Review: Prince Lestat

Prince Lestat by Anne Rice
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Sigh. Where do I start with this book? I definitely didn’t really look at the details before diving into this continuation of the Vampire Chronicles. I heard that it was supposed to be more reminiscent of the earlier books and, like a fool, I added the audiobook to my queue (even though the last Anne Rice book I read got my all-time lowest book rating).

There were some good things about this book – it was nice to visit with some familiar characters and be reminded of how much I liked the earlier books. Unfortunately, that’s about where it ends. I would have forgiven a gigantic trip down memory lane if the book had just been that, but instead it was some weird combination of new characters, old characters, vampire history, vampire science, and gory scenes. Sure, there’s the homoeroticism I’ve come to expect with Anne Rice and yes, Lestat makes me smile, but at the end of the book I made a noise something like “huh.” If you took a whole bunch of short stories and jammed them into a cannon, what exploded out would be a book like this one.

OK, so, how did we get here? The book begins with stories from Lestat, meeting some vampire scientists, meeting ancients, saving a human girl, and generally being an irresponsible brat. If you think of anyone in the vampire chronicles that is still alive, they are in this book. EVERYONE. Even with this, however, we spend an inordinate amount of time with the new characters. This was really a book about Rose and Victor (and his family) and how they come to enter the vampire world. Oh, and Lestat is in it. That would be a more appropriate description of the amount of time spent with each. Sure, big vampire happenings occur throughout the book, but the real turning points all center on Victor and Rose. Oh, and everyone gets the fun laugh-out-loud moment when the vampire chronicles equivalent of midi-chlorians (from Star Wars) comes up. Really, there was a lot of eye rolling involved in this book.

I know I’m super down on this book, but it certainly wasn’t as bad as the last Anne Rice book I read, so there’s that. For the parts that visited with familiar characters, it was nice to be reminded of the older books. Other than that, I don’t think it was really worth the time it took to chip away at this one.


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