The Works of Anne Rice

[Shanmac]

I used to reread IwtV every summer. It's just good reading. But, IMHO, as the series went on, it started to suck (no pun intended). I did, however, love Feast of All Saints. Great book.

I think I'll pass on Christ the King. No thanks, Anne!

[ramonaq]

I still can't reconcile the joy and wonder I experienced as a 13-year-old reading Interview and The Vampire Lestat with her later stuff. Blech. But, man, The Vampire Lestat was so cool to me. So cool.

I did read most of Christ our Lord (or whatever it's called), and it's actually kind of good. I just have issues with finishing things. Also, her conversion to belief and Christianity really weirded me out. A lot. I also liked Cry to Heaven.

And, heh, Shanmac -- the books sucked! Hee.

[biondetta]

I'm another that used to devour her books when I was a teenager. Heck, I was going to college in New Orleans when Witching Hour came out and I went and stood in line to get it autographed! I loved Queen of the Damned, as well as the earlier vampire books, read the whole Beauty trilogy, loved Feast of All Saints (actually the first book of hers that I read), and Cry to Heaven. She started losing me with Memnoch. I bought Violin, but never got more than a few pages into it. I just couldn't stand it. I haven't bothered with any of her stuff since.

[Ripley]

I wonder who her fans still are. I was another who loved her books when I was younger but have hated everything for the past ten or twelve years. It reeks of "Ya'll jus jellus!" to say that her fans are only adolescents. But if they are, shouldn't that tell her something?

ETA: I should be more specific: Her fans are adolescents who lose interest as they get older. I have great respect for YA authors.

[LurkerNan]

I used to reread IwtV every summer. It's just good reading. But, IMHO, as the series went on, it started to suck (no pun intended). I did, however, love Feast of All Saints. Great book.

If you like that, you should try the Benjamin January mysteries by Barbara Hambly. It's set in the same time period and place, within the free people of color.

[thecupcakekid]

Violin was terrible. I tried reading the last Vampire book where Mona becomes a Vampire and lives in a house with Lestat but it was absolute trash.

[Sunnyhorse]

I used to really like Rice's work -- Cry to Heaven was fantastic. Then I read one of the Mayfair Witches books -- I can't remember which one but don't think it was The Witching Hour -- and it dawned on me what an absolutely lazy writer Rice is. There was some description of a banquet where the table was set with "all kinds of delicious things" that sounded like an eighth-grader had written it, and it just pissed me off. Never finished that one, never picked another one up. Her later insistence that she was beyond editing when she so clearly is not (I'm a copyeditor -- can you tell? and her weird conversion to Christianity sealed the deal.

[Casino Bride]

ripley said:

I wonder who her fans still are. I was another who loved her books when I was younger but have hated everything for the past ten or twelve years.

Same here. I was about 21 when I read the first 3 Vampire Chronicles and absolutely adored them. And then read Witching Hour and Lasher, which I also adored. But it was all downhill for me after Tale Of The Body Thief .

[kore]

Oh yeah, Tale of the Body Thief was just crap! I was completely pissed off after I read it. It was a sell-out on her end in my thoughts.

[gemstone]

Heh. I'm a little embarrassed to have liked Tale of the Body Thief as much as I did. I just thought it was kind of amusing to watch Lestat try to deal with having a mortal body again. And the whole thing between he and David (it was David, right? Of the Talamasca?) was, uh...nice. I really wanted them to get it on. If it had been a few books down the line they would have. I just liked it because while it was still a Vampire Chronicle it took us (if memory serves) out of all the history and lineage we had been drowning in and into a "modern" problem.

On second thought, I'm not embarrassed by it. I liked Tale of the Body Thief. It's out in the open now and every knows it's cool to have unpopular opinons. So there.