♛”Dearest, it’s more about people throwing themselves at my bone(s),” *scoffs and ruffles her hair* “And, yes, believe it or not, I do politely decline plenty of offers, I have some measure of taste.”
Indeed, we have Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (PLROA). It’s the most recent book. We’re expecting at least one more installment after this one, no date has been given yet.
@bluestockingcouture — Ok I can’t phrase this very well, but tumblr won’t let me tag them, so I made a link to my reblog of their post in which they share that they wrote a 1,800 word review of PLROA that quotes Rousseau, so you might want to check that out on goodreads. (spoiler cut is there)
Here’s another by Kirkus Reviews2016-10-19. (spoilers in full view)
To be honest, near the end of PLROA I had to put it down bc it was about to launch into a monologue from a new character who I don’t really feel much affection for, and so I still haven’t finished it, but I am thoroughly spoiled as to what happens bc I love being spoiled.
There were many moments where I smiled bc it reminded me of the way the characters behaved in earlier books, there’s some development as to their current status, there’s some great little moments between them, and I think it’s worth reading for those gems.
I’ve always been able to read VC and cherry pick the things that I like (a good chunk of dialogue here or there, or something that seems to give more clarification to the established world/characters, etc.) and I have a flexible headcanon, so I can accept or not accept things based on the fanfic I’m reading, too, depending on what canon it relies on.
Having said that, PLROA feels very much like what would happen if one novel you were working on needed life support and you added your much more popular character(s) into it as a means of rescuing it.
“I was working on a novel called Born for Atlantis, and I just couldn’t get it to work. I thought, “What if I could somehow combine this with Lestat and the vampires?” And it was like, everything worked. Something happens to me when I write from Lestat’s point of view. There’s no question about it. By the time I was done, it felt inevitable, like it always had been…. It was a rare experience.”
^Anne Rice, Entertainment Weekly (August 5, 2016) [X] I’m glad that she shared that with us, because it explains why she brought these things together. Even if she hadn’t admitted as such, I think we would have been able to piece that together.
Some things are good on their own, some ideas can be brought together and the result is wonderful alchemy! But I think in this case, it felt like someone had dumped a river of ketchup on an icecream sundae. PLROA might count as what the fandom used to lovingly call the Vampire Crackicles.
Back then, we could have a good time, even when canon was wild. We could make fun of Lestat being a huge baby about his foot size in Blood Canticle:
Seldom did I see my feet in black socks. I knew almost nothing personally about my feet. They looked rather small for the twenty-first century. Bad luck. But six feet was still a good height.
Or, also in Blood Canticle, Lestat fixated by ice cubes:
…the sparkle in the ice cubes, the Miracle of the Ice Cubes.
^Our old familiar canon Rice Caps! Why can’t these things be funny anymore?
Or are the wacky things in PLROA too wacky to even find endearing? We do tentatively joke about PLROA, but not as robustly as we did over those older Vampire Crackicles. Maybe in a few years we’ll be more vocal about it, bc there will be even crazier canon. Lestat goes to Mars! Lestat ages backwards like Benjamin Button! Lestat accidentally destroys Alaska!
So IDK, I always recommend that ppl read the books before they judge them, but I think it’s easier to enjoy the wackiness if you can take it less seriously.
Maggie: I never thought I’d meet someone like you. But come on. I mean, do you still really want me? Are you really that great of a guy?
Narrator: Michael had always thought of himself as that great a guy. The kind of guy who could raise someone else’s baby.
Michael: Of course I am.
Narrator: But he wasn’t, and he regretted it the moment he said it.
Episode 2×012 “Hand to God”
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Passive-aggressively ignoring someone until they leave you, disgusted and on the verge of suicide, is not being a good boyfriend.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT 2: Armand is the best character in the series no matter what anyone else, including and especially Anne Rice, says.
Kapetria’s Tale and the saga of the Replimoids are simultaneously the most boring and the most cracky sections of the book. I cackled over the Space Birb aliens that created the Replimoids, but I don’t think I’ll ever reread those sections.
The sections about the hijinks of Lestat and his vampire court? Those are more like what I want/expect from a Vampire Chronicles book. For example, I am terribly fond of Prince Lestat, and have reread it a couple of times. Is it as good as the original Vampire Chronicles trilogy? No.
Finally, Anne Rice has stated herself (not that I can find links to the interviews where she said it) that she had been working on a stand-alone Atlantis book for over a decade, but couldn’t get it to where she was happy with it, and decided that it should be combined with a Vampire Chronicles book. I … do not agree with her authorial choices about this.
TL;DR: No one should feel they have to slog through Kapetria’s Tale in RoA. Yes, it ends up changing the whole mythology and backstory of the vampires, but … I reject those changes.
Thanks for your addition, @gothiccharmschool! Very much appreciated, and I am with you 100% on wanting more hijinks of Lestat and his vampire court! Good reminder about reading your liveblog of PLROA, I’m sure your liveblog can help me get through it.
Re: Finally, Anne Rice has stated herself (not that I can find links to the interviews where she said it) that she had been working on a stand-alone Atlantis book for over a decade, but couldn’t get it to where she was happy with it, and decided that it should be combined with a Vampire Chronicles book. I … do not agree with her authorial choices about this.
I, too, do not agree with her authorial choices about this. Here’s her quote about doing her specialty VC-mashup funtimes for PLROA:
… i, too, am unable to finish PLROA for MONTHS bc of Kapetria’s Tale! FOR THE SAME REASONS. I mean maybe it’s not boring to some ppl? But for me, I’m just… I was weirded out before by the Replimoids and getting to her tale I just didn’t want to buy more of what was being sold.
So I have been really struggling to pick it up again EVEN THO IT IS RIGHT ON MY DESK IN PLAIN VIEW, mocking me every day that I don’t just CRACK IT OPEN AND TAKE MY MEDICINE like I should if I really cared about this series (which I clearly do).
I went and asked around & skimmed ahead bc I very much like to be spoiled, and I won’t spoil you here, but from what I skimmed and from what I’ve been told, I don’t think you need to know Kapetria’s Tale to understand the rest of the book. It goes back to our vampires and their shenanigans and SCIENCE, and in the old days we might have called this all very “cracky” stuff, but the ending might even have been written before the Atlantis portion was added in, it seems to depend so little on it, but again, that’s from my spoilage.
…But currently? What are ppl’s thoughts on how PLROA ends? I would like ppl to speak freely, so there may be spoilers in comments/reblogs.
Message me privately, if you prefer, and I’ll add it to this post under a cut if it’s spoilery.
“I was working on a novel called Born for Atlantis, and I just couldn’t get it to work. I thought, “What if I could somehow combine this with Lestat and the vampires?” And it was like, everything worked. Something happens to me when I write from Lestat’s point of view. There’s no question about it. By the time I was done, it felt inevitable, like it always had been…. It was a rare experience.”
I-want-my-IWTV 