About the Author

Anne Rice is the author of the celebrated series of gothic novels featuring the vampire Lestat. As Anne Rampling and A.N. Roquelaure she is one of the best contemporary writers of erotic fiction.Previous Books: The Queen of the Damned, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty , Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat

Reviews

'By filtering staple mythic conventions through her own gothic sensibility, Anne Rice is able to create an entertaining legend of her own' - NEW YORK TIMES'The text pulses with menace, mystery and violence, and with sensuality verging on erotica' - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY'Imaginative . . . intelligently written . . . This is popular fiction of the highest order' USA TODAY

'By filtering staple mythic conventions through her own gothic sensibility, Anne Rice is able to create an entertaining legend of her own' - NEW YORK TIMES'The text pulses with menace, mystery and violence, and with sensuality verging on erotica' - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY'Imaginative . . . intelligently written . . . This is popular fiction of the highest order' USA TODAY

Relating Queen Vampire Akasha's scheme to subjugate the world by murdering almost all mena scheme opposed by the other remaining vampiresthis book neatly concludes the story begun in The Vampire Lestat ( LJ 10/1/85) and lays the groundwork for the next volume in the ``Chronicles of the Vampires.'' Don't let the title or the subject matter fool you; this is quality fiction written with care and intelligence. There are no false steps or wasted words in the multilayered plot, and the many characters each have a distinct voice. It's not absolutely necessary to have read the other ``Chronicles'' to understand this one, but it would add greatly to the richness of the whole. Rice is doing for the vampire genre what Dashiell Hammett did for that of the private detectiveraising it from the dregs of the penny dreadful to the heights of A fiction. Michael Rogers, ``Library Journal''