PRINCE LESTAT -Anne Rice-

Review: Diana Mistera

When Anne Rice announced the publication of a new chaper of the Vampire Chronicles, with my beloved Lestat as the main character I was over the moon with happiness, and, as soon as it was possible, I pre-ordered it on amazon.

I didn't know what to expect,and I didn't want to read reviews about the book, because I didn't want to spoil the pleasure of reading it for myself. Sometimes it was frustrating, because I follow Anne Rice's official page on Facebook and I always like to comment on her posts, but I couldn't until I had finished the book.

Now that I have finished it I can say I loved it very much.

There were points at which I had to try to remember what had happened in Interview with the Vampire, Queen of the Damned, and Memnoch the devil, because it's a long time since I read them so, my advice for the new Anne Rice's “fledglings” is to read Vampires Chronicle before Prince Lestat, otherwise it will be difficult to understand many of the characters, their past, how they have been brought to the Dark Gift.

Indeed the first pages immediately introduce the reader to the Blood Genesis, and after that there is the Blood Argot and I found this a great way to start the book, because it explains the history of the Blood and the terminology of the Blood, so I felt like a “fledgling”myself.

The list of the names at the end of the book is a good idea. It is a sort of hierarchy, and I got the idea of a sort of Census, and it was brilliant, because we are talking about Prince Lestat, and the first thing that a Prince will do, at the dawn of a new Empire will in fact be a Census.

As for the Queen of the Damned, in Prince Lestat, every chapter is a different voice, so we are introduced in the new Millenia, to every single vampire,and we get to know what they have done, and what they are doing in this new era, and it's very interesting if we think in terms of the fact that there are vampires that are more than 2000 years old.

There are new immortals which we haven't heard about before and there is that Voice which pierces itself into the mind of the Immortals driving them crazy, and pushing the extermination of the young ones by the fire gift.

There is our beloved Brat Price, who is living the life of a hermit in his old castle, the very one where he was living when he was a young penniless aristocrat, before he was raped by his Maker Magnus, and forced to the Dark Gift.

He is the one who Benji, a young one in the blood, is a 12 year old boy, who sounds far more adult than a teenager, in my opinion,and he is appealing from his radio Network, set in the Trinity Palace,to Lestat, to save the tribe from the extermination that this Voice is planning because, Lestat is The Rockstar who challenged the Old ones from his rock music video to come out,make themselves known to humans, and stop hiding in the darkness, the One who awakened the Queen from her silent sleep, Lestat, is their Prince without any doubt .

The new Millennia is the era of science and new discoveries, so we find Fareed , a youg doctor, brought to the blood by Seth, son of Akasha. They both try to study the nature of the vampires from a scentific point of view.

In every single chapter of the book we see the evolution of the story itself, every single immortal is struggling with their own selves, with different issues, and it is just the Voice that makes that struggle even deeper, especially in Lestat.

I have found the Voice fascinating , for me it resembles the Universal Conscience which each and every one of us has to deal with sometimes: who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we made like this? The Voice is an entity which is eager to learn, to see and feel, but it can't do it, because it is trapped in a body that has no interest in evolution itself, so it has to find a way to reach its ends using whatever it can to get what it wants and I ended up loving it.

Another character that I loved is Louis, I have always loved him, but in this book more so and then there is the sweet Rose, the icon of Innocence, rescued by Lestat during an Earthquake in the Mediterranean sea, his beloved one after Louis. Rose as innocent as a fragile flower, and like every innocent, victim of unspeakable violence.

This book more than any others, left me with a longing for more, I felt a terrible void when I turned the last page, a common feeling I guess, when you have lived alongside every single character during the reading, like part of the vampires tribe.

The writing style, is typical of Anne Rice, it gives you pictures that become alive in your head, and it is just this, that make her books always magical, and what else can a reader ask for?

Now I just have to wait for the sequel, to see, if my intuition has got the right clues about the future of Prince Lestat's reign.