Memnoch the Devil (Vampire Chronicles)

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Product Description

In this stunning, terrifying new novel from the phenomenally successful Anne Rice, Lestat, her vampire hero, makes a Faustian pact with Memnoch, the fallen angel and devil. When the novel opens, Lestat is being stalked through the squalor and opulence of New Orleans, sensing for the first time what it must be like to be one of his own victims. The dramatic plot hurtles through space and time from the New Orleans underworld in the 1990s to the first century AD, the Fourth Crusade, and an apocalyptic denouement in hell. Lestat brings back the shroud imprinted with the face of Christ, and is saved from damnation only by will of Dora, the saintly nun whose blood he desires but whom he could not bring himself to harm. Blind in one eye, and weak, he returns to earth and the present as a captive of his own kind and Dora's charge, uncertain whether he will ever be able to kill again...

Amazon.com Review

The fifth volume of Rice's Vampire Chronicles is one of her most controversial books. The tale begins in New York, where Lestat, the coolest of Rice's vampire heroes, is stalking a big-time cocaine dealer and religious-art smuggler--this guy should get it in the neck. Lestat is also growing fascinated with the dealer's lovely daughter, a TV evangelist who's not a fraud.

Lestat is also being stalked himself, by some shadowy guy who turns out to be Memnoch, the devil, who spirits him away. From here on, the book might have been called Interview with the Devil (by a Vampire). It's a rousing story interrupted by a long debate with the devil. Memnoch isn't the devil as ordinarily conceived: he got the boot from God because he objected to God's heartless indifference to human misery. Memnoch takes Lestat to heaven, hell, and throughout history.

Some readers are appalled by the scene in which Lestat sinks his fangs into the throat of Christ on the cross, but the scene is not a mere shock tactic: Jesus is giving Lestat a bloody taste in order to win him over to God's side, and Rice is dead serious about the battle for his soul. Rice is really doing what she did as a devout young Catholic girl asked to imagine in detail what Christ's suffering felt like--it's just that her imagination ran away with her.

If you like straight-ahead fanged adventure, you'll likely enjoy the first third; if you like Job-like arguments with God, you'll prefer the Memnoch chapters. --Tim Appelo