Cav's Place

I appreciate how the early part brings readers up to speed, and obviously also the mention of discussing rules for creating new vampires and stating that it’d be like forbidding humans from having children, which is just the point. And Lestat, the Brat Prince, can still be said to be himself, some others also have a few moments, and there are some remaining glimpses of this enticing parallel world. But all of that mainly comes after the action’s over, in the last three chapters, which provide the true and proper conclusion to the series that this book was clearly intended all along to be.
The problem is that those three chapters contain almost everything of value and you’d lose little if you’d skip straight to them. When the book is short to begin with, there’s little space left between that introductory part and the ending for what should have been the “meat” of it, but worse is that the level of quality of writing and, if you’ll pardon my use of the term, of channeling Lestat that Anne Rice seemed to have once again found in the first two books from this modern cycle of the Chronicles simply faded away, the book just rushing to the desired conclusion, whatever needs to happen to get there being forced through, with little room for anything bar bland settings, noteworthy characters that, with the exception of the one-dimensional villains and Armand, whom I still can’t stand, are generally reduced to little more than fawning, swooning sycophants, and an amorphous, nondescript mass that makes up the rest. Gone are the signature decadent splendor, glamour and romance, the depth and wisdom of the characters, even their palpable power… That incredible atmosphere which had been rediscovered is simply brushed away, and while those last three chapters save everything and the remaining traces of that world and memories from the previous books may allow readers to mentally flesh things out to some extent even before that point, I’d call it more of a relief than a disappointment that there will never be another book “by” Lestat.

Rating: 3/5