When Anne Rice announced that her current release, Blood Canticle, would be the last book concerning her infamous vampires or Mayfair witches, many fans began to speculate about how she would end the series.
Message boards all over the Internet suggested that the vampires would immolate themselves on a pyre.
Most suspected that at least Rice’s primary bad boy, Lestat de Lioncourt, would meet his end, one way or another.
Either way, readers expected a mind-blowing, tale-for-the-ages end to the works that have made the author famous.
But the fact of the matter is, there is no climactic, mind-blowing end.
But don’t lose all hope.
Admittedly, my jaw was on the floor when I finished the book.
Rice’s latest work is another prime example of her masterful storytelling and amazing character development.
Lestat is back in full form, changed from his experiences in the fifth book of the Vampire Chronicles, Memnoch the Devil.
Now, instead of being the hell-on-wheels bad boy he’s been for two centuries, Lestat wants to be a saint.
But his path to goodness and salvation is fraught with problems, namely a comely little Delilah of a witch named Mona Mayfair.
Mona, heiress to the Mayfair billions and the strongest witch that the lineage has produced in four hundred years, is at death’s door at the beginning of the book.
Quinn Blackwood, the love of her life and now a member of the undead, convinces Lestat to make her a vampire.
Lestat does so, only to suffer the consequences of his tarnished soul and Mona’s wrath at his infatuation with her aunt, Rowan Mayfair.
Rice effortlessly weaves the worlds of the Mayfairs and the Vampires, blending them so seamlessly that you wonder why their worlds have never clashed before.
The elegance of the Mayfair family suits the vampire, who finds himself falling in love with Rowan and haunted by an ancestor, Julien.
But where many of Rice’s other works had a good amount of closure, Blood Canticle leaves the reader with questions.
Many of Rice’s most famous vampires, including Louis, Armand, Marius and Pandora are absent from the book and aren’t even mentioned in passing.
The fate of all the other beloved characters is left to the reader’s imagination.
Lack of closure is the only thing that detracts from this novel.
Though it couldn’t be considered her best work by any means, it is a good addition to the already diverse pantheon of her world and makes many readers wonder what she’ll do next.
