Rice fans probably need not fear a drought of her thirst-quenching tales, then. As for this one, it’s trademark Rice: talky,...
Armand, Seth, Akasha and, of course, Lestat de Lioncourt are back with a vengeance—and, natch, they’re looking to put the bite on someone.
There was a time, not so long ago, when Lestat fans had reason to fear they’d seen the last of their—well, man, maybe, depending on how you define “man.” After an 11-year dry spell since Blood Canticle(2003), though, Rice has resurrected her Vampire Chronicles, picking up where one of the earlier books, The Queen of the Damned(1988), left off. A lot’s happened since that time. For one thing, the vamps have plenty of new technology to play with, with Lestat himself, the rock star manqué, in love with his iPod and with that undead popster Jon Bon Jovi, “playing his songs over and over obsessively.” That adulation is about the most frightening thing in Rice’s latest; it’s not that the novel is without its spine-tingling moments so much as that Rice has prepared the ground too well, with not just her own legacy, but also a legion of lesser imitators (Charlaine Harris, Stephenie Meyer, et al.) competing with her on the sanguinary-moments front. The latest installment finds the vamps at war with themselves, crowded on a planet with plenty of competition, indeed, but with plenty of juicy humans to nibble on: “So rich, so healthy, so filled with exotic flavors, so different from blood in the time he’d been made.” Rice extends the Chronicles even farther into the past, rounding out storylines stretching into ancient Egypt, while reintroducing a large cast of familiars and adding some new characters to the mix. Suffice it to say, first, that the vamps are no longer limiting their recruitment to liberal arts majors, to the poets and singers of yore; suffice it also to say that the busy intergenerational (and inter–planes of existence) conflict that ensues screams out for at least one sequel, if not a string of them.
Rice fans probably need not fear a drought of her thirst-quenching tales, then. As for this one, it’s trademark Rice: talky, inconsequential, but good old-fashioned fanged fun.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-307-96252-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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