. I'll never challenge your democratic freedom to do so, and yes, I'm answering you, but for what it's worth, be assured of the utter contempt I feel for you, especially those of you who post anonymously (and perhaps repeatedly?) and how glad I am that this book is the last one in a series that has invited your hateful and ugly responses. Now, to return to the narrative in question: Lestat's wanting to be a saint is a vision larded through and through with his characteristic vanity. It connects perfectly with his earlier ambitions to be an actor in Paris, a rock star in the modern age. If you can't see that, you aren't reading my work. In his conversation with the Pope he makes observations on the times which are in continuity with his observations on the late twentieth century in The Vampire Lestat, and in continuity with Marius' observations in that book and later in Queen of the Damned. The state of the world has always been an important theme in the chronicles. Lestat's comments matter. Every word he speaks is part of the achievement of this book. That Lestat renounced this saintly ambition within a matter of pages is plain enough for you to see. That he reverts to his old self is obvious, and that he intends to complete the tale of Blackwood Farm is also quite clear. There are many other themes and patterns in this work that I might mention -- the interplay between St.Juan Diago and Lestat, the invisible creature who doesn't "exist" in the eyes of the world is a case in point. There is also the theme of the snare of Blackwood Farm, the place where a human existence becomes so beguiling that Lestat relinquishes his power as if to a spell. The entire relationship between Lestat and Uncle Julien is carefully worked out. But I leave it to readers to discover how this complex and intricate novel establishes itself within a unique, if not unrivalled series of book. There are things to be said. And there is pleasure to be had. And readers will say wonderful things about Blood Canticle and they already are. There are readers out there and plenty of them who cherish the individuality of each of the chronicles which you so flippantly condemn. They can and do talk circles around you. And I am warmed by their response. Their letters, the papers they write in school, our face to face exchanges on the road -- these things sustain me when I read the utter trash that you post. But I feel I have said enough. If this reaches one reader who is curious about my work and shocked by the ugly reviews here, I've served my goals. And Yo, you dude, the slang police! Lestat talks like I do. He always has and he always will. You really wouldn't much like being around either one of us. And you don't have to be. If any of you want to say anything about all this by all means Email me at Anneobrienrice@mac.com. And if you want your money back for the book, send it to 1239 First Street, New Orleans, La, 70130. I'm not a coward about my real name or where I live. And yes, the Chronicles are no more! Thank God!"

In defense of unedited rambles - and not surprising this would be coming from me ...

As much as one might like to read her writings a bit more clarified ... there is a lulling cadence to be preserved by her semi-not-so-occasional backwards sentence structure. Additionally, some of us LIVE to see words used "creatively - not as they should; in inappropriate contexts; with inappropriate prefix/suffix-ation."

I don't think her use of urinal is off-target at all -- she probably views the posts on Amazon as crap -- and the term also resonates a few other humorous, as well as truthful, inferences to me as well.

These are her books, if she doesn't desire the services of an editor, that should rather be respected.
It is her book sales that will suffer or soar, and I don't think either is the most important thing - nor should be. Editorial consult is a service one should seek when certain goals are desired, and an edited goal is definitely not what she desired for this. I respect her standing up to preserve her pure meandering-river literary existence.

The tangent in question reminds me of when Joni Mitchell told everybody she was the modern Mozart. Sums her up! (and it was all downhill from there, hon) I like Anne Rice too but she may have turned a corner this time. True also Hatches that the longer a creator keeps a franchise going the more fans become attached to their own expectations of how said franchise should develop, thus audiences become increasingly tough to please.

Editing as an in-house function at publishing houses is indeed becoming something of a dying/lost art. A friend of mine was for several years a successful editor at Knopf of all places, considered to be one of the most prestigous imprints. They cut their editorial staff drastically and fired him, even after he'd edited Katherine Hepburn's autobiography and several other top-sellers. Since then he says the trend is to run manuscripts through spell check and call it a day. You can see the evidence in such tripe as The Devil Wears Prada, etc.

Nevertheless editors can chop things to bits and ruin things too. It's all so subjective. Personally I've never felt her works were too long or needed to be cut in half, IMHO. No one's work will ever be perfect or all things to all people. On my score card Anne falls comfortably in the "well-written trash" column, something I aspire to myself. I think's it a cool place to be, even if she's totally off her rocker!!!

A friend who started following the Amazon blather when it started about 2 weeks ago said that the Anne Rice post is allegedly a hoax, and that that wasn't even her real address. Anyone hear? That would mean someone at the NY Times didn't do their facts-checking. What a shocker.

It would be one thing if she recognized herself as good trash, Lexx, but she does think she is the Mozart of la litterature.

And style? That rambling-on, 'free-form,' melodramatic, stream-of-unconsciousness, fawned-over romance-tinged hackery? It's not a matter of proper form... nor is it a more 'sensible' style we honor: we are against gibberish. Mother Chichi has enjoined me on more than one occasion to give her a try. So, loving her, I have tried. I heave to one of the collossi. The feverish little brain each time grazes hopefully ~~ through the rampant repetitions the purple stanzas the florid floribundae, sways vertiginous through boredom into profound snooze.

S'tanley (or "Queen Of The Damned"),
This Paris trip has obviously been wonderful for you. Your fangs are sharpened to those delicious points that I remember. Your writing in this topic has made me want to re-read (your book) "The Correct Sadist".
That's the vitriol I remember!

I can't agree with you on this S'tan.
Honey, I've seen some "dangling metaphors" that would take your breath away. Actually gag you!

Messy you are always... not a dangling no but a flying urinal in these discourses... we must duck and all thought is forgotten. but girl I didn't know you could read...
oh of course you don't... Tha's why you likes ha.

Thanks S'tan, that's real nice a you ta say.

Messy, last night I dreamed that the Vampire Mafia was comin' to get me. A gloomy troupe of dour beings surrounded me on the mesa, muttering threatening imprecations at my many scandalous blasphemies. How dare I not worship and adore their Goddess... yes I have said baaaad things against that big blind larval Queen Mother... but I was able to disperse them with a gallant wave of my stubby red pencil, a pencil yes that was handed down to me from my Bob Daddy-o, the meanest and crankiest editor in the business of red-penciling...

As the gang of vicious venomous vampires were dispersed, it was then in my dream that an apparition as big as an elephant, as huge as a house, as monstrous as a monster, came gallumphing forth in a blind rage. Trumpeting her rage, seething at mine umbrage! I in defense could only hold up in mine leetle paw the talismanic familial stubby red pencil... with this poor weapon I slashed and I slashed at this monstrous thing, but I could not make a dent in it. This Beast roared in triumph... this Beast was .... MESSY ANNE RICE!!!

S'tan - LOL!!!
*applause* and brilliant!

Hmmmm thanks hons but thank the Beast 'twas she who inspired the purple!

At the urging of my boyfriend, Chi Chi and numerous others, I've finally started reading Ms. Rice's magnum opus, THE WITCHING HOUR. I've never read any of her witch-related books, only the vampire ones.

In my own (unfinished) novel, I stand behind my recent decision to leave out a large backstory section on my principle character. All that backstory was self-indulgent, it slowed the action and my manuscript is now much better as a result of cutting the fat. Besides, it's the mark of superior writing to weave in relevant backstory details in more subtle, interesting ways during later chapters.

So imagine my surprise then at being confronted with some 40+ pages of mostly irrelevant backstory on the character of Michael Curry no less than thirty pages into the book. What was Anne Rice thinking? It became clear that she never wasted a SINGLE SENTENCE of her rough drafts, no matter how much it weighs down the art like an anvil strapped to the reader's ankle. Of course not having finished the book I can't say for certain which details of all that flatulent backstory are important and which aren't, but there is no way all that minutia can possibly be pertinent to the plot.

Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I am. Mind you I do enjoy melodramatic, wordy, flowery prose and soap opera. But come on.

That said, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the descriptions of the old New Orleans townhouse/mansion (its crumbling beauty -- how gorgeous!), the Garden District and San Francisco. Ms. Rice really loves these places so much that the locales become characters themselves in the story. I really admire that and emulate that quality in my own work.

Now, when do I get to meet Lasher? ....

(to be continued)

Oh, you'll meet him. And he will be NOTHING like you think he will be.

THE WITCHING HOUR ended up consumming a large part of my summer reading. Having finally met Lasher, he turned out to be a footnote to the whole action at the end and ultimately took a backseat to the great dynasty of witches themselves, the Mayfairs, a family I wish I'd been born into! I loved, loved, LOVED the Talamasca file on the family tree, the personalities like Julien, Mary Beth, Katherine, Marguerite, Stella, Antha, Diedre, Cortland, etc and the luxurious evil that unfolds like the petals of a poisonous rose. Their escapades and vast wealth, Julien's trade, Mary Beth's ruthlessness, the endless cousins and scandals, the parties .... I really enjoyed that part. You're right Daddy, Lasher was nothing like I expected ... thought I'd get another Lestat rip-off, but still did not find him as interesting as the witches themselves.

I also loved Micheal Curry's restoration of the great house on First Street. Like reading a series from Architectural Digest.

Not sure if I should continue on with books 2 & 3 (Lasher & Taltos), but will decide after taking a break to read something else.

Lex, don't stop now. books 2 & 3 will continue to thrill you and there is a great big surprise ending that you will die for.

And if you can find it, read " Cry to Heaven". an early paper back she wrote under the other name.

Lex, I agree with Bobby. The first couple o' chapters in Lasher will raise your eyebrows, to say the least, and make you love Mona.

And, Bobby, I think I read Cry to Heaven and Feast of All Saints within days of each other after having found and finished Witching Hour. I must have been 15 or 16 and soooo angry that I had to wait for her to publish what happened to Rowan. Reading the other books certainly let me know that there was wide world that I could get into after high school. The funny thing is is I was more agog at the relations in Heaven (read: men of the cloth) than any of them in the Witching Hour series, excepting the escapades with Mona - I love her. And What's-Her-Face, that blond hillbilly relation with the big boobs and the violet eyeshadow. I love her, too.

I haven't read Anne Rice since Servant of the Bones, but this sounds like it could be quite good.

The Gospel According to Anne

The queen of the occult has been gone awhile. What's Anne Rice been up to? Getting healthy, finding God"”and writing her most daring book yet.

By David Gates
Newsweek

Oct. 31, 2005 issue - Sometimes Anne Rice won't leave her bedroom for days on end"”and neither would you. Glass doors open onto a terrace that looks over the red-tiled roofs of La Jolla, Calif., to the Pacific Ocean. A live-in staffer brings meals to the table at the foot of her ornately carved wooden bed, which faces an ornately carved stone fireplace. She exercises in a huge bike-in closet. She's got two computers and enough books to last her a year. Splendid isolation? Splendid, sure. But she's often got family visiting in a downstairs guest suite, she reads The New York Times every morning"”"Nicholas Kristof is a hero to me""”watches news "till I can't stand it anymore," and spends up to an hour and a half a day e-mailing with her extraordinarily faithful readers.

They've been worried about her. After 25 novels in 25 years, Rice, 64, hasn't published a book since 2003's "Blood Chronicle," the tenth volume of her best-selling vampire series. They may have heard she came close to death last year, when she had surgery for an intestinal blockage, and also back in 1998, when she went into a sudden diabetic coma; that same year she returned to the Roman Catholic Church, which she'd left at 18. They surely knew that Stan Rice, her husband of 41 years, died of a brain tumor in 2002. And though she'd moved out of their longtime home in New Orleans more than a year before Hurricane Katrina, she still has property there"”and the deep emotional connection that led her to make the city the setting for such novels as "Interview With the Vampire." What's up with her? "For the last six months," she says, "people have been sending e-mails saying, 'What are you doing next?' And I've told them, 'You may not want what I'm doing next'." We'll know soon. In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and"”under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure"”of soft-core S&M encounters, will publish "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. "I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord." It's the most startling public turnaround since Bob Dylan's "Slow Train Coming" announced that he'd been born again.

Meeting the still youthful-looking Rice, you'd never suspect she'd been ill"”except that on a warm October afternoon she's chilly enough to have a fire blazing. And if you were expecting Morticia Addams with a strange new light in her eyes, forget it. "We make good coffee," she says, beckoning you to where a silver pot sits on the white tablecloth. "We're from New Orleans." Rice knows "Out of Egypt" and its projected sequels"”three, she thinks"”could alienate her following; as she writes in the afterword, "I was ready to do violence to my career." But she sees a continuity with her old books, whose compulsive, conscience-stricken evildoers reflect her long spiritual unease. "I mean, I was in despair." In that afterword she calls Christ "the ultimate supernatural hero ... the ultimate immortal of them all."

To render such a hero and his world believable, she immersed herself not only in Scripture, but in first-century histories and New Testament scholarship"”some of which she found disturbingly skeptical. "Even Hitler scholarship usually allows Hitler a certain amount of power and mystery." She also watched every Biblical movie she could find, from "The Robe" to "The Passion of the Christ" ("I loved it"). And she dipped into previous novels, from "Quo Vadis" to Norman Mailer's "The Gospel According to the Son" to Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins's apocalyptic Left Behind series. ("I was intrigued. But their vision is not my vision.") She can cite scholarly authority for giving her Christ a birth date of 11 B.C., and for making James, his disciple, the son of Joseph by a previous marriage. But she's also taken liberties where they don't explicitly conflict with Scripture. No one reports that the young Jesus studied with the historian Philo of Alexandria, as the novel has it"”or that Jesus' family was in Alexandria at all. And she's used legends of the boy Messiah's miracles from the noncanonical Apocrypha: bringing clay birds to life, striking a bully dead and resurrecting him.

Rice's most daring move, though, is to try to get inside the head of a 7-year-old kid who's intermittently aware that he's also God Almighty. "There were times when I thought I couldn't do it," she admits. The advance notices say she's pulled it off: Kirkus Reviews' starred rave pronounces her Jesus "fully believable." But it's hard to imagine all readers will be convinced when he delivers such lines as "And there came in a flash to me a feeling of understanding everything, everything!" The attempt to render a child's point of view can read like a Sunday-school text crossed with Hemingway: "It was time for the blessing. The first prayer we all said together in Jerusalem ... The words were a little different to me. But it was still very good." Yet in the novel's best scene, a dream in which Jesus meets a bewitchingly handsome Satan"”smiling, then weeping, then raging"”Rice shows she still has her great gift: to imbue Gothic chills with moral complexity and heartfelt sorrow.

Rice already has much of the next volume written. ("Of course I've been advised not to talk about it.") But what's she going to do with herself once her hero ascends to Heaven? "If I really complete the life of Christ the way I want to do it," she says, "then I might go on and write a new type of fiction. It won't be like the other. It'll be in a world that includes redemption." Still, you can bet the Devil's going to get the best lines.

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

Well it will be interesting to see if she can persuade her following to follow her to church on Sundays.

Well it is just a baby step from muttering Hail Satan to Halleluiah'ing Jesus, isn't it.

Oh S'tan. Hail S'tan!

After writing about vampires, witches, ghosts and the Devil for so long (even mummies!), I suppose there was really nowhere else for her to go except to Jesus himself. (has she ever written a werewolf story?) I'll be interested to read her next effort. I think writing 25 books in 25 years is pretty awesome.

And FINALLY -- the gastric bypass surgery. Gorgey, hon.

Hail Madge, Hail Lexxy,
Lexxy if you had a staff of 40 + people you would probably write a book a year too.
Barbara Cartland wrote 500 before she kicked off.

http://www.goodbyemag.com/may00/cartland.html

"She invariably wore huge pink dresses (pink 'helps our brain' she said), did her eyelashes with boot polish (which would not run, despite tears), sported thick coats of makeup, and carried a lap dog while riding in a white Rolls. "She grew old in a unique style that she thought graceful," the Times said. "Perhaps she simply did not understand the idea of caricature."

Now THAT's a writer!

Now that Ms. Rice n' Beans has glutted the alt.culture folks with her flatulent blather, now she can suck up to the Xian market... and sell millions and millions and millions more pages!
Maybe she will reach her orgasmic epitome of cashflow, and become required reading at Bob Jones University!

What a bloodie waste of trees.

Hail to the Gastric Bypass!

Hail to the Voided Bowel of Reason.

"Hail to the Voided Bowel of Reason"!!!!!

Oh Stanley, she is not on your level that's for sure. But I just read about four pages (I'm saving it for Mexico) and it's good. Jesus is the new Lestat. The only prob is that it is about 200 pages of huge print. She probably wrote it in a week. I know I'm cheap but $30.00 is a lot to pay for an essay.
Bah!

Wow 200 pages of enormous print?
Is that to accomodate her new audience,
the born-again feeble-minded? I wonder.

Too much fame in this culture seems to destroy writers. I prefer her early work. I read "Interview" at least once a year.

There is always the hope that Ms. Rice's effort will return the story of Jesus to the fiction shelves... where it belongs.

Well, I finished it. (in about an hour) I liked it. Of course I love that period of herstory. It's really not that much of a stretch for her. The Veil Of Veronica", "Servant Of The Bones", "Memnoch The Devil" this is not really that different for her. I don't know what all the hub bub is about. It's not at all "preachy" It's a typical Anne Rice historical novel. It's not her best writing and not her worst. What she does REALLY well is bring the day to day world of first century Jews to life. I loved that aspect of it. The biggest problem, obviously, is that we all know the story. There are no surprises. Of course we all know how it's going to end but even the little plot twists I knew from Sunday school. The only mystery in the book (and it's a pretty good one) is seven year old Jesus slowly trying to figure out who or better, what he is. I mean everybody goes through this but not everybody kills the neighborhood bully with the blink of his eye and then brings him back to life when his family gets upset. It's hard for little Jesus to figure out why he can cure a blind man or make it snow at the drop of a hat. And finding out that you are the begotten son of God by age eight is enough to make anyone crazy. It's all told in the first person by Jesus.
Very clever.
And if I'm spoiling the story for anyone...
You must have lived your life under a rock not to know this story.

quote:

I mean everybody goes through this but not everybody kills the neighborhood bully with the blink of his eye and then brings him back to life when his family gets upset.

Well, they don't bring him back, that's for sure.

For the unbeliever there is no proof good enough.
For the believer, no proof is nessacary.

My boyfriend started to read Anne Rice's new Jesus novel but put it down after 50 pages, disgusted. (he actually bought the book for me as a Christmas present but I haven't gotten to it yet). He declared the prose "simple and dull, dull, dull" and refused to waste anymore time on it when there are stacks of other books in our kitchen from his "To Read" list that are still unread. A tepid bore, according to him, and it's no accident that it's printed in giant font. Haven't picked it up myself but I'm curious now.

I agree with you boyfriend lex. It is dull and boring and makes no sense. The story of Jesus is far more fascinating than Ms. Rices version.

I liked it BUT...
I'm a "bible freak".
I LOVE the historical/archeolicical aspects etc.

It's definitely NOT worth the $30 or whatever it was I paid and would be close to the bottom of my "must read" pile. The only good thing is you can read it in 1 or 2 days. It's not much of an investment.

This article made us sad:

Anne Rice comes to Jesus

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- It's Halloween, and Anne Rice has a new book -- a memoir, in fact -- that's climbing best-seller lists. Everything is normal, then.

Anne Rice says she hopes to take her skills writing vampire books and "redeem myself."

Normal if it were 1994 -- the height of Rice's megaselling fame as a queen of Southern Gothic pulp.

For those who haven't been paying attention lately to vampire lit, America's most famous chronicler of bloodsuckers doesn't live in New Orleans anymore -- and hasn't since before Hurricane Katrina hit -- and she's riding new waves of enthusiasm: the memoir and Christian lit.

Her memoir, "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession," is the latest piece of evidence that Rice is reinventing herself in an attempt to build a reputation as a serious Christian writer.

In the memoir, the 67-year-old writer doesn't disavow the two decades she spent churning out books on vampires, demons and witches -- with a batch of S&M erotica thrown in -- following the breakout success of her first novel in 1976, "Interview With the Vampire."

But she's clearly moved on.

In a telephone interview from her mountain home in Rancho Mirage, California, Rice laid out her goal:

"To be able to take the tools, the apprenticeship, whatever I learned from being a vampire writer, or whatever I was -- to be able to take those tools now and put them in the service of God is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful opportunity," she said. "And I hope I can redeem myself in that way. I hope that the Lord will accept the books I am writing now."

The memoir follows the release of two books in a planned four-part, first-person chronicle of the life of Jesus.

And in this new 245-page memoir, Rice presents her former life as vampire writer as that of a soul-searching wanderer in the deserts of atheism; as someone akin to her most famous literary creations -- Lestat, her "dark search engine," Louis the aristocrat-turned-vampire and Egyptian Queen Akasha, "the mother of all vampires."

"I do think that those dark books were always talking about religion in their own way. They were talking about the grief for a lost faith," she said.

In 2002, Rice broke away completely from atheism -- nearly four decades after she gave up her Roman Catholic faith as the 1960s started. It happened when she went off to college and found her peers talking about existentialism -- Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre. Religion, she writes, was too restrictive to the young Rice. Too out of step.

Yet, religion had to come back into her life, she writes. For her, it was something she'd have to face up to again like an absent parent or a long-lost love child or Banquo the ghost in "Macbeth."

By the late 1990s, when she went back to Mass, Rice -- the author whose books sold in the tens of millions and who had recharged Hollywood's appetite for vampire-inspired horror -- had fallen on hard times.

Her husband, poet and artist Stan Rice, died of a brain tumor in 2002. And she had become victim to diabetes.

Always over-the-top and beyond the rational, she writes that her return of faith was preceded by a series of epiphanies -- many while on travels to Europe's cathedrals, Israel and Brazil. In one episode, when she visited the giant Jesus statue above Rio de Janeiro, she writes that she felt "delirium" as the clouds broke and revealed the statue.

Her professed revelations recall the religious intoxication she describes of her childhood.

When she was 12, she had her father turn a room on the back porch of the family's Uptown home in New Orleans into an oratory modeled after St. Rose of Lima -- the saint Catholics believe turned roses into floating crosses. She wanted to be a saint, she writes.

In the memoir, Rice describes a familiar Catholic upbringing imbued with opulence and mystery. The incense. The statuary. The stained glass. The darkness. She learned the world, she writes, through her senses, through a "preliterate" understanding of the world. She writes that she possessed "an internal gallery of pictorial images" that, lamentably, was replaced "by the alphabetic letters" she learned later.

"You might call it the Mozart effect, but it was the Catholic effect on me," she said.

In a sense, the memoir also is a confessional about her struggle as a writer to be a reader, a thinker and an author with a distinct literary style. Her stories often are reveries with no end in sight -- and all too often ugly with pedantic unwinding, numbing in detail and overly simplistic, a pastiche of cliches.

Her turn in direction -- from vampire fiction to Christian musings -- still isn't winning the critics over.

In The New York Times, Christopher Buckley slammed Rice's memoir as "a crashing, mind-numbing bore. This is the literary equivalent of waterboarding."

And the bar is high when it comes to writing about Jesus.

"The best may be Nikos Kazantzakis' 'The Last Temptation of Christ,' " said Jason Berry, a novelist and journalist who has written extensively on the Catholic priest sex abuse scandal. "But also (G.K.) Chesterton, Norman Mailer. ... A lot of narrative artists in both literature and film have taken on Jesus, so to speak."

Rice isn't out to impress the critics, though.

"My objective is simple: It's to write books about our Lord living on Earth that make him real to people who don't believe in him; or people who have never really tried to believe in him," she said.

She pressed the point: "I mean, I've made vampires believable to grown women. Now, if I can do that, I can make our Lord Jesus Christ believable to people who've never believed in him. I hope and pray."

For her devotees, whatever she writes invariably goes down like a smooth bloodbath, that favorite Goth beverage sometimes made with raspberry liqueur, red wine and cranberry juice.

"There are so many people dedicated to her. They want her to write more vampire books," said Marta Acosta, author of the popular "Casa Dracula" series, a "comedy of manners" that plays on vampire themes. She also runs the Vampire Wire, a book blog for fans of gore and the undead.

As for her, Acosta couldn't care less if Rice sinks back into the vampire vein.

"People think it's sexual, but it's not. It's suppressed stuff. Southern Gothic," Acosta said. "How many centuries is Louis (played by Brad Pitt in the movie 'Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles') going to whine?"

Never again, it seems.

Rice is busy writing about Jesus as a minister. And that's a tall order, Rice said.

I don't think this is such a stretch for her.
All of her books have had this very Roman Catholic slant.
For me, her books made you look at heaven, angels, saints etc. in a very "real" way.
(The way it did for vampires and witches).
Her first "Jesus Book" (I forget the name of it) was fun to read.
I foolishly paid full price for it as soon as it came out and won't do THAT again but I did enjoy it.
The writing definitely isn't her best, and the story line is... well, VERY predictable but just like when she takes you back to ancient Egypt or Rome or Babylon in her vampire books, she brings the New Testament to life.
I thought it was fun to read and will read the new ones (I'll buy them used at the Strand though).
She's old now and is thinking about eternity.
But I thank God she gave us Vampires and Witches.
The saddest thing about her life (besides the "Queen Of The Damned" movie) is that she will never do the Talamasca books.

Who knows, wait until she gets in to her 70's. She may reinvent hersalf all over once again and be a re-risen sanguinary sipper. Jesus may not bring her the salvation she seeks.

And watch out about going to buy in the Strand Daddy, I know someone who keeled over dead in the aisle one day. Maybe you should carry your crucifix when you go shopping there.

What I think is the real sell out is leaving NOLA for Rancho Mirage!

I just re-read my post.

quote:

she brings the New Testament to life.

I sound like some kind of freak!
What I mean is...
Everything about the bible (especially the new testament) is clouded with this heavy sanctimonious overtone. When she writes about an historical period she makes you feel like you are there. It's a gift she has and is very cool.

Praise Jebus Daddy!