Friday, March 04, 2005

REVIEW: Blood Canticle by Anne Rice

Blood Canticle
My Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

I was a little disappointed in this book after the engagingly wonderful Blackwood Farm. Going from one book to the next, you feel almost as if it were written by a different person, the other Anne Rice whose grammar, syntax, and language usage I continually felt like correcting while reading (which is the case with some of her older books). She puts it off as trying to say that's the way Lestat talks, but I truly don't recall him being such a poorly-spoken vampire.

Beyond the writing itself, and on to the story, that part was good enough to hold my interest, though it didn't move as quickly as Blackwood Farm did. The story picks up right where Blackwood Farm left off, with Lestat making Mona Mayfair into a vampire. Certain parts of the story are dragged out longer than they need to be. For instance, the entire first half of the book was devoted to Mona adjusting to becoming a vampire, her outbursts with her family and Lestat, and so on. I kept thinking, when are we going to get to the meat of this story? That said, there really wasn't a whole lot of meat and substance to the story contained in this book. It had a few interesting subplots, but it wasn't as exciting and intense as some of her other work.

However, I like the characters, and I've followed both the Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches from the beginning so whether I liked this book as much as the others or not, I felt the need to bring the series to it's logical conclusion. Huge fans of either series will definitely want to read this one to see how things end. But definitely don't make it a first read if you're new to Anne Rice as it'll probably bore you to tears, not knowing or understanding a lot of the background behind the current characters.

View at Amazon

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