avie_j's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: War and Suicide
Minor: Antisemitism, Confinement, Sexual content, and Slavery
ariel_is_a_dreamer's review against another edition
slow-paced
1.0
"My song was the only sad note in heaven"
I've never been christian, so I couldn't relate to pretty much anything in the book. I struggled to get through it. Not even Anne Rice's beautiful prose could save this book for me. It just made no sense, dreadfully boring, and reading with non-christian eyes, it looks silly.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Blood, Sexual content, and Death
Minor: Rape and Sexism
arnrockwell's review against another edition
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.0
Let’s talk about the other travesty in the Vampire Chronicles that is worse than the book that came before it: Memnoch the Devil. This is book #5 in the Vampire Chronicles in terms of continuity and publishing order. Story wise, it picks up a while after The Tale of the Body Thief.
Lestat believes he is being followed by the Devil. Like, the Christian Devil. And he is actually very frightened by this possibility. He enlists the help of David Talbot, a character form the previous two books, later Armand as well. There is also a couple of characters introduced that exist to help propel the plot along, or that's the idea, anyway.
The titular Memnoch tracks down Lestat at last and attempts to recruit him in the battle against God. He does this by taking Lestat on a journey through time as he recounts the beginning of creation all the way to present day. Like Lestat, he presents it as an interview-like story, much like some of the other books in the series.
Out of the original 12 books in the Vampire Chronicles, Memnoch the Devil is the only book that I actually did not read at some point before I started this channel. I think I was probably a little disheartened after my original read of The Tale of the Body Thief, and decided to skip it with the intention of coming back to it later. And forgot about it. Now I understand why.
In case you didn’t already figure it out, I really don’t like this book. It somehow managed to be worse that the previous book.
Now, let me be clear that this book is written as well as all the other books that came before. Anne Rice’s writing style still sticks with me and it helped carry me through this book. Which is good, because I felt like reading this book was even MORE pointless than the previous book.
Now, I’m not against religion or theology in any form. I grew up being exposed to that sort of thing quite a bit. I had a parent who sampled Christian and non-denominational religions like customers sample food at a Costco. If this had been probably any other book, I would have been perfectly fine with what was presented here. I will admit it was quite interesting to read what Rice’s personal theology is. It’s a different take, I’ll give her that.
That being said, I’ll repeat what I said in my The Tale of the Body Thief review.
If you are writing a vampire novel, to me that carries a certain degree of expectation. I expect a fair bit of vampire representation, feeding, shenanigans, interactions, lore, et cetera. The reason why I rated this book so low, is there is so little of that in this book. There was just a little near the start and a little near the end. There was a little instance of menstrual blood feeding that I felt was a bit much. Authors will do what they want with their work. I’m not against Rice because she chose to use Lestat to express her thoughts and beliefs. She can believe what she wants. I honestly don’t care either way.
This is a vampire novel in a series about vampires. This book was about as far removed from that as you could get without eliminating the vampires completely.
The other reason for my low rating was… the plot was literally the only thing in the book. By that I mean, everything that occurred in the book was because of the plot. There was not a single story thread or character interaction that wasn’t influenced by the plot in some manner. That’s not always a bad thing. But for me, for this book, that was a bad thing. You take away the plot, the book doesn’t exist at all. It no longer has a reason to exist. Even while reading the book, as well written as it is, I still felt like it was pointless to read.
It didn’t develop Lestat’s character in any way, or any of the other vampire characters, really. The only characters that were developed in some fashion were the characters unique to this book that existed purely to help propel the plot along. That’s it.
And then, when the events are mentioned in other books, from that I’ve read so far, it’s summarized by the characters so you don’t even need to go back to read this book unless that brief summaries somehow manage to hook you into reading it. This entire novel can be summarized into a couple sentences. I mean, I think that shoes how little importance this book holds to the rest of the series. Which kinda counters the point of the references in the first place.
The fact that I just forgot about this book and, even with the references, felt no need to go back and read it… I think that speaks volumes.
My final rating on this book is 1-star. This book has no reason to exists in terms of the overall story of the series from what I’ve read so far. You can quite literally ignore this book and you won’t miss anything.
Lestat believes he is being followed by the Devil. Like, the Christian Devil. And he is actually very frightened by this possibility. He enlists the help of David Talbot, a character form the previous two books, later Armand as well. There is also a couple of characters introduced that exist to help propel the plot along, or that's the idea, anyway.
The titular Memnoch tracks down Lestat at last and attempts to recruit him in the battle against God. He does this by taking Lestat on a journey through time as he recounts the beginning of creation all the way to present day. Like Lestat, he presents it as an interview-like story, much like some of the other books in the series.
Out of the original 12 books in the Vampire Chronicles, Memnoch the Devil is the only book that I actually did not read at some point before I started this channel. I think I was probably a little disheartened after my original read of The Tale of the Body Thief, and decided to skip it with the intention of coming back to it later. And forgot about it. Now I understand why.
In case you didn’t already figure it out, I really don’t like this book. It somehow managed to be worse that the previous book.
Now, let me be clear that this book is written as well as all the other books that came before. Anne Rice’s writing style still sticks with me and it helped carry me through this book. Which is good, because I felt like reading this book was even MORE pointless than the previous book.
Now, I’m not against religion or theology in any form. I grew up being exposed to that sort of thing quite a bit. I had a parent who sampled Christian and non-denominational religions like customers sample food at a Costco. If this had been probably any other book, I would have been perfectly fine with what was presented here. I will admit it was quite interesting to read what Rice’s personal theology is. It’s a different take, I’ll give her that.
That being said, I’ll repeat what I said in my The Tale of the Body Thief review.
If you are writing a vampire novel, to me that carries a certain degree of expectation. I expect a fair bit of vampire representation, feeding, shenanigans, interactions, lore, et cetera. The reason why I rated this book so low, is there is so little of that in this book. There was just a little near the start and a little near the end. There was a little instance of menstrual blood feeding that I felt was a bit much. Authors will do what they want with their work. I’m not against Rice because she chose to use Lestat to express her thoughts and beliefs. She can believe what she wants. I honestly don’t care either way.
This is a vampire novel in a series about vampires. This book was about as far removed from that as you could get without eliminating the vampires completely.
The other reason for my low rating was… the plot was literally the only thing in the book. By that I mean, everything that occurred in the book was because of the plot. There was not a single story thread or character interaction that wasn’t influenced by the plot in some manner. That’s not always a bad thing. But for me, for this book, that was a bad thing. You take away the plot, the book doesn’t exist at all. It no longer has a reason to exist. Even while reading the book, as well written as it is, I still felt like it was pointless to read.
It didn’t develop Lestat’s character in any way, or any of the other vampire characters, really. The only characters that were developed in some fashion were the characters unique to this book that existed purely to help propel the plot along. That’s it.
And then, when the events are mentioned in other books, from that I’ve read so far, it’s summarized by the characters so you don’t even need to go back to read this book unless that brief summaries somehow manage to hook you into reading it. This entire novel can be summarized into a couple sentences. I mean, I think that shoes how little importance this book holds to the rest of the series. Which kinda counters the point of the references in the first place.
The fact that I just forgot about this book and, even with the references, felt no need to go back and read it… I think that speaks volumes.
My final rating on this book is 1-star. This book has no reason to exists in terms of the overall story of the series from what I’ve read so far. You can quite literally ignore this book and you won’t miss anything.
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexual content
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