The Queen of the Damned

Jumping into a novel series from its third volume is probably not the smartest course of action but I did it anyway upon encountering The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice (1941 – 2021) in the local library. The novel does pretty good job at recapping most of the previous events and I have watched the 1994 film adaptation of the first novel, Interview with a Vampire -- albeit many, many years ago -- in which Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt struggle to articulate through their fake vampire teeth.

This third novel also has a film adaptation which I have watched as well -- again too many years ago to truly remember it. The movie contains plot elements from the second novel, The Vampire Lestat, and I do recall a scene of Lestat getting up from a stone coffin after a decades-long sleep. That is indeed a past event in this novel because Lestat has been on his rock star act for a while.

The titular queen, Akasha, was played by Aaliyah who died in a plane crash shortly after filming. Her appearance in the movie is quite striking and you occasionally see cosplayers in the memorable getup.

Akasha and Enkil are considered to be the mother and father of vampires. They are quite mythical in nature because none of the characters around are old enough to have been around when they were active. Even Marius, who keeps the still existing parents in his secret hideout, is only from Roman times -- Akasha and Enkil go thousands of years back even from that, to Ancient Egypt. Now they are petrified in some manner of torpor.

Lestat is bit of a rebellious character. He's openly a vampire in the limelight but the general human public thinks it's just his rock star act. Supernatural is not a thing people believe in anymore. One thing Lestat hopes his rambunctious behavior would cause is for Akasha and Enkil to wake up. In this novel, he gets his wish. It's granted in monkey paw style, however: things suddenly don't look very good for vampires nor humans.

The first half of the novel is told via multiple viewpoints, with no repeats until the second part. Some of the viewpoints don't even survive that far. Older vampires are introduced and eventually the book leads to its main dish lore-wise: the origin of vampires. It's not biblically-inspired like in Vampire: The Masquerade but it's rather obvious that the tabletop RPG was otherwise heavily influenced by this Vampire Chronicles series.

Even though the vampires' abilities in this book don't strictly fit under any VTM clan, most of the characters are extremely Toreador: they are fixated by beauty and art in general. They are also terribly gay, at least in the sense that the male vampires tend to partner up with each other. I'm not sure if they're into having actual sex in their unlife but many of them are about to burst from how unbearably beautiful everyone is.

The film adaptations didn't dwell on the queer aspects of the series but evidently there's a more recent AMC TV adaptation (airing since 2022) that does just that. That's very current day but I think it might clash bit with how back in 1976, when Interview came out, being gay was quite anti-establishment while now it's the opposite. Rice did continue writing the series until 2018 when the 13th novel came out, though, so I guess the novel series has been staying relevant. Anyway...

At least in The Queen of the Damned, there is no organization like VTM's Camarilla to uphold an authoritarian masquerade law but vampires do stick to keeping their existence secret -- apart from Lestat, of course. Humans don't offer much of a threat because the vampires are physically and mentally so strong but I guess they are vulnerable during the day. I didn't get a clear understanding if sunlight actually harms them or if they simply fall asleep.

This is another vampire setting in which vampires -- at least the ones old enough -- are able to fly. That surprised me similarly to when I read a couple of The Southern Vampire Mysteries (aka True Blood novels) by Charlaine Harris. (I apparently chose to forgo writing posts about them.) Film and TV adaptations dropping the ability or replacing it with supernatural speed makes sense: less effort to produce and not as goofy visually.

The vampires' mental powers include telepathy: they are able to read thoughts and sense others. I found it amusing that of all the vampires, Lestat appeared to be particularly bad at it despite being reasonably aged at over 200 years old. He seemed to have a passive ability to keep his own presence hidden but he wasn't able to sense others. Other vampires coming en masse after Lestat surprised him completely. He was so clueless what was going on until Akasha came after him.

I had no clue what Akasha would do after so waking up; it was as unexpected to me as it was to Lestat when the queen announced her plans. I didn't find the final confrontation scene strongly written but I don't know if it's even possible to have good argumentation when one side such madness. And so things were solved with violence.

The novel has poems of Anne Rice's husband, Stan Rice, as epigraphs. I found them terrible but maybe they just hadn't translated very well into Finnish in which I read the book.

I'm not sure if I'll continue reading the series. Maybe if I happen to come by the following novels. They are somewhat randomly available in the libraries here, though. For instance, the 4th one seems to be missing.