Arguably the best book of
Anne Rice's series
The Vampire Chronicles. It directly continues from
The Vampire Lestat, and begins by telling of the rise to fame of
Lestat's rock band.
Lestat's music leads to the awakening of ancient
vampires all over the world, including the queen
Akasha and my favourite,
Khayman. The newly arisen
Akasha proceeds to wipe out most of the world's
vampire population and hatch a plan to create a world-wide
matriarchy.
Intrigue,
angst, and
violence ensue. This book has an extremely large cast of characters, as it also introduces Mekare and Maharet, the ancient twin
witches, Mael, Jesse, Aaron Lightner, Daniel, Pandora, and Azim. The
Talamasca is also introduced in this novel.
The Queen of the Damned shows a considerable departure in writing style for
Anne Rice. The book is wide in scope, pulling together threads from characters all over the world. It's comparable to
The Stand in the epic scale it brings to popular fiction. Also, Rice avoids the trap she usually falls into of extensive
flashbacks. The only major flashback in the novel is short and interesting, concerning the origins of the vampires.
Warner Bros. is currently developing an ill-conceived film based on the novel. Their exclusive filming rights for Rice's books were set to end in 2000, so in the fall of 1999 they threw together a horribly cliched script and began filming. Along with awful dialogue and big cuts, a silly romance has been added between Jesse and
Lestat. Much of the filming, including the elaborate rock music show, was done in
Australia. The stars include
Stuart Townsend as
Lestat and
Aaliyah (horribly mis-cast as the 6000 year old
Akasha).
Anne Rice, who has had her own movie adaptions rejected by the studio, has no connection to the film and is not impressed by the project.