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Oh boy...

So, I've been reading the book, and I don't know what to make of it. I skim a lot as it's boring to read Lestat/Rice keep listing all characters present in the room/scene on who wear what and in what shade...

Some "lose notes" from my Facebook so far:

"Gods! Reading "Blood Communion" is embarrassing! I don't know what's worse: everyone's kissing Lestat's arse or Lestat's obsession with furniture and luxury.... Neither is something I want to read about!"

"Does Rice even realise that her portrayal of life in this Chateau is comical and grotesque? I mean..seriously!"

" Everything is melodramatic and theatrical in this book, dialogues especially! I don't know..I think it's even more comical than in the previous one?"

And as a reply to friend who asked if she missed something:

"Missing something? Comedy perhaps?:P I mean, every emotion and reaction in this book is like super exaggerated to the point of being theatrical and on steroids? Vampires wearing nothing but long robes, gowns, or tuxedos either partying or preparing to ball. No matter what. And their decadence is..I don't know...unbelievable! They shifted from ridiculous existentialism to decadent nihilism/hedonism which is justified supposedly by the need to love one another no matter what... but, damn, if I was there I'd feel like in a vampire retirement house or something... just wow! And everyone is a drama queen! Seriously!"

I am almost done reading...and I think Rice fell into her own trap when trying to deal with so called vampire "physiology". Isn't Lestat the most powerful vamp evar! How is that he suddenly is weaker than Roshomandes? And you can "bind" vampire by putting him in iron and turning her/his head around? And Fareed carefully freeing the "Trio" because their spinal cord might be broken due to Rosh having turned their heads around? Yeah right...This is rather silly, to put it nicely.

I don't know..it's sad, you know. I am reading this book just to have a proper reference for my "Enter of the Dragon"-like Nicki's story...

Transcript of the recording 08.08.2015

Voice I: What is the greatest misconception about you, Nicolas?

Voice 2: Obviously, that I am dead.
[pause]
Voice 2: And mad!

Voice 1: Are you angry with Lestat?

Voice 2 This is not going to work..
.[pause]

Voice 1: There's no other way to start, you know that
[a long pause]

Voice 2: There used to be fury and rage. Now? Nicolas, the vampire child of denial and self-inflicted weltshmertz, perished in fire. Lestat, whom I had known, does not exist anymore too. Those young men, those two young vampires, like the century in which they were born, are gone forever.

Voice 1: Will you ever seek out Lestat?

Voice 2: No.
[a long pause]

Voice 1: Why?

Voice 2: I represent everything his newly established kingdom rejects.

Voice 1: What do you mean?

Voice 2: I don't like authority. I don't like covens. And, unsurprisingly, I've got this particular disdain for monarchy.
[pause]
Voice 2: And I feed on vampires.
[a long pause]

And I have no idea what to do with this account.

I hope everyone's been doing fine though.

Kindle edition of BC still not available to me (for this region?) on amazon. It's so weird. I suppose I could email a question about it. It does not look like I am going to read this wreck any time soon. Unless someone can, umm "lend" it to me?

A perfect man and woman look at me from a perfect instagram shot. Carefully styled and fashionable clothes perfectly cover (or not) their perfect bodies. The man and woman hold nutritious shake drinks which gangrene colour must certainly be a promise of an everlasting youthful life. They're perfectly relaxed, of course, and relaxing in a perfect setting on a perfect time with all the perfect material things all around them, the things you should aspire to acquire in order to live a fulfilled spiritual life..

I can't believe I read this book.. but hey, I did.

Without the passion for and understanding (at least the basics) of science, as well as the understanding of the sci-fi genre, one should really take a step back and reconsider her/his decision to write in this genre. ESPECIALLY, if a writer attempts to use genetics, biology, high tech to explain the mythos.

Rice fails on all accounts here, she did fail in Prince Lestat too. The explanation is far-fetched, ridiculous, retarded, and makes no sense at all. I rolled my eyes so often and laughed so hard...
I'd go as far as to say this story offends reader's intelligence...

Her vampires became grotesque and caricature of themselves. They waltz, buy stuff, "love" each other, and spend more time talking than acting. It is boring, really, really, really boring!

And not only that, on the top of that, we (the readers) are "blessed" with a new kind of "immortals" who were given the most annoying species name, and their story really taxed my patience. When I finished the chapter I really was proud of myself. Her story of Atlantis is not original, and she failed at describing the mythical realm like she did fail describing Paradise in Memnoch the Devil (Hey.. Dante had done it better!). Generally, if you google "glass sci fi metropolis" or "sci-fi metropolis", or anything in this fashion, you will get far more interesting examples than her description of a supposedly unbelievably breathtaking realm....

Rice tries so hard to discredit religion(s) and "secularize" her universe using science and sci-fi plot devices..Yet, she's unable to escape it anyway. At some point "the Parents" (this Alien hi-tech race) when asked if they believe in higher spiritual power (some form of a god, I assume)...they reply they do believe in such..
Ehh... whatever..
Truly, the author's scientific approach to explain the origins and the idea of " the aliens" themselves... is even less believable than Genesis in Bible or the idea behind Holy Trinity.

I remember a few years back she announced she'd working on a new book with a new kind of immortals. At the same time she was flooding her facebook with posts about Atlantis. Then she abandoned the project saying she's stuck and the story wasn't going anywhere. Anyone remember that? Well, you can read that "abandoned" story project in this book called "Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis".

Also posted on:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2480904493

So I've been rereading the book - Prince Lestat...partly because of the task I took for the reading session for the lovely group at vc_media here, and partly because I decided it would be interesting to reread it with some well-developed distance towards Rice's latest creations...
I've been trying - so hard - reading word after word and not skim through paragraphs...BUT OH BOY IT'S HARD!

so.... hard!

This book is grotesque, so many scenes are grotesque and hilarious, dialogues are grotesque...vampires are grotesque... I've been rolling my eyes so often that soon I'll be able to perform Exorcist trick..

But most of all.. the vampires are bunch of boring vampire geriatric decadents being so divorced from reality that it's so....grotesque?

Also, what is it with Rice and her idea of coming up with more and more "ancient vampires"? They all sound the same, but it's not even that. They're uninteresting despite having entire chapters dedicated to them.
They're so self absorbed and infantile!
In fact, all vampires are soooooooooo self-absorbed....
Lestat, most often than not, is a grotesque creature himself...

I have this image of the vampire ball in Polanski's "Fearless Vampire Killers"... There's not a big difference between Rice's portrayal and that scene there, literally and figuratively.
It makes me laugh, laugh so hard. I do laugh in this manic lestatish way at Lestat and his silly court of geriatric vampires waltzing all night because that is all what they can do while the world slowly becomes toothless and bleeds.
Hilarious, hilarious indeed.

I can have my paw cut off that the time may come when she decides - like with Memnoch - that explaining the vampire origins with aliens and "replishmoids" wasn't such a good idea.. so she'll fucking go back as far as to later pleistocene and bring back a damned Neanderthal who was - again - fused with some demon or whatever and that would be a real vampire?
*head desk*

Still rolling...

Irony?
I’ve been an avid observer of the ongoing discussion on the internet about female writers in the publishing world as well as the problem of female characters (as protagonist) in the literary world. You can find countless articles in which authors (with various methodological and view point approaches) analyse these two interesting aspects.

There has been a general consensus so far about:

1. The publishing world is sexist still, favouring male writers to female writers. It’s the 21st century but women still have to become Currer Bells, so to speak.

2. A female protagonist is more likely to attract fewer readers than her male counterpart. Although this observation is somewhat questionable if we take a closer look at specific genres…or maybe not.

3. Female writers are frightened to death to make a female character a protagonist because almost automatically she’ll be dubbed a mary-sue.

And the Irony is laughing hysterically because no matter how great the awareness is of these three (but there are more, I am sure) hmm issues, and no matter how great and thunderbolt-like the general and collective shouting NO coming from not only confirmed feminists but all female readership and female writers, the outcome is what it is. Male characters still bring greater readership and women choose to write about them and later fan-fiction (yes, I am using this word as a verb) them.

I don’t know how about you.. but I am smelling hypocrisy here?

I am here. Still getting used to it though.
But it looks fun.

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Ania Seeks Duende

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