Hey, welcome back!
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 Reviews 2016-10-19. (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.
I-want-my-IWTV 