From archive (archive) Subject: THE VAMPIRE LESTAT by Anne Rice From: ecl@mtgzy.UUCP Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ Date: 7 Jun 86 07:39:03 SDT THE VAMPIRE LESTAT by Anne Rice Knopf, 1985, $17.95. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Ten years ago, Anne Rice wrote INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, in which we met Louis the vampire and saw vampire life from the other side, a la Saberhagen's THE DRACULA TAPES. But where THE DRACULA TAPES was just DRACULA retold from the vampire's point of view, INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE created a new mythology for vampires, separate from Stoker's Transylvanian milieu. Rice based her vampires in New Orleans, and of French origin. Her goal was not to horrify, but to show that vampires are people too. And like normal people, they have rivals. Louis's rival was the vampire Lestat. Now, ten years later, Rice introduces us to Lestat and we learn his side of the story, his background. And eventually we (and he) meet Marius, a yet older vampire who relates the origins of the vampire race. (I can't help but predict that the promised third novel in the series will show us the early days of the vampires firsthand. If it takes another ten years for that novel, no one reading this prediction will even remember it to point out how wrong I was.) The framing sequence, set in modern San Francisco, is passable. It is the main body of the novel, the story of Lestat's "conversion" and existence in pre-Revolutionary France and Europe, which fascinates the reader. And, of course, Marius's story of *his* early existence and the origin of "homo vampiris" is almost a novel in itself. (THE VAMPIRE LESTAT is nearly twice the length of INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE.) I don't want to reveal too much of the plot, since much of the enjoyment (at least for me) comes from the gradual revelations, almost like peeling off the layers of an onion. Rice is able to show us many kinds of vampires, as distinct from each other in nature as human beings are. We do not see the sameness of character that most vampire stories show us. Some of Rice's vampires are full of conscience and get their "kills" only from thieves and murderers; others are amoral and seek the young and healthy victim to gain the greatest strength and sensuality from their blood. The sensuality of vampirism is a very strong theme in Rice's novels: the seductiveness of the powers vampires have, the ecstasy of feeding, the heightened awareness of one's surroundings that their senses give vampires. This is not a child's vampire story. I highly recommend this novel. Your appreciation will be heightened if you read INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE first, but that isn't necessary. I look forward to the third novel--I just hope it doesn't take another ten years. Evelyn C. Leeper ...ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl (or ihnp4!mtgzz!ecl) From archive (archive) Subject: THE MUMMY, OR RAMSES THE DAMNED by Anne Rice From: leeper@mtgzx.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ Date: 17 May 89 21:18:03 GMT THE MUMMY, OR RAMSES THE DAMNED by Anne Rice Ballantine, 1989, ISBN 0-345-36000-1, $11.95. A book review by Mark R. Leeper There have been many strange religions of ancient man. The majority have been for the most part forgotten. yet the religion of ancient Egypt has not. Modern Egypt has a large industry just serving tourists who want to come to see the relics of its ancient religion. The mysticism of ancient Egypt, seemingly so different from modern religions, has captured the public's imagination. And perhaps no single aspect of the religion has so captured modern people's imagination as stories of mummies whose remains have apparently mystically been able to survive the ravages of time. Where our corpses decompose within months of being buried, you can still see facial and body features of Egyptians dead for three thousand years. Horror writers have taken things a step further, asking, if the remains can be preserved for so long, is it possible to bring life back to these bodies? Revived mummy stories were around before the opening of Tutankhamen's tomb, but they were a relatively rare subject for horror. The coincidental deaths of several of the people involved in the opening of that tomb gave rise to wild newspaper stories and inspired a horror film--THE MUMMY, which starred Boris Karloff. It was actually a fairly good story and one that was well-grounded in ancient Egyptian mythology. It inspired two series of horror films, one produced by Universal Pictures in the 1930s and 1940s, and one produced by Hammer Films in the 1960s and 1970s. None of them were as authentic to the myth as was the original Boris Karloff film. No doubt inspired by the films, short story writers had often toyed with the plot device of walking mummies, but other than novelizations of films, to the best of my knowledge there has not been a novel about a revived mummy until now. New Orleans writer Anne Rice is best known for her vampire novels: INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, and QUEEN OF THE DAMNED. I have read only the first of these, but I enjoyed it a great deal and I have had good reports of the others so I had very high hopes and expectations when I saw that she had written a novel THE MUMMY, OR RAMSES THE DAMNED. Unfortunately, THE MUMMY is a disappointment. Not that it is a bad novel--at times it is fun--but while INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE was a fascinating exercise that really put the reader inside the mind and appetites of a vampire, THE MUMMY puts the reader only in some very familiar situations. Ramses, rather than being the frightful ghoul of some baroque tomb, becomes more the romantic lead of the novel. Once released again, alive by virtue of an immortality elixir (the same idea used in lesser mummy movies), he inflates to his former handsome self and almost immediately understands and speaks English. He is not at all bewildered by Twentieth Century life. He is an incredibly quick study. He is sort of the handsome Mummy May 15, 1989 Page 2 stranger who hides very well the secret that he is really 3000 years old. I, in fact, see in him everything I don't like about Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's vampire, Saint-Germain. Where Rice did such a good job of making us see the monster's point of view in INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, she totally falls flat in THE MUMMY. Ramses is simply too interesting a concept to turn into a romantic hero. Much of the book becomes a romance novel with a rather weak murder plot. Ramses, though it is never actually said, is Ramses II, who ruled Egypt until he was an old man and must have appeared so. Hence the elixir must have done more than just bestow immortality; it must have also restored his youth. That is an aspect that Rice never actually mentions. The plot has Ramses reviving his lost love more than a millenium his junior--Cleopatra. (With a few hundred pages more I am sure Rice could have worked Napoleon Bonaparte and Abraham Lincoln into the plot too--maybe they will be along later in the series.) Cleopatra could have brought more interest to the story in that she at least stays a monster rather than becoming a love interest, but we rarely see the world from her eyes and she too is entirely too much a quick study of so alien a culture. I found out after I finished the book that it was to be the basis of a television movie. Or perhaps Rice based it on her own screenplay. In any case, at $11.95 it is novelization-level writing. Be warned. Mark R. Leeper att!mtgzx!leeper leeper@mtgzx.att.com Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeper From archive (archive) Subject: Re: Anne Rice's The Mummy or Ramses the Dammed Summary: *spoilers* From: slf@well.UUCP (Sharon Lynne Fisher) Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA Date: 23 May 89 15:15:51 GMT >Anybody read Anne Rice's new book yet? I saw it at the mall yesterday Yes. Oh, you want to know about it.... :-) Potboiler. First few chapters are kind of dry (no pun intended). They find a mummy of Ramses, indications that he was a contemporary of Cleopatra's (who lived 1,000 years later), a bunch of poisons, and notes that indicate that one of the poisons is actually an immortalizing elixer. In opposition to the vampire books, where sunshine kills them, sunshine brings the mummy to life. Of course he's a stud and one of the effects of the elixer is that he wants to fuck all the time. It's kind of neat watching this guy wander around Victorian England; reminded me of Time After Time. Anyway, they go visit Egypt and find this "unidentified mummy" who is actually Cleopatra. So Ramses pours elixer on her. Whoops. She comes back to life but she was partially rotten and stuff, so she has holes in her. Moreover, since she'd actually died before she got the elixer, she isn't quite right in the head. Not as bad as Pet Semetary, but she has this thing for going up to guys and groping them (which goes over *real well* in Victorian England), then fucking them, then breaking their necks. Anyway, they feed her some more elixer and her body heals up. In the meantime Ramses has fallen in love with the daughter of the guy who dug him up, but he's still in love with Cleopatra. By the end of the book, a couple of people, including the daughter, have gotten the elixer and Cleopatra gets killed, we think, but she recovers. It's all just a setup for another trilogy or something. It has its moments but it's not nearly as good as some of her other stuff. From archive (archive) From: bondc@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Clay M Bond) Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington Subject: Vampire_Chronicles, part 3. Date: 30 Oct 88 16:42:50 GMT ***NO SPOILERS*** I just finished Anne Rice's new book, _Queen of the Damned_, and I liked it nearly as well as I did Lestat. There is more going on in it than the former two, largely because there are several sub-plots. One of these sub-plots she develops particularly well, in such a way that one is puzzled, then ripping through it to find out just how it works in with the rest of the story. Like her former two (and indeed, the S&M erotica she has written under the name Rocquelaure, _The Erotic Adventures of Sleeping Beauty_ [I think]), it is well written, evoking very effective images, sometimes lovely, sometimes sensual, sometimes horrible, and most often all three, and is as blatantly homoerotic as her former two. Towards the end I found myself wondering if a few of her political biases were being not-so-gently thrust in my face, but it was by no means enough to spoil my enjoyment of her book. It's worth the hard-cover price. And on the last page, she promises that the Vampire Chronicles will continue ... -- Clay Bond, IU Department of Linguistics ARPA: bondc@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu