Blood Canticle is the latest offering from internationally bestselling author Anne Rice, whose previous works include Interview with the Vampire (made into a movie with Tom Cruise) and Queen of the Damned. Now, until reading this book, I thought vampires were alright. Not as cool as ninjas or pirates, but, you know, pretty badass. What do I think of now, when I hear the word ‘vampire’? That smart, rich, popular, pretty kid in high school with the car his parents bought for him and the good looking girlfriend and the lead role in the school play.
That’s basically what this book is all about: “Look at me! My name’s Lestat! I’m good looking and oh so rich… Look at all my rich, good-looking friends! You will notice how I’m the richest and best looking of them all…Oh and I’m a Vampire! Observe my super-powers and the way in which they ensure absolute success in everything I do! Marvel as nothing throughout the story challenges or threatens me in any way whatsoever on account of my convenient ability to just make up new super-powers mid-way thorough a chapter!”
This rigmarole takes up maybe half the book. A further quarter is given to lengthy, drawn-out bitch-fights between Lestat and various (though always outrageously rich and good looking) female characters. Lestat is always right. They always end up making out.
This leaves a comfortable quarter of the book left over for extravagant descriptions of furniture and shoes (chiefly Lestat’s furniture and Lestat’s shoes). The plot is bumbling, lurching, random and incoherent. The characters, despite their immense wealth and the plethora of super-powers they have at their disposal are trite, unconvincing and completely fail both in forming any kind of connection with the reader, and in developing in any way whatsoever during the course of the book. It’s long, it’s slow, it’s boring, it stinks, it stinks, it stinks!