The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice (1988)

By -
The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice  

             


                I love when I get lost in the pages of a novel. When the narrative is beautiful, interesting and just whisk me away to whatever time and place the story is taking place. I absolutely hate it when the story gets muddled half way through and the story gets lost in an unnecessary lengthy plot that starts to drag the story out. This in a nutshell is my relationship with The Queen of the Damned. Now, mind you, this isn’t in any way shape or form a bad novel. I enjoyed this story. I simply lost interest midway through and dragged myself to the finish line.
                Lestat (yes, that Lestat from Interview With The Vampire which I absolutely loved) is a rock star. He has an autobiography out where he admitted to being a vampire and where he also divulged the history of Akasha and Enkil, the first of the vampires. He claims to have kissed the frozen statue that Akasha is now and claims to have drank her blood. Well, now Akasha is awake. Covens are being set on fire and only those close to Lestat seem to be safe. Then there are the dreams of the twins with red hair that haunt the vampires as they sleep. The twins from millennia past that are somehow connected to the awakening of the Queen.
                Like I said, this novel started off beautifully. I was so into the story. The world building was fantastic. There was so much mystery and so much history. And of course, there was Lestat. I really enjoyed the first two hundred pages of the story. Then Rice started going into detail with the twins and we finally meet the Queen and the story slowed down. To a snail’s pace. I guess I found the mystery of the twins more interesting that the reality. Or maybe it was the way in which the history unfolded. Rice’s method of storytelling changed and as it changed my attention waned. Were the characters interesting? For the most part yes. Especially all of the characters that we weren’t aware of in previous novels. Was the world building amazing? Not amazing but good. The major flaw then had to be the change in narrative half way through. Alas, I have to rate this 3.5 out of 5. Good but not amazingly great.

                

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Steve Johnson

By -
Image
Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Steve Johnson Bringing to life the story of a notorious pirate to a modern audience isn’t an easy task. We’re too used to the comfort of easy travel, the mythos of pirates and the commercialized imagery produced by movies and television. Images of Jack Sparrow and Long John Silver have been part of entertainment for so long that the idea of true piracy and all it’s ruthlessness has almost been washed away. It isn’t until you’re able to wash away the false images and submerge yourself into the actual history that you can see piracy for it’s truly brutal nature. It also brings up many questions about governments, laws, corporations, scandal, colonization and other factors that allowed piracy to flourish and exist in the manner that it did for so long. Piracy didn’t exist in a bubble. Enemy of All Mankind takes the story of one pirate, who helped usher in the Golden Age of Piracy, and exa
Read more

Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zack

By -
Image
Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zack          In my case it is always the image of Odetta that comes to mind when I hear her name. The tall, undeniably Black woman, hair in an afro, guitar in hand. It must be that I simply did not know enough about her life, her struggle, and even her music to convey more than that image. But her image is memorable and her presence something not easily described. This book fills in the gaps in the story of Odetta that I didn’t know. Looking back at my childhood, her most memorable songs are the ones I’ve known most of my life, singing in my school’s chapel along with hundreds of other Black students, the words having meaning that I can only truly comprehend decades later as a Black woman.          Zack takes his time with this biography, letting the readers learn as much about Odetta as we do the time from whence she came. Her migration from Alabama to California, her feelings of coming from a loveless, forced marriage,
Read more

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

By -
Image
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood I’m going to cut right to the chase. This book is well written but we didn’t need it. I expected more. I wanted more and this fell flat. I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale , more than once, and I genuinely enjoyed it. The single narrative of Offred lent itself to the story well and it was genuinely a terrifying society. I watched the first two series of the show and though I have my reservations about it, I still thought it was a good show. It does a great job answering questions that the book could not because of its singular narrative. It filled out the world. This book revolves around three narratives: Aunt Lydia, who we know had a helping hand in stripping women of their sense of self and molded them to be controlled by the men of Gilead; Agnes, raised in Gilead with a Commander as father, privileged and set to marry well; and Daisy, a teenager raised in Canada hating Gilead and the abuses women endured that she’s learned about since she
Read more