Blood Canticle
Ratings13
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings13
Average rating3.6
"Anne Rice continues her astonishing vampire chronicles with the story of Lestat's passionate quest for redemption, goodness and the love of Rowan Mayfair." "Here are all the brilliantly conceived principal characters that make up Anne Rice's world of vampires and witches: Mona Mayfair, who's come to Blackwood Farm to die and is, instead, brought into the realm of the undead...Rowan Mayfair, brilliant neurosurgeon and witch, who finds herself dangerously drawn to Lestat...her husband, Michael Curry, hero of the Mayfair Chronicles, who seeks Lestat's help with the temporary madness of his wife...Patsy, country-western singer, who returns to avenge her death at the hands of her son, Quinn Blackwood." "And here is the spirit of Julien Mayfair, guardian of the family, determined to torment Lestat eternally for what he has done to Mona...the riddle of the five-thousand-year-old Taltos, involving Mona's child...and, at the book's center, the Vampire Lestat, once the epitome of evil and now - following the transformation set in motion with Memnoch the Devil - struggling with his vampirism and yearning for goodness, purity and love as he contends with ghosts, legends, secrets and the mystery of the Taltos, and as he wrestles with the fate of his beloved Rowan Mayfair"--Book jacket.
Featured Series
13 primary booksThe Vampire Chronicles is a 13-book series with 13 primary works first released in 1976 with contributions by Anne Rice and Adalgisa Campos da Silva.
Reviews with the most likes.
I fell no empathy with those who gave this book a one star. If you have arrived until this one in the series, it is pretty much on the same level as the last few ones.
Lestat is evolving as a character ever so slightly. People expected a caricature version of him, following their misguided interpretations of him as a bad ass hero. He is not, and has never been that.
Rice even “tongue in he cheek mocks” her fans using Lestat's own words.
I'll address the top reviewers for fun and profit.
1st Lestat is a pussy: no. This is probably a reference to Lestat saying he wants to be a saint, but I'll give a broader criticism.
Do you require all your protagonists to be alpha males? This is not a PNR. This is not a teenager action love story, with the good hearted bad boy. This is not a cheap gore fest slasher action packed. The Vampire Chronicles are philosophical and psychological horror. Lestat's demeanor is very consistent with the previous books so far.
He even says he wants to be a saint, be can't help but being a sinner. This is Lestat. This, nothing else. Wanting to be good while behaving as a monster. This is Vampire The Masquerade's entire premise.
2nd Anachronism: this is as significant as forgetting a comma in a sentence. To call this a detail is to give it too much credit. So what if Lestat doesn't know how to use an email? And if he tries to use modern day speak, and fails at a times? This is part of his character, nothing to see here.
Regarding Mona being portrayed as a vacuous slut, I can't comment, I didn't read the Mayfair Witches. I'll take the author's opinion over the reviewer.
The first part of the book doesn't drag on. Its just not the story you want to hear. I have this feeling with most books I read. I couldn't bare the Mayfair Witches, every single page was a drag. The Balckwood Farm first half was a drag.
xst) Rice criticizing her fans as Lestat. oh the irony. I have read all of the books and Lestat has been consistent so far. Her books as well. Her previous books had more elements of PNR and other tropes, as I mentioned above. Yes they were also better, but they were never meant to be the books you were expecting them to be.
The PC critics are strong in this reviewer, I'll just say that literature is art, not a declaration of intent. To the implications of Rice's Catholicism's influence affecting her work, I'm a fervent atheist, and I'm not bothered even one bit by that. I'm much more offended by some of her philosophical views in previous books then these. If you want to read a Vampire book where religion got the best of her, see Vittorio, the Vampire.
About the whole of nothing happening, this has always been present in her books. I don't like it either, but her prose is so alluring that I can't help but feel a mixture of joy and irritation.
Regarding all of these and the others criticisms, I gather that people wanted more of the same. I don't. Rice took this book to “different” heights. It is a book that would have nothing for me to like, except for Rice's prowess as a writer. The elements presents in this book may not be as good as the first books, but they are still here. I'm surprised I'm this long in a book series that is very unlike my tastes.
As to my review, I don't have much to say.
Lestat is the protagonist an narrator once again. Quinn and Mona have meaningful participations, and so does Dra Rowan Maifair
Lestat is being haunted by Uncle Julien and some other Mayfair ghosts, because he “stole” Mona from them, by preventing her to die.
The plot revolves around Mona's transformation, the reveal of her new condition to her family of powerful witches, her quest to seek out her stolen Taltos child and Lestat's incontrollable attraction for Dra Rowan.
They were weary of what they might find when meeting the Taltos. Their race has been destroyed in the past by the humans, and so they have vowed to grow strong and conquer mankind. But when they finally find them, they had all been killed os enslaved. Mona's daughter had long since died, and she is survived by two of her descendants. The Taltos are born and fully grow in a few days by the way.Mona and the remaining Taltos gets off to a rocky start, but eventually things work out well enough. The pirates who enslaved the Taltos were all killed, the surviving Taltos were integrated into the Mayfair family, Lestat manages to overcome his desire to give Rowan the Dark Gift.
Here is Rice's response to her angry fans.
http://50.116.16.126/wiki/index.php/Anne_Rice
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/books/the-people-have-spoken-and-rice-takes-offense.html
Not easy to pick up the plot and run with it because there's an assumption you know the prior 1 or 2 books. There's a bit of introduction to each of the character and their relation to each other but not enough to make each memorable for recall when needed.
Also, there's an awful lot of talking to the reader and not alot of plot, unless it picks up after I got frustrated and quit.
