#the pissing description is from tale of the body thief by anne rice

[colinrobinsonscardigan]

Something I'm glad has died down is people in vampire fandoms (Hellsing, Vampire Chronicles, etc) make fun of Twilight, as if we have a leg to stand on. Like I'm not going to sit here and say that Twilight is without issue (it is comprised largely of issue) but I also don't think Stephanie Meyer has described one of her characters pissing for two whole, entire and utterly godforsaken pages. Can we not all be cringe together?

[high-fructose-lesbianism]

A Subjective Ranking of all 18 Books in the Vampire Chronicles Extended Universe

18. Blood Canticle (2003)

It took me the longest to read Blood Canticle of any of the books because I couldn’t read more than about 25 pages at a time before the urge to throw the book out the nearest window got too strong. The story is bad, the characters are the worst they’ve ever been and the writing style is full-on terrible. Blood Canticle is one of the worst books I’ve read full stop.

17. Taltos (1994)

I hated the Mayfair Witches trilogy. While Taltos was at least the shortest of the three, it was a terrible conclusion to the trilogy. The Taltos are one of Anne Rice’s worst ideas. Each of the books delves more into their mythology and it gets worst the more it’s explored.

16. Blackwood Farm (2002)

A major issue I have with Anne Rice is she insists on telling these extremely lengthy backstories of characters we’ve just met who I almost never give a shit about. That’s the entirety of Blackwood Farm. It’s the backstory of a character I just met and don’t care about whatsoever. Blackwood Farm evokes the classic Anne Rice style of bad where it switches between just being insane and being fucking boring at the drop of a hat. I skimmed most of the book because it was so boring. But then I’d tune in to some insanely weird shit about intersex vampires or ghost twins giving handjobs or whatever was happening and yeah, my attention would of course be held by such insanity. But invariably, the book would drift back into describing wildly uninteresting events with too much detail and I’d tune out again.

15. The Witching Hour (1990)

The Witching Hour has a three paragraph summary on Wikipedia. It is an accurate summation of the events of the book. So then why is this fucking book 968 pages? That’s my main grievance with The Witching Hour; it’s way too fucking long. It’s the least insane of the Mayfair Witches trilogy but also by far the least interesting.

14. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016)

These fucking bird aliens who inhabited Atlantis are just the Taltos 2.0. There’s a lot of insanity and also boring backstory in this one. I skimmed the backstory of the Atlantean bird aliens and don’t feel like I missed anything. What saves this book from ranking lower is I’m a slut for the main VC characters interacting and this one did have such a thing, plus some good Louis/Lestat moments which is my other big priority with the series. Simultaneous highlight and lowlight of this book is when that one dude looses a hand but it gains sentience, breast feeds off him or something and then becomes his perfect clone. Fucking insanity.

13. Lasher (1993)

Lasher is the best of the Mayfair trilogy because there are genuine moments of horror in this horror novel. On the downside, the Taltos are as always, insane. Also, another signature of Anne Rice’s is sexy and sexualized teenage characters which there is a lot of in this book in the form of 13 year old Mona Mayfair, her affair with Michael Curry and the many scenes where this is excused, justified or even somewhat celebrated. That disturbed me and not in the way I want a horror novel to disturb me.

12. Memnoch the Devil (1995)

In terms of writing style, Memnoch is a lot better than many of the books that will rank higher than it. But this is a subjective ranking and I didn’t give a shit about Anne Rice working through her weird, religious baggage in a series that I’m reading to hear about the exploits of sexy, bisexual vampires. The majority of this book is again, a long backstory from a character we just met and I don’t care about. In this case it’s literally Satan which is a good start but Anne Rice sure has a way of taking too long describing everything which leaves me extremely bored by the narrative.

11. Blood Paradise (2018)

Blood Paradise should be lower in this list. It’s objectively extremely poor. Blood Paradise is basically the inverse of Memnoch; I really liked the story but hated the writing style. This one only ranks so high because it is a story that focuses on the lead vampire characters who are my priority. And yeah, I liked the outline for the story. It’s character-based, no major new characters interrupt the narrative and no insane additions to canon are added. Too bad the writing style feels extremely half-assed. Where usually I’m critical of Anne Rice taking way too long to say anything and focusing on unimportant details, this one is the opposite. It feels extremely rushed. A lot of major, emotional scenes that occur between characters are only a few sentences or paragraphs long. But still, at least this one gave me story content that I could just expand upon in my head instead of insane additions to canon that I’d prefer to ignore.

10. Merrick (2000)

Merrick actually might have my favourite ending to any of the VC novels. I loved Lestat resurrecting Louis from his suicide attempt and then that descends into Lestat, Louis, David and Merrick living in what seems to be perfectly happy polyamory. I totally dug that. But of course, the majority of the book is a backstory of Merrick, a character I just met and don’t care about. Also, we get a bit of David backstory which I seem to remember being him mostly creeping on some young boy who was in expedition with him. Not ideal. 

9. Vittorio, the Vampire (1999)

Vittorio is a fairly effective historical horror. Anne Rice did a lot of research and it shows. That’s not exactly my interest but she did well with it. There’s also some really horrific moment where Vittorio meets a clan of vampires in an old castle who do keep humans like cattle and eat babies and stuff. The major downsides is just that this is a character who we’ve never met before and never see again. Also the fact that Vittorio is 16 and is absolutely sexualized. I’ve really grown tired of Anne Rice’s constant belief that’s in almost all of her writing that teenagers are sexy and it’s totally fine to fuck them. It makes me uncomfortable to say the least.

8. Pandora (1998)

This one’s just pretty good. I’ve no major complaints but no specific bits of it I want to champion either. Again, a lot of historical research is done which is not interesting to me but well done. Also nice to have at least one book with a female vampire protagonist.

7. Prince Lestat (2014)

Prince Lestat is not objectively better than the last two books. I rank it this high mostly out of relief. For ages, Blood Canticle was the last book in The Vampire Chronicles. So, when Prince Lestat was released, it was impossible to see this as anything other than a huge upgrade. And of course, I liked that this book returned to focusing on the lead characters of Lestat, Louis, Marius, Daniel etc. It’s still a baffling idea to have Lestat be the vampire head of state or whatever though. But oh man, that Louis/Lestat moment near the end of the book made me feel a whole lotta feelings.

6. Blood and Gold (2001)

This one is another excuse for Anne Rice to do a lot of historical research. And you know what? Better she spends her energies doing that instead of creating weird, tall supernatural beings with specific quirks that are impossible to take seriously. I like the framing of this one because it’s sort of the inverse of usual. Thorne, a new character is introduced but instead of him telling Marius his story, it’s established character Marius who tells Thorne his story. And he does this the first day they met after Thorne’s awakened after several hundred years and they’ve taken a bath together. That’s just good story structure right there. The most memorable part of this story for me is keeping a vague tally of all the people Marius fell in love with throughout the course of the story. In one 100-page stretch, Marius falls in love five separate times. This grew tiresome but I also just thought it was funny.

5. The Vampire Armand (1998)

I’m the most morally against The Vampire Armand. It’s basically the peak of Anne Rice’s love of sexualizing teens. That’s sort of the whole book. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that around the time of its publication, Anne Rice got back into religion. I think she looked over what she wrote and was like yeah okay, maybe I do need Jesus. But I dunno, I remember really liking it. It was well-written and Armand is one of my favourite characters. I think Anne Rice did actually hit the right mixture of the story being sexy, horrific and rather tragic. Also, that bit at the end where Armand eats a drug dealer’s face and heart in front of some new, human friends is one of my favourite scenes.

4. The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)

There’s a lot of good and a lot of bad in Tale of the Body Thief. I love the body swap aspect and this one has some of the best interactions between characters. On the downside, there absolutely is a 2-page description of Lestat taking a piss, he absolutely commits a rape and him turning David into a vampire was #problematic. But even there, the Lestat and David scene is really well-written and works because Lestat is an absolute piece of shit. Tale of the Body Thief is for better and worse, Lestat at his most Lestat. Still didn’t need to hear about him taking a piss in that much detail, though.

3. Queen of the Damned (1988)

Akasha is the only good villain in any of the Vampire Chronicles books. Plus, Queen of the Damned brought all the characters we’d met in the previous two books together and I was absolutely all about that. At this point in the series, I actually did care about the majority of main characters and their interactions were absolutely spectacular. Only downside is again, we get a lengthy backstory of Akasha that I absolutely skimmed.

2. Interview with the Vampire (1976)

Yeah, it’s only number 2. Because while this book is better written and the start of this whole damn phenomenon, Louis is far from my favourite narrator. Dude’s too morose and shit. Still, the writing style is exquisite and it introduced great characters. As the series went on, Anne Rice clearly ran out of ideas but because this one is the first book, that’s not the case. There’s a lot of ideas here and they aren’t even fucking insane. 

1. The Vampire Lestat (1985)

I’m really only into this series because of how much I love Lestat as a character. I read Interview and thought I was done with the series. Interview was fine but I didn’t think I cared about the sequels. However, six months later when I decided to read The Vampire Lestat, I knew within the first two pages that this was going to be a problem for me. This is exactly my brand of bullshit. It’s just Lestat being a sexy and shitty person who makes out with everyone and overreacts to everything. I love him. And in the third act when it’s revealed he’s been in love with Louis all along and then Louis shows up in the present day and they reunite???? Oh my god. 16 year-old me nearly exploded. The Vampire Lestat is really the sole reason The Vampire Chronicles happened to me as hard as it did. I love this book and its ridiculous narrator/protagonist.

[thenightling]

Just read Prince Lestat and The Realms of Atlantis

So I finally finished reading Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis. It took me a few days but it's done.

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT 

Roughly twelve thousand years ago there were this alien humanoid birds from the planet (or asteroid) Brevenna.  They are tall, with large black eyes, small beaks, tiny feathers all over their bodies, large hands (about twice the size of human hands) and have wings on their backs like angels.  These angry bird aliens do not like us Mammals because... Reasons!   Seriously, they gave very flimsy excuses.  So they create these four "Replimoids."  The replimoids may or may not be modified humans. In any event the Replimoids first memories are waking up in pods surrounded by their bird Parents.  They have been endowed with human emotions (which the bird people hate) but it's so they can blend in easier.

The Bird people also apparently feed on suffering, feel hate but...  don’t like emotion... supposedly...

The Parents tell them that they had sent another replimoid down to Earth to fix their monitoring equiptment scattered all over the planet but this replimoid named Amel decided to build Atlantis instead.

Now the birds are pissed.  The birds tell the four new Replimoids that they must get into Atlantis, find a power supply and detonate it, destroying themselves and this will unleash a toxin that could destroy all life on the planet except for single celled organisms to allow Earth to start again and properly have another creature that is not mammalian as the dominant race.

The Replimoids don't want to die.  The most sensitive of the four, Derek, begins to cry.  The bird people tell them that if they can lure Amel outside perhaps they will change their plans.

The four Replimoids are sent to Earth and eventually are allowed entry into Atlantis.  Here they meet Amel, the ruler.  Amel tells them that he is not an Replimoid and that The Parents lied to them.  He was born human and modified to be immortal (and sterile) based on the whims of the parents.  He also doubts they have any toxin inside them at all as they are not the first batch of Replimoids sent to either stop or kill him.  One of these Replimoids is a religion obsessed being known as Maxymus, who Amel allows to reside in Atlantis because he likes him even though they argue all the time.

The four new Replimoids decide they don't want to lure Amel out or destroy the human race.  They want to join him in his quest to protect and better humanity.   Very shortly after this Brevenna appears to explode.  Whether it was setting off a weapon or actually got destroyed is unclear but flames rained down and Atlantis was hit.  The domes cracked open the city flooded with water and fire.   Amel died (body destroyed) in the blast and became the spirit that entered Akasha, turning her into the first vampire. Maxymus also died and became the entity known as Memnoch, creating his own pocket dimension Hell in The Astral Plane.  The four new Replimoids escape with their lives.   So no, Memnoch is not really The Devil after all but a religious fanatic ghost Replimoid. 

Side note:  Amel has red hair and green eyes but otherwise resembles Lestat.  The bird people said this was on purpose so he would be mistaken as a God while the four new Replimoids look like most other early humans (who look like black people...)

In present day an evil vampire named Roland has found Derek, discovering he's immortal and holds him prisoner, torturing him and keeping him captive for many years.  Rhosh, a vampire introduced in the previous novel who resents Lestat is given refuge by Roland.

The female of the four replimoids was actually working in the laboratory of Lestat's two scientist vampire friends, who are accountable for the creation of Viktor (Lestat's biological son, now turned vampire)  and other vampiric scientific discoveries such as giving the lame vampire, Flavius a leg. Derek gets tortured by an impatient Rhosh, who cuts off one of Derek's arms and throws it into a fire.  Once alone Derek retrieves his severed arm from the fire to find it has a face on it's palm.  The hand moves as if on it's own accord and suckle's Derek's teet.  Derek faints and wakes up to find he has a clone.  The severed arm has regenerated on his body and the burnt severed arm is now a nearly exact clone of himself except for more light streaks in his hair.  The clone calls himself Derek Two but Derek doesn't like the name and when prompted to name him suggests changing it to Dertu instead (A shortening of Derek Two).

Derek Two helps his father escape from the evil vampires.  They reach out to Lestat (the current leader of the vampires) and his court by calling into to Benji's radio station.  You see the vampires have their own radio station that is disguised as playing ordinary music but on a frequency humans can't hear they broadcast their real messages.   Benji is a vampire Marius made for Armand back in The Vampire Armand novel.

After Derek calls them, frantically telling them what another vampire has done to him and that he wants to meet them another call to the studio is made, this one by the female of the four Replimoids.

Lestat and his group have a meeting where Armand suggests capturing the new immortals and using them as cattle to harvest an endless supply of blood.  Fortunately Lestat does not go for this plan.

The spirit Amel is now connected to Lestat and if Lestat should die so will all the vampires (or so they believe).   Lestat is now Prince (technically King but I guess it's a Principality...)  and Marius is the Prime Minister doing most of the work. 

Eventually they agree to meet with the Replimoids.  The four Replimoids are united for the first time in nearly twelve-thousand-years.  They had drifted apart after the fall of Atlantis and some had even slept under ice.

The Replimoids tell their story to the vampires and this causes Amel to abruptly remember who and what he truly is.  Amel knows that Kapetria (the female Replimoid) has become a scientist and wants to give him a physical body but he tells her not to do if it hurts the vampires.   He loves them, Lestat in particular. After the Replimoids leave there is still mistrust from many of the vampires.  Armand still thinks they should be taken prisoner and that they are enemies and other vampires have similar feelings... for no real reason other than "They're different!" 

This is odd since the vampires are perfectly okay with hanging out with the two ghost founders of the Talamasca and their other ghost friends, (one of which accidentally created for himself a body out of organic particles so perfect he's now stuck in it as an immortal).   One of these ghosts is Magnus, Lestat's own vampiric maker, who had been rescued from Maxymus / Memnoch's fake Hell.

Eventually Louis comes forward to reveal he's not really attached to Amel the way other vampires are.  The reason is he died during Merrick.   Abruptly it's revealed that if a vampire's heart stops beating temporarily it will sever his ties to Amel and he can remain a vampire without being attached to the spirit that created them.  It's also revealed that vampire flesh is very, very similar to Luracastria, the material almost everything is made of in Atlantis.

Apparently way back when Akasha was killed and all the vampires were dying, so long as she was not roasted while still alive their hearts would have temporarily stopped but they would have all survived separating from Akasha.  They would not have all died with her after all!

So the two science vampires briefly stop Lestat's heart, during which time Amel gives him visions of Atlantis.  When Lestat wakes up the vampires are now separated from Amel.   Well, all but Lestat who is still attached to him.

Random note: Lestat still has a French accent but it's now described as having a Southern drawl.  This has never been described in any of Anne's novels before.    Could no one else hear it but the new Replimoid characters?!

Roland is burned to death for the years of torture and captivity he subjected Derek to.

Rhosh is confronted for his crimes and his lover Benedict comes to his rescue and pleads for him.  He tells Rhosh to say he's sorry or he'll cling to him and burn up with him when the other vampires condemn him.  Rhosh apologizes (more or less) for the sake of Benedict.  He also briefly thinks about the end of Faust (Faust Part 1) where Marguerite (Gretchen) is saved.

While out and about Lestat gets abducted by Kapetria and Rhosh (the bitter vampire rival).   Rhosh helps Kapetria restrain Lestat for surgery.  She cuts off the top of Lestat's skull and conducts brain surgery because that's how you de-tach ghosts now...

Side note: Anne Rice has a very, very, very painfully poor grasp of science, particularly physics.   She seems to think the only non-chemical energy in the universe is kinetic energy.  She is obsessed with the idea that ghosts are made of "invisible matter" (Instead of energy containing consciousness).   And that spirits are of biological nature.  She also has now decided that the body switching in Tale of the body thief involved the "silver cord" that connects the astral form to the body and keeps the body alive during out of body travel.   She has entirely forgotten her repeated descriptions of the residual soul theory embraced by at least three characters in Tale of the body thief.

She's also decided that souls are "generated" when a conscious mind suffers and questions it's existence.   She has decided this to explain away an empty scientifically created body lacking in a soul...

Well, Kapetria succeeds in Lobotomizing... I mean removing Amel from Lestat. (Don't worry, he was not lobotomized) and puts Amel into his own body created (Frankenstein style) with genetic material she harvested from herself and her siblings.  By now the four Replimoids have all made duplicates of themselves by cutting off body parts that grow back while the severed part sprouts into a clone.  And much like Derek they are horrible at naming such as one is Katu.  So the so-called sterile, immortal  Replimoids reproduce by budding...  There's about thirty of them, all roughly identical to the original four.

Lestat wakes up, no longer restrained, and perfectly fine, his skull already mended, hair grown back.   He puts on his violet sunglasses and leaves the laboratory.

The other vampires are horrified and refer to the Replimoids as their enemies. Lestat, however, does not.  And one night at a cafe the newly incarnated Amel shows up in the body that was grafted for him by the Replimoid genetic material.  He tells Lestat that it took him months to adjust to having a physical body again. He has the red hair and green eyes he had during his original life in Atlantis. Lestat shares an intimate moment with him where he tastes Amel’s blood and the two part, lovingly.

Lestat tells the other vampires of Amel's good fortune and though they cheer he believes they never truly loved Amel and will eventually fear him and the other Replimoids again.  And then he thinks about love, talks about how there is goodness in this world and it all comes from love.  The ending is actually kind of sweet.  And perhaps they do love Amel after all in their own way.   Marius is now leading the vampires completely now and writing up laws for them.  And it's hinted at that it was foolish for Lestat to repeatedly let Rhosh live (yet he has killed young vampires for petty infractions as they weep...) but Lestat doesn't care.  I think he likes having an arch nemesis.

And that's about it.

It's... odd...   And honestly I kind of miss the truly spiritual side of things.   Anne Rice's misunderstanding of science and theoretical physics is brutal, especially when her theories are constantly repeated and affirmed by her scientist characters.  I wish she would stop those efforts.   And I never thought I would say this, but I miss Memnoch's original version.   He doesn't have to be The Devil but does he have to be a Replimoid?  Couldn't he have just been a very powerful ghost or an Earth bound demon that doesn't know where he really came from?    Why is it all things supernatural have to be aliens and bad pseudoscience now?  It seems to take away some of the magick.  Marvel Cinematic Universe does this too.  

Also Anne Rice is getting paranormal terms mixed up.  When a character was pinned via telekinesis she called it telepathic.   No wonder she's mostly using terms like "thought gift" and "Cloud gift" now instead.   Telepathy is communication by thought.  Telekinesis is moving or stopping objects with the mind. 

It's difficult to talk about the alien birds without thinking of the game Angry Birds and laughing a little.   This novel retcons a lot and drains The Vampire Chronicles of much of it's mysterious and supernatural nature for strange science fiction.  And I have noticed how similar the Replimoids are to Taltos from her witch novels...

I hate that The Vampires would not have died with Akasha now and separating them from Amel just required briefly stopping Lestat's heart.  I hate that Louis conveniently just now mentions that he's been separated from Amel since his suicide attempt and that apparently vampires have never been brought back from their hearts temporarily stopping before when that can so easily happen even to humans.  In six thousand years no vampire's heart ever briefly stopped?!?  Really!??  I hate the bad science trying to make ghosts organic and the fact that brain surgery was needed to remove Amel from Lestat.  

But oddly I still don't hate this the way I hated Blood Canticle.  And I think it has to do with the personalities.  Lestat feels more like Lestat here. Except for the sudden "drawl" to his accent.  

Another odd detail is the vampires (and even the Replimmoids) seem very very obsessed with their smart phones.  Lestat even exchanges numbers with Amel at the end.  Powerful immortal psychic ...exchanging numbers like teenagers at High school.   Even Louis was sending text messages at one point.  

 It's like Anne Rice just discovered Smart Phones and the novelty hasn't worn off yet so everyone (even the Luddite immortals) should all have them. Because you totally want a device with GPS in your pocket while hunting human prey!  

Oh, don't get me wrong, this is a weird book and I'm not sure if I'll ever read it more than once.   It's definitely not a favorite and it feels nothing like Interview with the vampire or The Vampire Lesat or The Queen of the damned.  And I really don't like the retcons to the original mythos, including changing what happens when you leave your body (the silver chord thing) and that Akasha's death would not actually have killed them all and that Memnoch is now the ghost of a Replimoid.   It's weirdly a bit disappointing.

Final side note:  The Replimoids call themselves "The People of the Purpose" which is a bit unnerving since Anne Rice calls her Facebook followers "The People of the Page."

I wasn't a fan of the idea of Lestat meeting The Devil and Anne Rice's idea of how God and The Devil functioned but to replace that with aliens feels like a cop out.   Couldn't it have been a hypnosis induced dream from another supernatural entity?  Fred Saberhagen had Dracula encounter the Egyptian God Sobek in A Coldness in the Blood (book ten of his Dracula books).   It turned out Sobek was just an immortal human transmutated with a crocodile thanks to the philosopher's stone in Ancient Egypt.  That kept it mysterious and supernatural without keeping Sobek Godly.   That was clever.   This...  This was odd...