It is a dream that slowly, tauntingly reveals its meaning to the dreamers as they make their way toward each other, some to be destroyed on the journey, some to face an even more terrifying fate at journey’s end.Īkasha, Queen of the Damned, mother of all vampires, rises after a 6,000 year sleep and puts into motion a heinous plan to “save” mankind from itself and make “all myths of the world real” by elevating herself and her chosen son/lover to the level of the gods. The sleep of certain men and women–vampires and mortals scattered around the world–is haunted by a vivid, mysterious dream: twins with fiery red hair and piercing green eyes who suffer an unspeakable tragedy. Among the audience are hundreds of vampires, fiends themselves who hate Lestat’s power and are determined to destroy him. The rock star known as the Vampire Lestat, worshipped by millions of spellbound fans, prepares for a concert in San Francisco. 150,000 first printing: Literary Guild main selection.Publication: October 1989 (originally 1988)

She regains her verve in the final chapter, however, promising yet another mesmerizing installment of the Vampire Chronicles. Though she ingeniously pulls together the various plot strands, Rice then almost loses the reader in philosophic overkill. As Rice gradually reveals the significance of the dream, she also focuses on Jesse, who works for the Telamasca, a secret society that collects data on those with paranormal powers. Meanwhile, vampires and psychic humans around the globe are having the same terrifying dream in which twin red-haired women weep over the body of another woman, whose eyes and brains are on a plate nearby. She immediately begins a wholesale slaughter of most of the world's vampires, sparing only a small remnant (including Lestat) who she expects will join her in a crazed crusade against male mortals. Lestat's kiss has awakened Queen Akasha from her 6000 year sleep. Here Lestat and all other vampires pay the price for his obsessive need for fame, his reckless honesty in describing the ``blood drinkers'' among us, and his frenzied rock concert in San Francisco. As before, Rice tells her story in fine melodramatic style, overwriting with zest and exuberance: the text pulses with menace, mystery and violence, and with sensuality verging on erotica. The cult audience for Rice's two previous vampire novels, Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, will undoubtedly broaden with this third book, which features the same characters and a more complex plot.

The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice