Review on: The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice
Series: The Vampire Chronicles (Book 3)
Rating: 4.5/5
When I first encountered this title before, from Anne Rice’s collection, I never thought it was part of the vampire series. I originally thought it had something to do with mummy’s and other paranormal creatures or something. Now, I know I was not correct, but i wasn’t entirely wrong, read below to find out why.
Enter The Queen of the Damned, and where we left off from the other book (The Vampire Lestat, book #2) is Lestat finding himself face-to-face with a very powerful vampire before he goes to his sleep-of-the-dead. The prior book talks about Lestat’s world-changing concert, but this next book takes place somewhere before and after the concert. The Queen of the Damned explains to us what happens before the concert, because most of us are left shocked and disoriented with regard to how Lestat’s concert ended the way it did. More or less, the end of the last book and the beginning of this book leads us to understand that another life-changing character makes its appearance, who else but Akasha. I guess I was correct when I guessed that this book sounded like it had to do with mummy’s, because The Queen of the Damned explains to us how it all started. Akasha kidnaps Lestat, and we later find out why it happens. Somewhere in the middle of the book, our young vampires meet up with some very old and ancient vampires who’ve been living for thousands of years, and they help readers understand how vampires came about (in the book). We meet a lof of new characters, and if you’ve read the Mayfair Chronicles series from Anne Rice, we get re-introduced to our old friends – The Talamasca.
Now, The Queen of the Damned is focused on Akasha, she’s the queen of the damned. The flow of the story focuses on why Akasha kidnaps Lestat and goes on the killing-rampage that threatens not only all vampires but mankind as well. With that, we discover the origins of vampires, and how Akasha becomes the slightly deranged vampire that she is. Her origins lead us to Maharet, a beautiful red-headed vampire whom we firstly meet as the relative of Jesse (also a new character) who works for the Talamasca and becomes intertwined with the story of Lestat, since we know and are introduced to the Talamasca who are there to study the paranormal and the weird and the things that normal humans don’t understand. We later find out that Maharet is one of the first vampires after Akasha and Enkil and that she has some connection to the red-headed twins in the dreams that start invading the younger vampires’ minds. We later understand her (Maharet’s) connection to vampires, and how she inconceivably helps bring about the birth of the undead race.