Two Prince Lestat reviews
TLDR - You’ve been warned. I just have to get it off my chest.
Review 1 - A book I enjoyed, because I really wanted to (Spoiler free)
I must admit, that although Anne Rice is my favouriteauthor, I am mighty slow in reading her books these days. Sometimes I am months behind, like now. I just finished Prince Lestat; it took me three days. I might say that I devoured it, but that doesn’t mean it is without flaws. On the contrary.
I liked this book mainly because I really wanted to after so many years of waiting for a visit from my favorite characters, but when I sat down to write a review all the negative things came rushing at me.
The book begins with Lestat hearing the Voice, and then there are other people hearing the Voice. A lot of these people get their own backstories, some of them we never heard about before or just heard about in passing. But this is the main theme. And the deification of Lestat, of course, that just gets a bit ridiculous after a while.
The storyline, the format of the book, the style makes it a true sequel to the Queen of the Damned. - which was the least cohesive book until now in the series. It’s as if much of the Blood Canticle and Blackwood Farm had never happened (which is all well, though I kind of liked Quinn Blackwood, it would’ve been nice to see him here). Lestat is still broken, but we get a passing glimpse of the old Lestat we all came to love, and a glimpse of a new one in the making.
I must admit that among all the stories in the Vampire Chronicles, the Queen of the Damned book was probably the only one I could never get into. Not exactly because of the story, but because of the format it’s written in. First of all the point of views. We have Lestat speaking in first person, and then all these other characters have their own stories, from an omniscient point of view. We get a montage of stories, with one story written to a certain height, and moving onto the next story before resolving it. This montage works well enough with four or maximum five storylines, not so well with ten. The changing in point of views does not help.
Prince Lestat’s format is essentially the same only worse; it’s like little short stories strung together, and you know that they will come together at one point, but with this book you have to be really patient. To say it is not an easy read is an understatement. It’s especially hard when you have one or two characters you really care about and dozens you don’t, and they are usually left behind just when you would start to care. There is little passion and suspense. The only extremely small tension is created by a minor character, Everard, who’s harboring a deep hatred for his maker. Other than that everyone is so good, they like and want the same things.
This format rarely works, and this book sadly is not an exception. Not all the little stories come together, some are not very interesting, and they tell you the same thing over and over until it feels rather repetitive.
'Yes, but is it good?' I hear you ask. 'Is it worth reading?' The answer is obvious. This is not a point in the Vampire Chronicles where you can start reading the series. If you are a fan of the series you will read this one, and there's a chance you won't be disappointed. If we can talk about the whole plot of the Vampire Chronicles, this one moves it along nicely, there are lots of things going on, although most of it is very predictable from the start. It gives us fans something we have longed for for many years, the Brat Prince himself, though the first half of the book does not feature him as heavily as the title suggests.
Anne Rice not just references her previous books, but glorifies them. Lestat becames an almost godlike figure, and suddenly everyone respects him and is in love with him. Unfortunately, in this universe supposedly deep feelings like love come and go faster than for a twelve year old girl, and with a similar amount of crying.
We always hear about the Coven of the Articulate, the fictious authors of the books, Lestat, Marius, Pandora, Louis, Armand, but you’ll probably start wondering who writes Prince Lestat (seriously who wrote the Queen of the Damned?)? But the thing is, they are not as articulate as they used to be. Even the old characters seem to have lost their distinct voices and they became interchangable. The focus is more on appearances (clothes, decor etc.) than on personalities or plot.
It not just revisits lots of old characters, it introduces new ones. Some of the new ones are well written, have potential, but don’t really get a chance to shine. It features way too many characters for one book, but too weak a storyline for being broken into two. What’s the use in creating a potentially interesting character if they are just going to get pushed in the background without a second thought? The new characters don’t add anything to the plot anyway.
This is typically the book that wants to tell so much, yet it tells so little in so many pages. Of course there is the point when it all gets rather interesting, and you just want to keep on reading.
It is definitely not the highlight of this series, but maybe it shouldn’t be. It is for hardcore fans. If it is a beginning of a new series, it is an intriguing one, and I for one am looking very much forward to reading the next book. I long to get to know Rose, Viktor, Gregory better, because it made a lot of promises, that remain unfulfilled.
For a starter of a new series this is actually a very good feeling to be left with, but this book lacked something essentially Anne Rice, and that does not bode well for the following installments.
Review 2 - An entertaining disappointment (*SPOILERS*)
The books starts out promising: a Voice is bothering Lestat in his head. Is he going mad? Or is an ancient half-mad one nearby? He tunes it out from time to time. It has everything in the setup that suggests this will be a classic, good Anne Rice book. Starts slowly, but interesting, with a broken Lestat, but at least he IS Lestat!
Lestat is wandering for years, and though he hears Benji’s radio broadcast from New York calling out to him, he doesn’t care much. The Voice sends him back to the Auvergne, his birthplace, where he takes up residence in his old family castle, and renovates it. The timeline is a bit confusing in this book, but I assume he meets Seth, an ancient vampire, and Fareed, his fledgling in Los Angeles before that. Fareed is a scientist, who was brought over to study vampires, and Lestat agrees to provide blood and DNA samples for the sake of Science. Not just that! He is offered a hormone shot, to be able to “get it up” again, and do the naugthy with a female scientist in the clinic. He of course says ‘hell yes!’. He even provides sperm this way! He just goes along with this, no questions asked. After that he talks a bit to Seth, and they declare their love for each other. And then they never meet again (at least not for a long time). Seriously?
Lestat then is reunited with David and Jesse, after he hears David calling out to her telepathically. They both relate to Lestat that something very wrong is going on with the twins, and there are burnings all around the world. Like a Second Burning. Yeah, we know, Benji talks about that all the time. Thousands of young vampires are dead.
Up until this point the story is still promising and rather coherent. But then comes Part II.
We get to know Rose, a human girl who is rescued by Lestat - uncle Lestan, as she calls him - from certain death after the girl’s parents die and her grandparents don’t want her. He pays nannies, tutors and bodyguards to care for her, and visits occasionally. When she is in trouble and Lestat is nowhere to be found - although he has an iPhone, the brat just always forgets to recharge it, and forgets how to check his emails -, Louis rescues her. How does he even know about Rose is a mystery, because Lestat wants to be left alone and keeps in contact with no one. We’ll never get an answer to this one. When she is in trouble again, Seth and Fareed rescues her (again, how do they even know?), and bring her to their clinic where she meets Viktor, a young mortal boy, who is Lestat’s grown up son/clone (remember the scientis female? That happened roughly twenty years ago apparently.). Rose learns about vampires, and so she and Viktor becomes an item, quite predictably.
After this we get a string of small stories - all in a third person, omniscient point of view, while Lestat narrated the first part in first person - about Cyril, Antoine, a little bit of Marius’s life now with Daniel, Gregory, Everard, Gremt, Teskhamen, Rhoshamandes and his fledgling/companion, Benedict. The only thing connecting most of these, that they all hear that Voice from time to time, but this just makes these stories repetitive. Most of the characters we never heard about, or only in passing, now we get a backstory, but it is probably a bit too much and unnecessary. Cyril’s story for example never intertwines with the main plot, I don’t even know why he’s in this book at all. The others are there at the gathering at Trinity Gate, Armand’s home, but that would be understandable without all these backstories. They add almost nothing to the plot and not even that interesting, except maybe the founding of the Talamasca, which was a mystery up until this book. The new characters like Rose, Viktor and Gregory can be taken out of the book and no one would even notice.
Gregory is - as Jesse describes it to Lestat earlier - deeply (!) in love with Lestat, and let’s be honest, who isn’t? Even if they don’t even know each other. Gregory is just a sixthousand years old fanboy of the Vampire Chronicles, whose love apparently involves spying and stalking. If you think a big romance will come out of this when they will finally meet face to face, you’re in for a disappointment. They have no interaction throughout the book whatsoever, apart from a small introduction at the gathering.
The whole book is a big glorification of the previous Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice even goes as far as to make her characters review her own books - and the deification of Lestat. Everyone is in love with him and looks to him for leadership. Why, he’s only a baby in terms of immortality! Even Lestat says it’s crazy. The l’enfant terrible is making rules instead of breaking them?
When you arrive to about two-thirds of the book, it gets somewhat coherent again, when all these characters finally get together (aren’t you just glad for all those backstories? Now you know, who’s who, even if the characters are totally interchangable withouth a distinct voice or stlye). Everyone is just so beautiful, and dressed elegantly, everybody’s so rich and have so good taste, especially in classical music and furniture! Even Lestat’s maker, Magnus makes a totally unnecessarly appearance, and even he is beautiful now, as a ghost.
The dialogues are so far from normal human speach - even when humans or younger vampires are talking - which is weird considering how they always talk about their soul remaining human. It’s not believable at all, nobody talks like that.
Lestat learns that everyone wants him to lead, that Alessandra is not dead, he meets Eleni, Eugénie and his maker, Magnus – now a handsome ghost – again. He also learns that he has a son, Viktor and he and Rose is at Armand’s place. He should be overwhelmed (and we all know what happened the last time he was overwhelmed), but instead he takes the news rather well. He’s not even particularly mad at Seth and Fareed for violating his trust, for creating a human being without his permission and that they did not tell him and let him be part of him son’s life. Lestat’s temper, for which he is famous for is suddenly non-existent.
Rhosamandes finally brings some action, when bewitched and mislead by the Voice, he kills Maharet and Khayman with the help of Benedict, and kidnaps Mekare to take the Sacred Core into himself. Unfortunately, this is written devoid of any drama and emotion, so these great, ancient characters perish without anyone mourning them, except for Jesse. But there is so much crying going on for no reason, that Jesse’s loss goes almost as unnoticed as those characters’s deaths. I swear, Gabrielle is the toughest, manliest one here, among all those crying hundreds and thousands of years old men, and she is just a minor character here.
Rhoshamandes, to enlist Fareed’s, the scientist’s help for taking the Sacred Core, kidnaps Viktor, Lestat’s son, to make everyone so cooperative. Lestat proves what kind of a leader he would be by brutally chopping off Rhoshamandes’s arm and demanding his son and Mekare to be brought back. Yes, that scene is actually badass. Of course everyone approves of his methods. Viktor has already escaped - he’s probably the only one with actual brains here -, and is found by Seth, and both him and Mekare are brought to Trinity Gate.
Lestat is now the only person in direct contact with the Voice, who is no other than - surprise! - Amel, the spirit, and Lestat is contemplating taking the Sacred Core himself for the sake of the whole “tribe”. The choice is taken out of his hands when Mekare kills herself and offers the Sacred Core to Lestat, and Amel is finally at peace. This would be a highlight scene, if Anne Rice would have not decided to drop the “C” word for the male part of Lestat. This is not even a sensual or sexual scene, that word is just ugly and distracting. My bad, for assuming that Anne Rice’s vocabulary is finer that an average fanfic writer’s.
But what comes after this, is just ridiculous and laughable. Lestat becomes a monarch for the blood drinker tribe, the ‘People of the Savage Garden’, and he gives titles to buildings such as ‘royal residence’ or ‘headquarters’, makes a constitution, and thinks up initiation rituals with the help of his new ‘ministers’. What will be next? Will he impose taxes for his subjects to pay to their Prince?
Lestat will never be alone again, with Amel inside his head all the time, and we are convinced that this is actually a good thing for someone who wanted to be alone for the past two decades, but apparently everyone is happy with this situation. Rose and Viktor both becomes immortals during a newly created ceremony by Marius and Pandora, and the Elders of the Talamasca are eager to visit the new ruler at the Château de Lioncourt, the appointed residence of the new monarch.
At the end it is not Gregory that kisses Lestat, but Louis. Anne Rice found the easy exit again, because this does not need much explaining or sexual tension or long talks. They have a history, so necessarily the will always end up with each other. This time it is Louis that drops everything to follow his love back to France to be with him. Awww!
The next book is titled Blood Paradise, which sounds just terrible. It gives me the feeling that it would be about Lestat leading his blood drinker tribe to Canaan, and they will all be at peace with the mortals, hunting only the evildoers and practice the little drink. Isn’t that sound like a sickening Utopia? Okay, that's a bit too harsh. I'm not reviewing a book that is not even written, so scratch that. I'm just very angry, because despite its flaws I did like this book, but it could have been so much better!
This book is good and terrible at the same time, but more of the latter than the former. It had the potential to be good, and is quite entertaining at parts if you are patient and can live through the boring stuff. The format is not working well, the story is predictable and it lacks depth, drama, passion, action and character development, everything essentially Anne Rice.
As a hardcore fan I have hope that the next book will be better than this, and we will get another classic sooner or later. Until then, I am just happy that Lestat - my favorite character - is back and I am looking forward to reading more about him, even if Prince Lestat was just - for the lack of better words - an entertaining disappointment.
