Anne Rice lures the reader into her world with velvet and silk, gold and diamonds. Her characters speak in lush, sensuous sentences with moist full lips. In the first half of the book she had the main character, Azriel, telling the story through a dialogue with the narrator, Jonathon, which resulted in too much clunky dialogue. She abandoned this device about half way through, after she had established the history and had Azriel narrate the story himself more directly toward the reader. This allowed the story to flow much more smoothly into the modern day timeline.
SOTB is a ghost story wrapped in a mystery. The spirit named Azriel has been summoned and he doesn't know why. He needs to put together the pieces of a puzzle. He is here to learn and at the same time teach the other characters as much as he can about himself and the world in which they find themselves. Along the way, he makes the reader think: What is a ghost? What is a spirit, an angel? We find out that there are stupid ghosts, and smart ghosts. There are upper echelons of spirits, and even angels, and of course pagan gods. The idea that these forms all inhabit the same realm and intermingle is just glorious, and delicious. If we see a ghost, is it evil or is it good? Or is it just lonely and bored? What if the ghost of Christmas Past could talk to Apollo? What would that conversation be like?
As wonderful as Rice is, sometimes she reaches too far. Passages where she has Azriel explain things about modern times that the reader already knows become encyclopedic and boring. Fortunately, they are few and Rice has sense enough to cut herself off as if to say, but enough about that...let's get back to the story.Occasionally her brush stroke is too broad when it comes to any one religion, or moral, or ethic. It's best when Rice doesn't put too fine a point on it. When she does, it turns into a rant about the government, or ecology, or even humanity itself. And no one really wants to hear that.
I have read Interview With A Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and Queen Of The Damned. Yet nothing prepared me for this...I long for Azriel to tell me where he is and what he has seen since last we met.
