Well, that was much better in my memory…

The Queen of the Damned: The Third Book in The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Another reread. In my memory from 30 years ago my favourite book book of the series. Although in reality that turned out to be an amalgamation of this and the previous book. And I am being charitable when calling them favourites and giving them 4 stars each, due to nostalgia. Both were much too slow and scattered for present day me. 

Part I was a good reminder of all the characters from previous books. Felt very much like a collection of short stories though. Took me forever to get through this part.

Part II, over 200 pages into my paperback edition, finally dug into the main plot and picked up a little speed and coherence.

Parts III and IV were a mix of my favourite parts of the book, the Story of the Twins, and my least liked parts of Lestat with Akasha. I didn‘t buy Akasha‘s motivation and she left me cold as a character. The finale was really short for this doorstopper and anticlimatic.

I really enjoyed Part V and could have read another 100 pages of that. We got emotional and mischievous Lestat back from the previous book.

Sorry for this non-review. I sort of meandered through this book slowly, without taking any notes. There were quite a few parts I liked—pretty much everything without the titular character in it. Which makes the book a bit pointless, really… I just consider it a short story anthology of Anne Rice‘s vampires and everything is good.

I will continue with the series, purely because I have the next three paperbacks sitting on my bookshelf already. 

PS: The movie is really bad. It also tells only a small part of the book and pretty much completely leaves out any attempt at explaining Akasha‘s motivation.