Cav's Place

This will be quick, so let me get right to it and say that the week started with going to the dentist, where she replaced that filling yet again, and scheduled me to go again this coming Wednesday because she found another tiny cavity on another tooth. The problem is that, same as last time, she drilled significantly more into the tooth before putting in the new filling, to the point that it now hurts somewhat to eat there. Also hurt while she was drilling, of course, and it means I lost most of this tooth even though the initial cavity it all started from was really tiny and no other appeared since then, instead it being completely the dentist’s fault for apparently being unable to find a way to make that particular filling stick and taking away more and more of my tooth each time for no medical reason whatsoever. Needless to say, I’m very unhappy about it, but at the same time quite confused, as I have other fillings that are still in place after eight years.

Either way, from there I went to buy a few things, and then in the evening I went for this week’s run, saying I’ll be content if it’s not the slowest so far… And being surprised when it somehow ended up being clearly the fastest, 21:53, 19 seconds better than the previous best time, despite even stopping for a few seconds to tie my shoelaces again after those from one shoe had come undone. And yes, the park was still crowded, implying a lot of weaving, slowing down or even briefly stopping, and I didn’t have anyone to chase.
There was a moment when somebody caught up with me, but he didn’t pass, only coming alongside me and staying there even when I was specifically trying to let him get ahead, then dropping back again until I pretty much had to stop when there was no room to pass other people while going under the bridge and he and two others I hadn’t noticed until then went past me by getting in the way of some cyclists coming from the opposite direction. After I caught up with and passed them again after clearing the people, they quickly dropped back and I didn’t notice them again, so I had a “running partner” for at most a fifth of the route, probably less; the rest of the way it was just me pacing myself, and I didn’t think I was doing so well, but then I saw the time and couldn’t quite believe it.
The problem is that, while I didn’t feel like I was pushing too hard while running, I definitely felt it pretty much as soon as I stopped and can’t say I recovered even now, as I still feel exhausted, my leg muscles are tired, still have a few cramps and my left hip keeps hurting. In other words, that was definitely too much and it’ll be bad if that time doesn’t remain the record on that route for quite a while, because I definitely shouldn’t push this hard again, even if the temperature is set to drop as of next week and I may be able to once again go when the park won’t be so crowded anymore.

As for the protest mentioned in the title, that took place yesterday, in front of the Danish Embassy in Bucharest, and it was part of the #StandUp250 series of events taking place around the world, asking Denmark to stop supporting the Faeroese whale slaughter and displaying support for the Sea Shepherd volunteers fined, arrested or already deported for interfering or even merely for not participating. I was actually wondering whether Remus Cernea will organize such an event, since it was obvious that nobody else would around here, and was glad to see that he did, even if it was scheduled to take place between 5:45 PM and 7:30 PM, so outside working hours. It was, after all, mainly an opportunity to take some pictures and post them in order to add to the international show of support for these efforts, though I heard that Remus does intend to file a formal statement as well, next week.
Walking all the way there and back obviously didn’t help with my recovery, and now my arms are tired as well due to holding up those banners, my left shoulder complaining the most after I held one up against a wall for as long as I could while we were still waiting for people to gather, so it’ll be more easily seen. Still, it was all right, and the 17 or 18 people who attended were actually more than expected, as small as the number may otherwise appear. And yes, I did take a few pictures, not from the beginning but eventually leaving my spot among the others to do so after somebody pointed out that I had a camera as well when Remus was saying that his, which had only been brought to him by his assistant after about one hour even though he was saying it shouldn’t take more than ten minutes to reach his place, had some problems… And I also somehow managed not to look like a complete idiot in some of the pictures taken by him, even though that required a fair amount of conscious effort to control my face when I knew I was about to be in a shot, knowing that pretty much whenever I end up in a picture taken at a protest the way I look is terribly embarrassing.

And I guess this wasn’t quick after all, but that’s no news when it comes to personal matters. Still wish I could simply write like this when I actually mean to, in my story or in posts about non-personal issues, but the chances of that happening are slim to none and even what little I do occasionally manage to write is the result of significant effort and requires a whole lot of time. Worse, while I at least keep thinking of serious non-personal blog posts, I can’t even remember the last time my story had any place in my mind, what little I still add to it every day taking it absolutely nowhere and being nothing but the result of sheer stubbornness.

Today, at 2:03 AM GMT, comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, or more simply Rosetta‘s comet, reached perihelion, 186 million kilometers from the Sun. The event, which obviously also implies a maximum of activity, was marked by team members attending a two-hour Hangout, which also included some questions and answers about the New Horizons mission, and by the release of a new interactive viewer. Do note that the viewer is still quite a work in progress, but it’s still fun to play with for a little while.
Sadly, as it was once again confirmed during the Hangout as well, there has been no further contact with Philae and the last time something was received it was obvious that one receiver was broken and the two transmitters were malfunctioning, so it may be that other systems are still gathering information and attempting to send, but there’s no way for it to do so. Plus that, considering the increased activity, it’s quite possible that it once again moved to another location on the surface, changing the amount of sunlight received and obviously also making it impossible for Rosetta to know when and where to listen for a signal. The team doesn’t believe the jets could actually shoot Philae into space, however, and the power situation should continue to be good until October or so, so they’ll keep trying.

Interestingly, the Perseids also peaked last night, so while seeing Rosetta’s comet requires a relatively large telescope, there were reasons for anyone living in an area without much light pollution to look up, at least as long as the sky was relatively clear. For those who missed the “main show” but still hope to see some “shooting stars” this year, Perseids should still be visible for about ten more days, or more specifically ten more nights, but of course there will be much fewer now that the peak has passed.

In itself, that doesn’t sound that bad, since we’re seven and a third months into the year. However, this Sunday update comes only two weeks after the previous one and it’s also the week’s second personal post, plus that it doesn’t exactly have any purpose other than to be able to say that I posted twice this week as well. So, if Thursday’s post turned out a fair bit longer than I meant it, this will definitely just be a short one.

In fact, the only thing I may care to add is that the fact that someone else mentioned it on the MobyGames forums made me reinstall Neverwinter Nights and show off my character. The last save, towards the end of chapter 2 of Hordes of the Underdark, is from January 2011, though there is an autosave from February that can be said to be only one step ahead. The other saves are from December, however, and include one with the same location as the autosave I mentioned, but made several game hours earlier, confirming what I remembered, which is that I gave up as I wasn’t sure which order to do certain things in or even how to do one of them at all, trying different ways until I got too frustrated.
This definitely doesn’t mean I’m about to pick this game back up, but I guess it does allow for the possibility… Which would be bad news for the plans to make some serious attempts to win a long game of King of Dragon Pass, but if it’s a matter of simply finishing a game, Hordes of the Underdark may actually be a safer bet, if I’ll somehow manage to get around my need to do everything perfectly. Still, I do seem to have gotten myself out of the situation that was troubling me earlier on King of Dragon Pass and, while another problem appeared, I may just keep my clan together at least as long as I did the first time, which also means I have quite a few more game years to try to actually improve instead of merely struggling to fail just a little better, as they say.

Otherwise, going to the dentist tomorrow to have that filling replaced yet again, so let’s see how that will go. Apparently it’s the last day before the dentist goes on vacation, so I guess it’s a good thing it happened now and not a little later, but I sure wish they’d find a way to make these fillings stay in place. Or this one in particular, as it’s the one that keeps falling off, though the one from the same tooth on the right side fell a few times as well. The rest seem to stay in place just fine, even if most of them have been there for nearly eight years now.

I seem to have managed to get back to King of Dragon Pass, though it’s going badly and at the moment I’d say that managing to last until the start of the 19th year, as I did the first time, may be something of an achievement. May be better to just start over, but doubt I’ll do better, so I guess I’ll see how long I can keep going like this and what will happen later, unless I’ll just give up again. Either way, the chances of “winning” a long game this year, or at least by next spring, as I keep saying is the plan, seem slim at the moment and get slimmer every day.

This week’s run was particularly fast, however, as I managed my best time so far on this route through the park, 22:12, though it was once again in the evening and therefore I had to weave around people and slow down or even briefly stop when there was simply no way through. That was thanks to some other guy who was alongside me as I started and who seemed to have a pace that was just slightly better than my normal one, so after running side by side until the first time we had to squeeze through a space between other people, where he sped up first and I allowed him to go through ahead of me, and then him speeding up slightly more when I tried to draw level again, I followed him until he stopped, maybe 200 meters short of a lap around the lake. Then I tried, and managed, to maintain that pace for the final portion as well, and this was the result, though my body sure complained about it later.

The good part of that was that I managed to sleep for some nine hours Tuesday morning, which was quite a welcome change, and also necessary, as yesterday morning that once again didn’t go too well and napping later was definitely not an option, as I was going to a concert. Unless you count that time, probably in my early teens, when dad took me to some big event organized by a radio station, or a media corporation owning a television and a radio station, this would be the first concert I attended and I was very anxious about it, but it was The Hourglass coming to Bucharest again and, even if nothing else, it’d have been extremely difficult to forgive myself if I wouldn’t have at least said hi to Alma after talking to her for the past few years on-line and not attending their previous concert here, back in 2013, as it’d have finished way too late and I didn’t want to be walking back at that hour.
The thing was that the schedule was quite a mess, as the event listed the “open doors” time as 7 PM in one place and 8 PM in another and also supposedly included an opening act which remained unnamed until that very afternoon, when any mention of an opening act was simply removed. As a result, I got there at 7:45 PM, to be sure and also to give myself time to also find the place, but no such time was needed as a comment I had seen was accurate, pointing out that the actual location is across the road from where it’s listed on the map, and therefore my eyes fell on it immediately. That meant I was left to simply wander around for those 15 minutes, then spent a few more minutes sort of hidden behind the metro exit, trying to convince myself to head in, and then I picked a seat and waited, telling the waitress who came to ask what I wanted that I didn’t want anything and being thankful that nobody asked again later.
So in the end I did get to say hi to her and exchange a few awkward words as they were getting ready, though then I just looked away and tried not to curl in a ball when she walked past me a couple more times, once even making a comment out loud that couldn’t have been meant for anyone else, probably as an attempt to get me out of my shell for a few more moments. And then I got to listen to a particularly good performance despite some sound issues. I mean, the guitar and bass were too loud for my taste, the keyboards and the recorded backing tracks possibly a little too quiet and her microphone cut out a few times, but her singing was quite flawless as far as I’m concerned and those allowances I’d usually make for a live performance were quite unnecessary.
Still, I felt terribly awkward while there, and the fact that maybe a total of 35 people attended, possibly a little less if I accidentally included a few staff members in the count, definitely didn’t help, as you can’t not stand out from the crowd when there’s no crowd to begin with. Worse, nearly all the others seemed to know each other, the members of Tiarra and some others who knew or even worked with the members of The Hourglass being at two tables at the front and those who definitely seemed to be regulars of the location at a few others behind them, leaving me and another woman who had also come alone and left as soon as the concert ended to sit at the tables off to one side and a couple of others to hover at the back.
After the concert ended and Alma was saying they’ll have a few beers and chat with people, I turned to leave, but haltingly, as I wanted to say goodbye as well but couldn’t quite persuade myself to do so, which meant it was a good thing she caught up while talking to a waitress who was heading inside and I had a chance to just sort of wave and shrug when she asked if I’m going already. Then I made my way to the metro and after exiting I mostly ran the one and a half kilometer or so left, to catch as much as possible of the match.

And this was supposed to be a quick post but ended up at over 1000 words already, so let me just mention that I just lost a tooth filling again, from the upper left side, and also swallowed it before realizing it. Then again, a part of either it or the tooth itself may have already fallen last week, while I was eating popcorn, but I wasn’t sure exactly what that was and nothing seemed missing when I checked, so I shrugged it off, but it may have been a piece from the contact area broken off, so the rest of it was left to hang on loosely a little longer until it also fell off. So I guess I have to go to the dentist again, and the annoying part is that it seems this filling lasted for just over a year, so it won’t be a free replacement, assuming the last one replaced was a different one, as I seem to recall was the case. Would sure wish they could make them stick for once, though that sure doesn’t seem to be the case with this one.

What must be stated clearly from the beginning is that, after many years and wrong turns, Anne Rice is back, and so is Lestat. Of course, those who expect the exact same Lestat they initially grew to know, from The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned, may be disappointed, but in the end that’s their fault alone. After all, not even the most resilient and rigid immortal would emerge without being deeply altered by everything Lestat went through from Queen of the Damned onward and, while admittedly on a merely mundane level, the same can be said about Anne Rice herself.
Prince Lestat may be, more than anything, a rather direct sequel to The Queen of the Damned, but also, while it doesn’t particularly dwell on them, it stands firmly by the events depicted in The Tale of the Body Thief and Memnoch the Devil and includes characters and references to important moments from The Vampire Armand, Blood and Gold and Pandora. Yes, that means it completely ignores Merrick, Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle, and also Vittorio, but that’s pretty much as it should be. I don’t think it exactly contradicts the events depicted in those books, but can’t really say that I recall much from them, so there may be things that don’t add up, especially regarding the Talamasca. Still, those parts of the series are probably better off forgotten either way, though the one somewhat unpleasant aspect of that is the lack of any reference to the Mayfairs, as depicted in Lives of the Mayfair Witches, and maybe even the Taltos.

In short, as long as expectations remain reasonable, Prince Lestat has much to offer those who enjoyed the first half of The Vampire Chronicles, as well as the story of Marius and those directly related to it. The atmosphere of those earlier books has returned, for better or worse along with Anne Rice’s obsessions and her detailed descriptions of immense wealth, opulence and old-fashioned luxury and behavior. The history and lore of the Undead, as well as of the Talamasca, are presented in even greater detail than before. And readers have the chance to catch up with the old characters and understand the new ones, which are properly introduced and explained, so their presence and their connections to the others and the events make sense. In fact, the earlier books in the series are directly referenced on numerous occasions, including exact quotes and, in one case, even page numbers, both as a way to clarify those connections and to reinforce the myth the entire series relies on.
But does this mean that this book is only intended for fans of the series? Well, yes and no. Yes because properly understanding certain details and nuances does tend to require knowing everything that took place up to the end of The Queen of the Damned and quite a number of important later events, and no because pretty much the entire first half of the book is in fact an extended introduction, using the guise of presenting characters to ease new readers into the story and remind existing fans of facts they may have forgotten over the years. And yes, this means there’s very little actual action for about half the book, and in fact there’s not that much of that even later, and the moments that do exist do seem rather forced and rushed, but here I’ll return to keeping expectations reasonable and say that a significant amount of actual action isn’t the point of Prince Lestat, nor is it exactly necessary at this point in the series.

Moving on to specifics, the first thing that struck me was Rose, who immediately gave me the impression of being the author’s alter ego, through which she presents how she sees her relationship with her characters, and with Lestat most of all, and also moments of her life, events that shaped her or at least her state of mind at certain points in time. Now I didn’t check to see what Anne Rice herself said about this or what others dug up, in part because I don’t want to be disappointed by possibly finding that she refuses to admit it, but this to me adds significantly to the impact and, for lack of a better term, the meaningfulness of Prince Lestat.
On the other hand, while I understand the need to limit the level of detail about some characters, even to the point of leaving some secondary ones rather one-dimensional, in order to focus more on recreating the overall atmosphere and presenting more of the history and lore, I must say I was unpleasantly surprised that the entire Marius and Pandora story was only very barely alluded to, and even that in a way that seemed wrong to me. Seeing as a chapter was dedicated to Marius and another, while admittedly not dedicated to her, specifically included Pandora, I expected more… Or perhaps I needed more, considering the impact that part of Blood and Gold had on me at the time and the connections that story creates in my mind.

But speaking of those one-dimensional characters, and also returning to the relative lack of action in order to explain it in another way, one must understand that Anne Rice’s vampires are Romantics, with a capital “R”. Sure, not all to the same extent, some perhaps hardly at all, but those she prefers and focuses on, most of those who rise to positions that make them truly significant, they live for beauty, for creativity, for art, for emotions and passions and sensations, and for the deep bonds they form with others. They can easily become extraordinarily fixated on another, or on a source, or a form, of beauty, so much so that their dedication will appear to go well beyond what the vast majority of people would consider sick obsession.
However, that definitely doesn’t mean they’re weak. Instead, it means their capacity to love and cherish and appreciate is so much greater. It means the emotions and sensations they’re able to experience are so much more intense. It means they can focus so much better, and treasure and maintain, and possibly improve, what they have, instead of always being distracted or even actively looking for something better, or even simply something different, as most humans do. And, while at times it can definitely prove to be a weakness, overall this may well be their greatest strength.

That said, Fareed and the other scientists do seem rather out of place, but their role is properly explained, as is how they came to be. In addition, the very fact that they’re out of place is pointed out quite a number of times, from both directions, but so is the fact that they’re necessary. Anne Rice does tend to take the easy way out, largely skipping over any scientific and technological details that she perhaps can’t properly grasp, or that she simply believes many readers won’t, by stating that the main characters neither know nor particularly care about those issues, but at the same time it’s stressed that no society, not even one of immortals, can continue to exist in the present day and age without embracing science and technology and the knowledge and the advances they bring.
On the other hand, it’s also pointed out, repeatedly, that all this knowledge can easily be misused and new developments can also have negative consequences, both intended and unintended, and measures must be taken to reduce these risks as much as possible. And this is just one of the many considerations, opinions, pieces of social commentary, philosophy or bits of wisdom that make Prince Lestat more than a simple story. Depending on the reader’s stance on the respective issues, these may be seen as either positive or negative aspects, but the different characters do, in quite a number of cases, allow for multiple different and even conflicting points of view to be presented, offering arguments in favor of each.

And now, please allow me to finish this the same way I started: Anne Rice is back, and so is Lestat. This book breathes new life, or perhaps a better term would be new unlife, into the series, pulling it together and paving the way toward a potentially exciting future. It truly belongs within The Vampire Chronicles, using many of the elements which deserve to be remembered as its foundation while ignoring those which perhaps do not. It selects characters and events which had previously been offered too little, if any, time and space and presents them properly, ensuring that they make sense both on their own and as part of the story and offering them a chance to shine or, at the very least, setting the stage for future books to do so.
True, it may be mainly intended for existing fans of the series who have forgotten some details since reading the rest, but it’s written in a way that allows it to remain quite enjoyable for new readers as well, while those who, quite the contrary, need no reminders or recaps but nevertheless enjoy the style and atmosphere should also have little to complain about. So yes, as this review likely also proves, nostalgia, fond memories, mental and emotional links and just the right amount of forgetfulness definitely help improve one’s opinion of it, but none are truly required in order to clearly state that Prince Lestat is simply a good book… At least as long as expectations remain reasonable and readers don’t demand it to be something it neither is nor needs to be.

Rating: 4/5