The Queen of the Damned (The Third Book in the Vampire Chronicles) [Hardcover]

Anne Rice (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 1988

In 1976, a uniquely seductive world of vampires was unveiled in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire . . . in 1985, a wild and voluptous voice spoke to us, telling the story of The Vampire Lestat.  In The Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice continues her extraordinary "Vampire Chronicles" in a feat of mesmeric storytelling, a chillingly hypnotic entertainment in which the oldest and most powerful forces of the night are unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

Three brilliantly colored narrative threads intertwine as the story unfolds:

- The rock star known as Vampire Lestat, worshipped by millions of spellbound fans, prepares for a concert in San Francisco.  Among the audience--pilgrims in a blind swoon of adoration--are hundreds of vampires, creatures who see Lestat as a "greedy fiend risking the secret prosperity of all his kind just to be loved and seen by mortals," fiends themselves who hate Lestat's power and who are determined to destroy him . . .

- The sleep of certain men and women--vampires and mortals scattered around the world--is haunted by a vivid, mysterious dream: of twins with fiery red hair and piercing green eyes who suffer an unspeakable tragedy.  It is a dream that slowly, tauntingly reveals its meaning to the dreamers as they make their way toward each other--some to be destroyed on the journey, some to face an even more terrifying fate at journey's end . . .

- Akasha--Queen of the Damned, mother of all vampires, rises after a 6,000 year sleep and puts into motion a heinous plan to "save" mankind from itself and make "all myths of the world real" by elevating herself and her chosen son/lover to the level of the gods: "I am the fulfillment and I shall from this moment be the cause" . . .

These narrative threads wind sinuously across a vast, richly detailed tapestry of the violent, sensual world of vampirism, taking us back 6,000 years to its beginnings.  As the stories of the "first brood" of blood drinkers are revealed, we are swept across the ages, from Egypt to South America to the Himalayas to all the shrouded corners of the globe where vampires have left their mark. Vampires are created--mortals succumbing to the sensation of "being enptied, of being devoured, of being nothing." Vampires are destroyed.  Dark rituals are performed--the rituals of ancient creatures prowling the modern world.  And, finally, we are brought to a moment in the twentieth century when, in an astonishing climax, the fate of the living dead--and perhaps of the living, all the living--will be decided.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Did you ever wonder where all those mischievous vampires roaming the globe in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles came from? In this, the third book in the series, we find out. That raucous rock-star vampire Lestat interrupts the 6,000-year slumber of the mama of all bloodsuckers, Akasha, Queen of the Damned.

Akasha was once the queen of the Nile (she has a bit in common with the Egyptian goddess Isis), and it's unwise to rile her now that she's had 60 centuries of practice being undead. She is so peeved about male violence that she might just have to kill most of them. And she has her eye on handsome Lestat with other ideas as well.

If you felt that the previous books in the series weren't gory and erotic enough, this one should quench your thirst (though it may cause you to omit organ meats from your diet). It also boasts God's plenty of absorbing lore that enriches the tale that went before, including the back-story of the boy in Interview with the Vampire and the ancient fellowship of the Talamasca, which snoops on paranormal phenomena. Mostly, the book spins the complex yarn of Akasha's eerie, brooding brood and her nemeses, the terrifying sisters Maharet and Mekare. In one sense, Queen of the Damned is the ultimate multigenerational saga. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The cult audience for Rice's two previous vampire novels, Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat , will undoubtedly broaden with this third book, which features the same characters and a more complex plot. As before, Rice tells her story in fine melodramatic style, overwriting with zest and exuberance: the text pulses with menace, mystery and violence, and with sensuality verging on erotica. Here Lestat and all other vampires pay the price for his obsessive need for fame, his reckless honesty in describing the "blood drinkers" among us, and his frenzied rock concert in San Francisco. Lestat's kiss has awakened Queen Akasha from her 6000 year sleep. She immediately begins a wholesale slaughter of most of the world's vampires, sparing only a small remnant (including Lestat) who she expects will join her in a crazed crusade against male mortals. Meanwhile, vampires and psychic humans around the globe are having the same terrifying dream in which twin red-haired women weep over the body of another woman, whose eyes and brains are on a plate nearby. As Rice gradually reveals the significance of the dream, she also focuses on Jesse, who works for the Telamasca, a secret society that collects data on those with paranormal powers. Though she ingeniously pulls together the various plot strands, Rice then almost loses the reader in philosophic overkill. She regains her verve in the final chapter, however, promising yet another mesmerizing installment of the Vampire Chronicles. 150,000 first printing: Literary Guild main selection.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (September 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394558235
• ISBN-13: 978-0394558233
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 1.6 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (262 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #196,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anne Rice was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She holds a Master of Arts Degree in English and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, as well as a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science.

She is the author of over 30 books, most recently the Toby O'Dare novels Of Love and Evil, and Angel Time; the memoir, Called Out of Darkness;and her two novels about Jesus, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana,

Anne publicly broke with organized religion in July of 2010 on moral grounds, affirming her faith in God, but refusing any longer to be called "Christian." The story attracted surprising media attention, with Rice's remarks being quoted in stories all over the world.

Anne is very active on her FaceBook Fan Page and has over 550,000 followers. She answers questions every day on the page, and also posts on a variety of topics, including literature, film, music, politics, religion, and her own writings. She welcomes discussion there on numerous topics.

Her latest novel, The Wolf Gift, a werewolf story set in Northern California in the present time, will be published on February 14th, 2012. With this book, Anne returns to the classic monsters and themes of supernatural literature, similar to those she explored in her Vampire Chronicles, and tales of the Mayfair Witches.

Her first novel, Interview with the Vampire, was published in 1976 and has gone on to become one of the best-selling novels of all time. She continued her saga of the Vampire Lestat in a series of books, collectively known as The Vampire Chronicles, which have had both great mainstream and cult followings.

Interview with the Vampire was made into a motion picture in 1994, starring Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst and Antonio Banderas. Anne's novel, Feast of All Saints about the free people of color of ante-bellum New Orleans became a Showtime mini series in 2001.

Anne Rice is also the author of other novels, including The Witching Hour, Servant of the Bones, Merrick, Blackwood Farm, Blood Canticle, Violin, and Cry to Heaven. She lives in Palm Desert, California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Immensely important yet problematic, August 7, 2003

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles, No. 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

The Queen of the Damned is strikingly different in both form and substance from the first two books of The Vampire Chronicles. Several new characters are introduced, a number of truly old vampires we have only heard of up until now become part of the action, and the story is woven together into a mosaic much more wide in scope from what has come before. This is essentially Lestat's book, but he is not really the focus of the tale; while he narrates his own role in events, much of the book is written in the third person. This, plus the addition of so many new characters and the truly elaborate scope that is covered, makes this novel much less cohesive than the first-person narratives of the first two books. The action is spread out over six thousand years from one end of the world to the other, with a lot of mythology and pondering taking the place of the thrilling, energetic action of the earlier novels.

The book begins a week or two before Lestat's legendary rock concert and the ensuing mayhem that erupted outside the auditorium on that night. We follow the paths of other vampires in the days prior to this, including Armand and Daniel, the young man from Interview With the Vampire. We also learn that the immolation of vampires that Lestat, Louis, and Gabrielle saw that night had actually begun several days earlier, as a number of covens were destroyed by Akasha, the newly awakened Queen of the Damned. After the story of her awakening is told, the book takes on a somewhat mystical air. Almost all vampires are dreaming of two red-headed young women preparing to feast upon their dead mother, only to be taken prisoner by soldiers while their village is destroyed around them. The true significance of the red-headed twins does not become clear until the final hundred pages of the book, for their tale is an integral part of the story behind vampirism's very existence. We already knew that Enkil and Akasha, ancient rulers of Egypt, were the first vampires. Now, the whole history of the King and Queen is revealed, including the curse that accompanied their transformation. Rice goes out of her way to explain the beginning of vampirism in a unique way, although the facts of the matter seem a little too elaborate and far-fetched to me.

The one real weakness I find in the novel is Akasha's agenda. She is not exactly the altruistic type, and her mission to save mankind sounds ingenuous at best. It is also a rather laughable plan; having spent the past six thousand years in contemplative thought, I would have expected a character of her strength and moxie to have come up with a plan much better than this one. The final conflict, one prefigured for hundreds of pages in the slow unveiling of the Legend of the Twins, ends so quickly I was forced to stop and make sure I hadn't somehow skipped a paragraph or two. Basically, it's all over in one sentence. Even Lestat is not himself here; I actually enjoyed the stories of the other vampires and the history of the accidental birth of vampirism in Akasha more than I enjoyed the action related first-hand by Lestat. Certainly, Rice is to be commended for vastly expanding her vampire universe and having her characters deeply examine their lives and their purposes on earth, but I just could not fully connect with this novel. Still, it is an essential book for Anne Rice fans, as it offers up loads of information about the vampires who roam the world of her creation and explains the very origins of vampirism itself.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Queen of the Damned is a truly exceptional book., November 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles, No. 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

Queen of the Damned tells about the much loved two hundred year old vampire, Lestat de Lioncourt, who finds himself in the middle of a vampire war. Queen of the Damned is the third book in the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. The first book was Interview with the Vampire, and was followed by The Vampire Lestat. I recommend you read both of these books before you read Queen of the Damned, to get the appropriate background. In Queen of the Damned, Lestat has just made his Hollywood debut. He has penned an autobiography, entiltled The Vampire Lestat. He has started a band(also called The Vampire Lestat), and has set a date for a concert on Halloween. His fans aren't the only ones to be there- vampires who want to punish Lestat for his outwardness towards mortals will also be in attendence. Unbeknownst to him, Lestat's loud music has woken the ancient vampire King Enkil and Queen Akasha from their millenia long slumber. Akasha immeadiatly starts on a plan to stop all vampires and to save mankind- or rather, womankind. As in The Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Damned is narrated by Lestat. But unlike 'Lestat, Queen of the Damned includes side views and stories by others observers, and after all the events were over, told Lestat the story. If you like this book, I suggest to you the other Vampire Chronicles, and other Anne Rice books, such as Lasher, The Witching Hour, and Pandora.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Devil Is In the Details, April 10, 2002

By 

Bruce Rux (Aurora, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles, No. 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

Following the curse of Frank Herbert and Dune, Anne Rice doesn't know when to let sleeping vampires lie and keeps churning out sequels to her initial monster hit. And each one is just a little less than the one that preceded it.

Vampire Queen Akasha, first of the immortals, awakens by the secret-revealing rock music of Lestat from her eons of slumber, to initiate the vampire-human apocalypse and implement a New World Order. The pearls of immortality have for too long been cast before swine, and she wants to clean house. Cleaving her Chosen Few to her bosom, her plan is to eliminate all lesser immortals and men, and rule over a carefully controlled and bred human world. Needless to say, those not Chosen - from either species - have something to say about that, and even her own favorites rebel against her. "How sharper than a serpent's tooth..."

It's a great plot, but the devil is in the details, and Rice dwells on unimportant details at the expense of the plot. The climax is terribly anticlimactic for such an inordinate buildup, and the novel's structure is more than usually loose. Her historical accuracy is hit-and-miss, though nothing to be concerned about.

The book's greatest problem is simply its length. It actually climaxes halfway through - which is when the plot truly begins - leaving a long, long stretch of exposition to what the story is really all about. And by the time it gets to where it's going, the reader's interest is drastically diminished. The vampires are a loquacious lot, and keep repeating their points in a talky finale that then concludes all too abruptly. The epilogue is actually better than the rest of the novel.

Rice's fans will certainly embrace Queen of the Damned, but her new readers will want to start with her stronger work - namely, the original Interview with the Vampire.

The movie really wasn't bad, considering this is an all but unfilmable novel as written.