Hi readers,
I'm opening my new book reviewing with probably one of the most anticipated novels for horror, supernatural and vampire fans from last year. Being the massive Anne Rice and Vampire Chronicles fan that I am, I couldn't wait to read this and finally in the small hours of last night I finished it, almost two months after having started it. It be honest, I was a little disappointed. To make matters worse, it wasn't just one thing that I had issues with and right now I'm not going to be able to explain all the whys and hows, so, lets look at the key points.
The first thing, was the segmentation of the novel. I understand that Rice's writing technique has improved over the many years she has been working and this was her first vampire story after fifteen years. However, unlike the plot and narrative structure of her other novels this one didn't have a linear feel to it, even though it was meant to be and I think this is because of the way the novel is divided up.
Secondly, there is no real focus on one or a few characters, instead you get a lot of characters telling you different parts of the narrative, which sometimes shows their lives and other times gives you the bigger picture. There is also the switch between first person and third person narrative. For me this didn't actually work and maybe its because I'm a bit of an old fashioned reader, but I like my novels not to switch the narrative voice around and not to focus on such a large number of characters telling the story. The flow of things ends up becoming a bit lost and I felt distracted by this.
Thirdly, the problem with there being so many characters, that you can become lost and start to forget who's who. Normally, I have good mind for that kind of thing, but towards the end of the novel, I was questioning if all the characters had really been necessary. I get part of the plot was to draw all these ancient vampires together to form a council and royal court, but many just seemed to faded into the background. Clearly, they all have their stories to tell and maybe Rice's next books will focus on them, but for me it was a case of character over-saturation.
Fourthly, I felt that parts of the story dragged on or weren't necessary. I know that Rice's writing can often be over descriptive and in the early Vampire Chronicles books I did enjoy this, but this time round, things felt repetitive and for me the last few chapters felt a bit useless. At other points the characters went over things the reader already knew and things the characters should have already known and I felt that maybe this was a bit of bad writing.
Overall, my first impressions of Prince Lestat are mixed. The characters are well written and they still feel like themselves from the past books. The plot is interesting and does keep your attention, it feels 'new' too and it does tie in nicely with the series. However, it really is let down by the narrative structure and too many characters. If you are an Rice fan and have read the other books, than I'd recommend you give it a try, for anyone else and specially if you are new to Rice's books, you will need to have read some of the others before attempted this one because I don't think some of the characters and themes will be understandable.
Hopefully, you've found that useful and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this novel. I'm not sure what I'm going to be looking at next week as I've got a few books lined up. Over on my other blog right now I'm looking for short story submissions, so please check that out at; http://thestoryfiles.wordpress.com/submission-guidelines/
Links and images:
http://bookriot.com/2014/11/10/excited-prince-lestat/
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