Cav's Place

The 19 years that passed since I read the first book were a serious reason for concern, so it was a relief that the fact that readers were likely to need a lot of reminders was fully taken into consideration. Not that it’s surprising, considering the 28 years that passed between the respective release dates, but I want to point out that I never felt lost or that I was missing anything important while reading this. And those reminders aren’t forced, generally fitting quite well into a story that expands and improves upon that of the first book while also offering some explanations that were initially lacking.
Then again, that’s not hard at all, seeing as I was calling The Mummy as “the worst book by Anne Rice, except of course the “Sleeping Beauty” series“. And I must say that The Passion of Cleopatra also fails to meet my expectations of a book by Anne Rice, feeling like it tries at various moments to reach for that “magic” but keeps falling short or going off the mark, and while the fact that she wrote it with her son may also have something to do with that, the problems are likely deeper, having to do with the source material and the fact that this “species” of immortals and their world just don’t fit Anne Rice’s style and she never developed them quite enough. It has its good moments and, other than a couple of obvious continuity errors that were actually very close together, I wasn’t actually bothered by anything specific, actually being surprised that I didn’t dislike the characters this time around, which is unusual for me in general, but overall it’s just a decent way to pass some time.

Rating: 3/5