tbh sassy lestat and mona being involved is the only thing i enjoyed about those two books
Mona was so awesomely sassy in Blood Canticle!
Lestat: “I told her to change clothes. That short sequined dress was just too damned distracting. And we had some heavy matters to address immediately.”
[argument ensues]
Mona: “ ‘And I know why you’re so fired up over Rowan, she’s the first adult female other than your own mother who’s ever caught your attention for more than five minutes, and Hello! Lestat Discovers The Opposite Sex! Yeah, females do come in grown-up sizes! And I happen to be one of them, and this is not the Garden of Eden, and I am not taking off this dress!’ ”
First of all I have to say the entire series is sort of jokingly – and endearingly – called the Vampire Crackicles. The crazy is a big part of why we enjoy it. Dysfunctional vampires! The first 3-4 books in the series seem to be the more highly regarded, VC-fandom-wide, maybe bc the crazy was better woven in. We all have our differences in opinion as to what we consider to be canon after that.
Do I think you’ll like the rest of the series? I don’t know what you liked specifically about the first 2 books, but if you did like them enough to reread them, you must also enjoy the sense of humor that’s mixed in with the angst, the love, the overall crazy!
Short answer is give it all a chance, read it in order, and decide for yourself, it’s meant to be fun, it’s not a religion ;]
For more on Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle, clickez ici:
The books you mentioned have earned a negative reputation partly because they are involved with the crossover of the Mayfair Witches series, and introduced a whole bunch of new characters, when the fandom craved more about the already established characters (like Daniel Molloy!) and that the plots of those stories didn’t seem as engaging as in the first 3-4 books (at least for me, because they were maybe too ambitious or not structured in a more believable way).
Blackwood Farm focuses on a new set of characters (including a few of AR’s Mayfair Witches, it’s one of the 3 books that makes the crossover of the two series) than in IWTV, TVL, or QotD. It’s got some very interesting mythology and you do have Lestat being Lestat, but he’s been through alot at this point in canon and is not the same throw-caution-to-the-wind lovable moron that he was previously. He’s got a gentleness and a snappiness about him.
Blood Canticle is very cracky bc it’s further down the Mayfair Witches crossover story. Now Lestat has very strange religious grappling. It was meant to be the very last VC and you can see Anne Rice tried to pack in as much excitement and fireworks as possible. Sometimes this ended up making the story jump the shark.
☺ :Favourite canon scene/chapter involving your muse?
//GOOD QUESTION. It’s actually from the most terrible book in the series and it is only my favorite scene because I actually had to put down the book for several days before I could even look at it again without laughing.
I recall this one scene in Blood Canticle, where Lestat has this woman (she was probably a hooker, if I recall correctly) in a hotel room, and he drains her dry, killing her. Well, he had to hide the bite marks, right? So, he goes to the ice machine, fills it with ice, and uses the ice cubes to close the wound. (Probably used some of his blood, too. Can’t recall exactly. I remember him specifically saying, “Ah, the miracle of ice cubes!”
It’s my favorite scene because it was so damn strange, and the line he said was just…insane.
omg so I just looked that up. The glorious Rice Caps are what really make it: “the sparkle in the ice cubes, the Miracle of the Ice Cubes.”
It doesn’t look like he used the ice cubes for that purpose but that would’ve made the scene even better! Now I’m going to have to read BC again aren’t I…. hmmmm.
tbh i absolutely cannot stand either quinn or mona but the ONE TIME where i was completely behind mona was when lestat told her to change her dress because she was ‘distracting him’ and she told him to go fuck himself and stormed out. of course later she ruined it by being all OH I’M SORRY FOR HAVING TITS TOTALLY ALL MY FAULT REALLY, but still, for awhile i was like you go girl.
merciful-death: #ooc #[ yes i agree ] #[ it was two seconds of ‘hell yeah hell yes you tell him mona’ and then two seconds of ‘ugh mona i was beginning to like you for a paragraph how could you betray me like this’ ]
^Agreed.
Mona Mayfair: “And I know why you’re so fired up over Rowan, she’s the first adult female other than your own mother who’s ever caught your attention for more than five minutes, and Hello! Lestat Discovers The Opposite Sex! Yeah, females do come in grown-up sizes! And I happen to be one of them, and this is not the Garden of Eden, and I am not taking off this dress!”
Such shots fired! I’m not a big fan of Mona Mayfair but WOW who else has the balls to talk to him like that?!
I must confess: I can not answer any more Emails sent to AnneOBrienRice@mac.com. There are nearly 200 Emails on the site right now,…
So this is a letter from AR from 2004 regarding the whole rebuttal against the bad Blood Canticle reviews drama but this needed to be highlighted:
"Post Script: If anyone wants to send back a book for refund, by all means do it. We’ll be glad to send you your refund, and we’ll put the book into the next package to be shipped to the soldiers overseas. We get plenty of letters from them. All blessings, Anne.”
I love the idea of soldiers reading Blood Canticle. For free! A returned book from an unhappy fan in the hands of someone defending our country who’s doing real violence, and reading about the Mind Gift and possibly thinking:
"Well shit that would make all this A LOT easier…”
“Her generation, with Touch-Tone phones. Big deal! I can write with a quill pen in a flurry of curlicues you wouldn’t believe; let’s see her do that. And I don’t spill a drop of ink on the parchment, either.” – Lestat de Lioncourt, Blood Canticle
although i DO like the fact that there’s more queer canon couples in vampire chronicles than non-queer canon couples; i do think there’s a lack of non-male characters, like pandora or bianca or mona (who appear only a handful of times), needless to say non-male canon couples
I wholly agree and the few books we get centered around females IE PANDORA and MERRICK are basically boiled down to their lives revolving around the men of the stories. (Even if I think Merrick really shouldn’t have been Merrick’s story but David’s since he was telling it). The series has so much potential and unfortunately there is a lot of problematic themes and sexism and even racism but ;c )
#ALSO I LOVE YOUR URL) #REMINDS ME OF LESTAT IN MERRICK CALLING OUT THE TALAMASCA FOR OBJECTIFYING MERRICK)
EXACTLY! the only reason we got to have those books was because david was seeking out for them, a male again.
i think that the whole series got better when it started to get mixed with the witches, but you’re right about the unspoken racism/sexism; and i mean, with the whole super-queer-androgynous-too-good-for-human-morals thing, it shouldn’t be real hard to make it more open
#thank you im in love with my url #it kinda reminds me of that too 🙂
((I like this discussion and also wanted to reiterate those tags re: Feministlestat))
I think the mixing with the witches was good in some ways, for sure. I liked that whole Mona vs. Lestat thing, of course they would butt heads immediately, being such alpha types…
That dress scene in Blood Canticle! Where they were fighting over her dressing too sexy… Mona actually had a good line there about VC women:
“And I know why you’re so fired up over Rowan, she’s the first adult female other than your own mother who’s ever caught your attention for more than five minutes, and Hello! Lestat Discovers The Opposite Sex! Yeah, females do come in grown-up sizes! And I happen to be one of them, and this is not the Garden of Eden, and I am not taking off this dress!”
Fanart by damnedest-creature. I love it. This is an actual quote from CANON, believe it or not…
Lestat de Lioncourt, Blood Canticle, PAGE 1, FIRST PARAGRAPH:
“I WANT to be a saint. I want to save souls by the millions. I want to do good far and wide. I want to fight evil! I want my life-sized statue in every church.”
I-want-my-IWTV 