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arnrockwell's reviews
109 reviews
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Illustrated with Interactive Elements): & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
I remember back when I was a child and I saw a film based on Lewis Carroll's classic story. No, not Disney's animated adaptation. It's alright but not anywhere near my favourites. I thought the live action film by Tim Burton was okay but again, just alright and not a favourite.
It was a film released in 1988 by Jan Švankmajer, a director from Czechoslovakia. It was released in English as "Alice." The original title was "Něco z Alenky," which translates to "Something from Alice." It's a feature-length film and combined live-action with stop animation. I absolutely adored it and it remains one of my favourite films to this day.
It was after watching that film more recently in the past year or two that I decided I wanted to one day read Lewis Carroll's stories, both of them. I wanted to learn more about the origins of some of my favourite pieces of popular culture. For context, one of my favourite video game series is also based on these stories: American McGee's Alice and its sequel Alice: Madness Returns.
You can imagine how thrilled I was to finally find this gorgeous collection of both tales: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland AND Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. Most of the time, the first story is published alone and everyone seems to forget the second one even exists. As a consequence, there are a lot of elements from the second story that often influence adaptations that I feel people don't know the origin of.
Reading these classic stories has been a treat. Carroll seems to have had a good grasp of imagination, specifically a child's imagination, and how nonsensical it often can be. Not only are both stories quite imaginative and whimsical, but the artwork created by Minalima is beautiful, colourful, and helps to enhance my visualizations. Being a children's book, it also has some pages where there are pop-out elements, which are also well done.
This is my preferred definitive edition of these classic stories. A perfect collection and a must-read.
It was a film released in 1988 by Jan Švankmajer, a director from Czechoslovakia. It was released in English as "Alice." The original title was "Něco z Alenky," which translates to "Something from Alice." It's a feature-length film and combined live-action with stop animation. I absolutely adored it and it remains one of my favourite films to this day.
It was after watching that film more recently in the past year or two that I decided I wanted to one day read Lewis Carroll's stories, both of them. I wanted to learn more about the origins of some of my favourite pieces of popular culture. For context, one of my favourite video game series is also based on these stories: American McGee's Alice and its sequel Alice: Madness Returns.
You can imagine how thrilled I was to finally find this gorgeous collection of both tales: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland AND Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. Most of the time, the first story is published alone and everyone seems to forget the second one even exists. As a consequence, there are a lot of elements from the second story that often influence adaptations that I feel people don't know the origin of.
Reading these classic stories has been a treat. Carroll seems to have had a good grasp of imagination, specifically a child's imagination, and how nonsensical it often can be. Not only are both stories quite imaginative and whimsical, but the artwork created by Minalima is beautiful, colourful, and helps to enhance my visualizations. Being a children's book, it also has some pages where there are pop-out elements, which are also well done.
This is my preferred definitive edition of these classic stories. A perfect collection and a must-read.
Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice
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
The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Let it be known that I can indeed to critical of Anne Rice's books, and not completely blinded by nostalgia. And boy, do I have some words on this one.
The Tale of the Body Thief, the fourth book in the Vampire Chronicles... definitely suffers from middle book syndrome, among other things.
This book picks up after the events of The Queen of the Damned. The vampires who came together to fight Akasha in the previous book have all gone their separate ways.It's a thing for Rice's vampires to becomes sick of the presence of others of their kind and wander the world alone. Lestat has taken to prowling Miami, Florida.
He also travels to England in order to interact with David Talbot. Talbot was introduced in the previous book as a high-ranking member of the Talamasca, a human organization that studies the paranormal. He has basically become Lestat's new fascination, and Lestat really wants to turn him into a vampire.
Now, Lestat is also being watched by a strange man who claims he can switch bodies with people and offers Lestat the chance to live life as a human again. This is obviously a bad idea. The majority of this book is Lestat being an idiot and proving he didn't really learn anything from his time with Akasha at all.
The whole body-switching thing is an interesting concept, but it felt out of place in this book. It seemed like just an excuse to throw Lestat in a human body just so Rice could write a few quick sex scenes. One of which was a rape, by the way.
It’s so incredibly convenient that a couple of women decide to they want to screw Lestat’s young mortal body when they see him. Because he’s hot and charming, or whatever. Look, I know one night stands happen all the time in real life. But this felt forced. Sex for because why not? The vampire don’t do it, so gotta throw it in there somewhere. Only the second one was justified and even that’s kinda shaky.
The second woman he has sex with also happened to be a nun, temporarily taking time off, because she wanted to find someone she felt right in fucking so she wouldn’t die without knowing what it was like. And of course Lestat happens to meet her at a hospital while he’s recovering from severe illness. How convenient. That nun was also in the book for another convenience: theological discussions.
For context, this book and the one that came after, were written during a time when Anne Rice was becoming a hardcore Catholic and she used Lestat as her tool for expressing her beliefs. In general, I’m not against that sort of thing. Authors can do what they want. But with most of the other things that happened in this book, it felt like it was a bit too much.
Then there’s the fact that Lestat knew this whole body switch thing was a bad idea, of course. Louis told him it was bad idea. David told him it was a bad idea. But Lestat was so blinded by his desire to live like a human again, that he didn’t care and went through with it anyway, only to get screwed over, forcing him to seek help to get his body back.
He learned really quickly that he over-romanticized human existence in his head, even his own from way back when, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Which is pretty much the only thing he learns over the course of the book.
Another problem I had was… the lack of vampire stuff going on in general. When I read a vampire novel, I expect there to be a certain amount of vampire shenanigans. Even, and especially, if the protagonist is a vampire or heavily involved with them. But there’s not a whole lot of that in this book.
If you were to completely remove the whole “body thief” plot, there’s not a lot left over. Sure, there’s still a few parts where Lestat and David have some interaction that’s not dependent on the plot, but that’s it. There’s no other subplots or characters that he interacts with for any reason outside of what the plot dictates. Now that’s not a big deal if you like the book, of course. Then that’s fine. And it’s not a badly written book. It’s written about as well as her other stuff really. But I felt like the book had almost no reason to exist. Lestat is almost the exact same person at the end that he was at the beginning, and I did not want to waste my time time reading over 400 pages to find this out.
I cannot rate this book any higher than 2-stars. If I wasn’t used to Rice’s writing style, honestly, I don’t think I would’ve finished it.
The Tale of the Body Thief, the fourth book in the Vampire Chronicles... definitely suffers from middle book syndrome, among other things.
This book picks up after the events of The Queen of the Damned. The vampires who came together to fight Akasha in the previous book have all gone their separate ways.It's a thing for Rice's vampires to becomes sick of the presence of others of their kind and wander the world alone. Lestat has taken to prowling Miami, Florida.
He also travels to England in order to interact with David Talbot. Talbot was introduced in the previous book as a high-ranking member of the Talamasca, a human organization that studies the paranormal. He has basically become Lestat's new fascination, and Lestat really wants to turn him into a vampire.
Now, Lestat is also being watched by a strange man who claims he can switch bodies with people and offers Lestat the chance to live life as a human again. This is obviously a bad idea. The majority of this book is Lestat being an idiot and proving he didn't really learn anything from his time with Akasha at all.
The whole body-switching thing is an interesting concept, but it felt out of place in this book. It seemed like just an excuse to throw Lestat in a human body just so Rice could write a few quick sex scenes. One of which was a rape, by the way.
It’s so incredibly convenient that a couple of women decide to they want to screw Lestat’s young mortal body when they see him. Because he’s hot and charming, or whatever. Look, I know one night stands happen all the time in real life. But this felt forced. Sex for because why not? The vampire don’t do it, so gotta throw it in there somewhere. Only the second one was justified and even that’s kinda shaky.
The second woman he has sex with also happened to be a nun, temporarily taking time off, because she wanted to find someone she felt right in fucking so she wouldn’t die without knowing what it was like. And of course Lestat happens to meet her at a hospital while he’s recovering from severe illness. How convenient. That nun was also in the book for another convenience: theological discussions.
For context, this book and the one that came after, were written during a time when Anne Rice was becoming a hardcore Catholic and she used Lestat as her tool for expressing her beliefs. In general, I’m not against that sort of thing. Authors can do what they want. But with most of the other things that happened in this book, it felt like it was a bit too much.
Then there’s the fact that Lestat knew this whole body switch thing was a bad idea, of course. Louis told him it was bad idea. David told him it was a bad idea. But Lestat was so blinded by his desire to live like a human again, that he didn’t care and went through with it anyway, only to get screwed over, forcing him to seek help to get his body back.
He learned really quickly that he over-romanticized human existence in his head, even his own from way back when, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Which is pretty much the only thing he learns over the course of the book.
Another problem I had was… the lack of vampire stuff going on in general. When I read a vampire novel, I expect there to be a certain amount of vampire shenanigans. Even, and especially, if the protagonist is a vampire or heavily involved with them. But there’s not a whole lot of that in this book.
If you were to completely remove the whole “body thief” plot, there’s not a lot left over. Sure, there’s still a few parts where Lestat and David have some interaction that’s not dependent on the plot, but that’s it. There’s no other subplots or characters that he interacts with for any reason outside of what the plot dictates. Now that’s not a big deal if you like the book, of course. Then that’s fine. And it’s not a badly written book. It’s written about as well as her other stuff really. But I felt like the book had almost no reason to exist. Lestat is almost the exact same person at the end that he was at the beginning, and I did not want to waste my time time reading over 400 pages to find this out.
I cannot rate this book any higher than 2-stars. If I wasn’t used to Rice’s writing style, honestly, I don’t think I would’ve finished it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape, Sexual content
Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Lestat de Lioncourt is a famous rock star in the 1980s and he is having his first concert. His music attracts both human admirers and vampire threats. It also has the unfortunate effect of coaxing Akasha, the mother of all vampires, from her millenia-long slumber. She proceeds to kill all the vampires targeting Lestat, and abducts him. What follows is a race against time to somehow stop her before she raises hell of earth.
The Queen of the Damned takes place directly following The Vampire Lestat. While the events of the novel take place over a short span of time, much of the book is focused on developing multiple characters, old and new.
Two characters that have only been mentioned by name in the previous book are formally introduced to us: Pandora and Khayman. Pandora herself is a child and former lover of Marius, while Khayman was part of the "First Brood," a vampire about as old as the Queen herself.
Some new character were introduced that actually matter: the red-haired Twins, whose backstory is closely interwoven with Akasha and the creation of vampires; Jesse, a witch and investigator of the supernatural; and David Talbot, the leader of the organization known as Talamasca, who have kept an eye of all things supernatural for centuries.
And of course, aside from Lestat, several characters from prior books have made their return. Most notably Louis, Armand, Gabrielle, Marius, Mael, and "the boy" from Interview with the Vampire, who is introduced to us as Daniel Malloy.
Lestat's abduction by Akasha starts as something magical and wondrous. He only has eyes for her and believes a dream has come true. She feeds him much of her blood, allowing him to gain greater strength and new powers. However, the longer he spends time with her, the more he realizes not only her incredible power but also her ambition. She believes all men to be evil and seeks to create a world where women rule, believing this would bring an end to war. She starts killing men in a few locations around the world, and fashioning herself as a mother goddess to be worshiped. Lestat, knowing she has the power to kill him any time, becomes fearful of her.
A large chunk of the novel is setting groundwork for the history of the vampires and how they were created. This is important, as it is connected to the history of Akasha and the Twins. However, as it also described some detail that either is repeated or dragged out a bit too long. I can understand why some readers think of the book as slow. The battle at the end is also short, but that is be expected considering Akasha's power. However, that didn't bother me near as much as the one thing that prevented me from rating this book 4-stars.
Very early on in the novel, there is a chapter concerning a character, a young vampire, who only exists for this chapter and nothing else. This chapter doesn't bring anything new to the story and felt like unnecessary padding. If this chapter was all there was, I could've forgotten about it and moved on. HOWEVER, the character from this chapter is mentioned not once but four times throughout the rest of the book. It is said that Akasha made Lestat see what happened to this character, but when asked why she says to simply "forget about it." Why would you show Lestat and the readers this character if it's ultimately unimportant? Every mention of this character felt shoehorned in to justify the chapter's existence and it aggravated me so much!
Overall, this novel is a good addition to The Vampire Chronicles. Not as good as The Vampire Lestat, which I feel would be difficult to top. Still it imparts some much needed history and backstory that answers a lot of questions. An enjoyable 3-star book.
The Queen of the Damned takes place directly following The Vampire Lestat. While the events of the novel take place over a short span of time, much of the book is focused on developing multiple characters, old and new.
Two characters that have only been mentioned by name in the previous book are formally introduced to us: Pandora and Khayman. Pandora herself is a child and former lover of Marius, while Khayman was part of the "First Brood," a vampire about as old as the Queen herself.
Some new character were introduced that actually matter: the red-haired Twins, whose backstory is closely interwoven with Akasha and the creation of vampires; Jesse, a witch and investigator of the supernatural; and David Talbot, the leader of the organization known as Talamasca, who have kept an eye of all things supernatural for centuries.
And of course, aside from Lestat, several characters from prior books have made their return. Most notably Louis, Armand, Gabrielle, Marius, Mael, and "the boy" from Interview with the Vampire, who is introduced to us as Daniel Malloy.
Lestat's abduction by Akasha starts as something magical and wondrous. He only has eyes for her and believes a dream has come true. She feeds him much of her blood, allowing him to gain greater strength and new powers. However, the longer he spends time with her, the more he realizes not only her incredible power but also her ambition. She believes all men to be evil and seeks to create a world where women rule, believing this would bring an end to war. She starts killing men in a few locations around the world, and fashioning herself as a mother goddess to be worshiped. Lestat, knowing she has the power to kill him any time, becomes fearful of her.
A large chunk of the novel is setting groundwork for the history of the vampires and how they were created. This is important, as it is connected to the history of Akasha and the Twins. However, as it also described some detail that either is repeated or dragged out a bit too long. I can understand why some readers think of the book as slow. The battle at the end is also short, but that is be expected considering Akasha's power. However, that didn't bother me near as much as the one thing that prevented me from rating this book 4-stars.
Very early on in the novel, there is a chapter concerning a character, a young vampire, who only exists for this chapter and nothing else. This chapter doesn't bring anything new to the story and felt like unnecessary padding. If this chapter was all there was, I could've forgotten about it and moved on. HOWEVER, the character from this chapter is mentioned not once but four times throughout the rest of the book. It is said that Akasha made Lestat see what happened to this character, but when asked why she says to simply "forget about it." Why would you show Lestat and the readers this character if it's ultimately unimportant? Every mention of this character felt shoehorned in to justify the chapter's existence and it aggravated me so much!
Overall, this novel is a good addition to The Vampire Chronicles. Not as good as The Vampire Lestat, which I feel would be difficult to top. Still it imparts some much needed history and backstory that answers a lot of questions. An enjoyable 3-star book.