Blood Canticle (The Vampire Chronicles)
by Anne Rice
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anne RiceEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-08-31
ISBN: 0345443691
Number of pages: 401
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of Blood Canticle (The Vampire Chronicles)
Book Review: A book that is much more than some if its reviewers
Summary: 5 Stars
Having a background in classical literature, I remember first reading Ms. Rice as a break from "real" fiction. After "Interview" this distraction grew to a full-fledged guilty pleasure. After finishing the vampire series (the four completed ones at that point), I moved on to the Mayfair series and have developed a steadfast admiration and respect for her talent.
The stories are fun reads but, like all good classics, larger issues lie at the core of these series - namely death and meaningfulness. What would you do with a life that was potentially limitless? How does death define personal meaning? How would one find meaning if all wealth and magic were at their disposal? Each of her characters serve as vehicles to explore these (and many other) notions. Obviously there are no answers but here treatment - through these characters - is profound. From Tolstoy to Maugham, all great authors have done the same thing for different audiences at different times.
For many years now I have been first in line when another Anne Rice book hits the bookstore and never have I grown tired of her discussion of these ideas and never have I been disappointed. Some have been more profound than others (e.g., Pandora), some have been a little work (e.g, Memnoch), and others I read too fast because it was a cool story (e.g. Witching Hour & Blackwood) - but that was OK, the second and third times I read it more slowly and savored the ideologies.
Ms. Rice has been generous in allowing me (us) to hitch along her ideological highway and I am grateful. With even a distant understanding of the trials she has endured during these years, her work is all the more personal, vulnerable, and poignant. Those reviewers here who pick up one of her books "from a library on a beach" and then suddenly feel qualified to offer a cogent opinion give me the unsettled feeling that the depth of human ignorance is bottomless. It is certainly more of a commentary on the reviewer than that which is being "reviewed."
I personally loved "Blood Canticles" but for a rationale unique among my many Rice-loving reasons - in it she offers a fitting closure and send-off to the characters that have come to have a life of their own. If the entire vampire/Mayfair series was one big book, then "Canticles" would have been that last chapter that lets you set it down with satisfaction, hope (and a bit of piqued curiosity). I sensed a lot of love and goodbye in it - at least that is how I read it.
And to Ms. Rice, in regards to those "reviewers" who seem to have flocked to this website, I offer the words of another person who made the mistake of offering himself to the ignorant masses; "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
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