Now Mona is a vampire and not facing her inevitable death, she is able to ask hard questions – like where her daughter is and what has become of the TaltosThe big dark secret of the Mayfair family is finally open and ready to be resolved.I have a problem.When I reviewed Blackwood Farm I gave it 0.5 fangs. I do not regret that rating, it most definitely deserved that rating. But now I have a problem, because Blood Canticle is even worse but, out of some odd twisted sense of needing to finish this series, I finished it so I can’t DNF it.Normally I like to sum up all the positive things with the book first. This will not take long. I like that the book addresses Mona becoming a vampire and how, as a woman, the sheer safety from attack that comes with vampiric power means a lot more than it would to, say, Quinn. It’s a nice mention – it’s one lineThere’s the good. I can think if not one more positive thing to add. Now to the much much much longer lists of negative.Firstly, this book opens with a rather awful screed from Lestat chastising readers for not appreciating the brilliance of Memnoch The Devil (a book that was much criticised and, no, I didn’t like it either). I’ve seen authors respond to negative reviews before and it’s never good, but to actually have your title character scold readers for not UNDERSTANDING the insight of your oh-so-perfect book in a later book in the series is rather shockingly childish and ridiculous. It did not make me positively inclined towards this bookThen we have Lestat running through this strangely bizarre joyous ode to Catholicism, including shovelling over a lot of problematic issues (in a series that likes to make every character bisexual – well so long as their loves are under-aged – praising the church in glowing terms then throwing aside the homophobia as a 3 word bracketed reference is insulting) which then develops into a confused, incoherent ramble of Lestat wanting to be a saint and the Pope and the spiritual joys of an obscure saint that will keep popping up throughout the whole book without any real need or relevance (and it’s not like the books need more reasons to deviate).After all this (and a brief, strange idea of lecturing the pope that the super-rich and luxurious would totally save the world so why worry about wealth divides), we move towards the story. Well, no, we move towards lots of sitting around and talking, info-dumping, lecturing and great big melodramatic emotional outbursts, commenting on people’s clothes in huge detail, a lot of recapping and a whole lot of nothing happeningBut all of this happens with Lestat having “updated” his language. I think this is a response to people complaining about how over-elaborate the language of these books are – especially when Quinn showed up speaking in exactly the same voice as Lestat – so now Lestat drops random “yo” “cool” and “dude”. It is cringingly awful. It’s like your granddad trying to be “hip”. This continues through the book, it is never not awful.The characterisation is appalling, especially Mona. Quinn just kind of fades away into the background. Lestat is histrionic and overly dramatic and spends most of the book arguing with Oncle Julien’s ghost, quite why this paedophile is haunting Lestat isn’t really explained, he just appears and he and Lestat melodramatically argue with each other in ridiculously overwrought language for pages on end. Mona is a disaster though – she throws off vast temper tantrums, is slut shamed horrendously both for her sexual past (accepting the blame for “seducing” a male relative when she was 13!) and for how she dresses (which Lestat finds distracting so of course she must change!). She is portrayed as histrionic and bad tempered and spiteful – even when she’s reasonable (she doesn’t like Rowan for good reasons, but her anger is portrayed as spite. She objects to how Lestat speaks to her but she is considered unreasonable). Lestat constantly thinks of her with words like “harpy”. To top it off, of course she apologises to Lestat for not being sufficiently meek and subservient to him. The characterisation is truly cringeworthy.The story is crammed at the end. Before that we have an excruciatingly long info-dump of what I assume is the plot of the Mayfair Witches books since these two series have now been mushed together (to no-one’s shock, Lestat is now madly in love with Rowan Mayfair. Because Lestat falls in love with everyone the second he sees them. Always.) in between which we have random dramas and temper tantrums from ghostly Patsy (musical interval! Just like Lord of the Rings and just as boring) and Oncle Julien. Finally after all these tantrums and lectures we learn that the Taltos are out there and need finding.Read More
I was a big fan of Ms. Rice's books for a long time. Blackwood Farm was the first vampire (or Mayfair witch) novel that I didn't love. Actually, she had been declining for a couple of books before that, but it was in Blackwood that I noticed the sharp drop in quality, which only drops even further with this book.Now, I know that Ms. Rice was going through a hard time. Her husband died, she found out she had diabetes, etc etc.If Ms. Rice had said to her fans (via her website or otherwise) 'You know what, I'm just dealing with a lot right now, so I'm going to take a break from writing' or some such, I'd have supported her one hundred percent. It would have been completely understandable.But no. For whatever reason, Ms. Rice decided she wasn't going to write more vampires since she found Jeebus all over again and is now gonna write Christian tripe, so she thought she'd end the Vampire Chronicles/Mayfair witches with this book that brings them together. Normally, this idea would excite me.But this book left a sour taste in my mouth. Everyone has become flat and cardboard. Mona, Rowan, Lestat are all shadows of their former selves. And Taltos being the prisoners of drug dealers? PUH-LEEZE.Anne Rice has a ego that nobody would envy. I don't know what was worse, this book or Twilight. NO ONE is above the editorial process. When I write, I thrive off feedback and critique. No one can consider themselves 'good' at anything unless they are willing to admit to themselves that there is always room for improvement. And this is only exacerbated by the declining quality in her work... writers often get better, not worse.It is a huge shame that the Vampires and the Mayfair Witches had to end like this. A crying shame, really.
What do You think about Blood Canticle (2004)?
El último libro de las crónicas vampíricas y donde se junta con las brujas de Mayfair. Me decepcionó. Ese final fue de "¿en serio?, ¿así lo vs a acabar? ¿qué te pasa?"Y como me había enterado que se juntaba con los libros de las brujas, me tomé la molestia de conseguir esos y leerlos. Resultó que fue una gran pérdida de timepo, porque lo que me leí en tres libros (uno de 1000) páginas me lo resumieron en las últims 50 páginas de este libro.No es la misma Anne Rice de cuando "Entrevista con el vampiro" y no puedo decir que este nuevo giro me guste. Me enamoré de ella con "La momia" y con "Cántico de sangre" se me ha ido el amor.
—Carol
Spoiler Alert! I've read two books since I finished Blood Canticle, and I still find myself thinking about how disappointed I am by this book. I was so excited to see how this beloved and epic tale of The Vampire Chronicles would end. Despite having had to consciously try hard to get used to Blackwood Farm, I was sure Rice would write a book that would make this whole set end in a satisfying way. But no, I was dead wrong. It almost feels like a kick in the junk after reading the previous nine books. I'm so miffed that its hard to write an eloquent review of this crap. So I won't, because obviously Rice didn't go that mile with this book, and I treat a writer how they treat me as a reader. Lestat has turned into a whiny little sissy who speaks in short, choppy sentences like an ADD sufferer describing a Michael Bay movie after nine beers - but only in chunks - the rest of the time, he speaks like he used to, for some reason. Several Chronicle-wide plot points and character-important decisions have apparently been forgotten or very vaguely excused away - like that whole War With The Freaking Talamasca thing we've been hearing about since Merrick, and the Bianca thing, and Louis ever actually hearing from the REAL Claudia again. I don't even want to remember anymore of the things Rice left us high and dry on. One thing that got me - and probably most of you - hooked on Rice, was her beautiful and elegant writing style. Well, you'll find about two pages of that in here. Instead of developing characters with depth and who you can relate to, she gives us one-dimensional personalities on a worse scale than the Disney Channel. One of the failures of this book that makes it so overwhelmingly insulting to me is that I haven't read the Mayfair stuff yet, and was thinking about it, until I saw the Mayfair characters in here to be vague and one-dimensional. Now it would be really hard to care about them in their own story, so I'll probably never read that. Now, I understand that Rice went through a lot of hard things that anyone reading this review would probably already know about, and that she is an emotional writer in the first place, which is a good thing as far as her process is concerned (I think she uses it very well, usually). But I think she could have either powered through and given her writing greater attention, or taken a break. I'm sure that her publisher and fans would've been okay with her taking time to work things through - it would've been a lot better than being handed something which, if I didn't know better, would of seem to be a bootleg copy that a bad fan fiction author would've tried to sell us, like a Rollecks watch or a Sohnee TV out of the back of an old rusty Chevy van somewhere near my neighborhood's most luxurious illegal dumping site. Thank you, Anne Rice, for being like so many drummers and ex-girlfriends, by making me love everything you do - right up until you take a gigantic shit all over my hopes and dreams and probably my couch, too. If you need me, I'll be chillin' with Bradbury, King, and Wells.
—Jeff
I was a little disappointed in this book after the engagingly wonderful Blackwood Farm. Going from one book to the next, you feel almost as if it were written by a different person, the other Anne Rice whose grammar, syntax, and language usage I continually felt like correcting while reading (which is the case with some of her older books). She puts it off as trying to say that's the way Lestat talks, but I truly don't recall him being such a poorly-spoken vampire. Beyond the writing itself, and on to the story, that part was good enough to hold my interest, though it didn't move as quickly as Blackwood Farm did. The story picks up right where Blackwood Farm left off, with Lestat making Mona Mayfair into a vampire. Certain parts of the story are dragged out longer than they need to be. For instance, the entire first half of the book was devoted to Mona adjusting to becoming a vampire, her outbursts with her family and Lestat, and so on. I kept thinking, when are we going to get to the meat of this story? That said, there really wasn't a whole lot of meat and substance to the story contained in this book. It had a few interesting subplots, but it wasn't as exciting and intense as some of her other work. However, I like the characters, and I've followed both the Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches from the beginning so whether I liked this book as much as the others or not, I felt the need to bring the series to it's logical conclusion. Huge fans of either series will definitely want to read this one to see how things end. But definitely don't make it a first read if you're new to Anne Rice as it'll probably bore you to tears, not knowing or understanding a lot of the background behind the current characters.
—Cherie
