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The fifth volume of Rice's Vampire Chronicles is one of her most controversial books. The tale begins in New York, where Lestat, the coolest of Rice's vampire heroes, is stalking a big-time cocaine dealer and religious-art smuggler--this guy should get it in the neck. Lestat is also growing fascinated with the dealer's lovely daughter, a TV evangelist who's not a fraud.
Lestat is also being stalked himself, by some shadowy guy who turns out to be Memnoch, the devil, who spirits him away. From here on, the book might have been called Interview with the Devil (by a Vampire). It's a rousing story interrupted by a long debate with the devil. Memnoch isn't the devil as ordinarily conceived: he got the boot from God because he objected to God's heartless indifference to human misery. Memnoch takes Lestat to heaven, hell, and throughout history.
Some readers are appalled by the scene in which Lestat sinks his fangs into the throat of Christ on the cross, but the scene is not a mere shock tactic: Jesus is giving Lestat a bloody taste in order to win him over to God's side, and Rice is dead serious about the battle for his soul. Rice is really doing what she did as a devout young Catholic girl asked to imagine in detail what Christ's suffering felt like--it's just that her imagination ran away with her.
If you like straight-ahead fanged adventure, you'll likely enjoy the first third; if you like Job-like arguments with God, you'll prefer the Memnoch chapters. --Tim Appelo
From Publishers Weekly
Rice has made a career out of humanizing creatures of supernatural horror, and in this fifth book of her Vampire Chronicles she requests sympathy for the Devil. Having survived his near-fatal reacquaintance with human mortality in The Tale of the Body Thief (1992), the world-weary vampire Lestat is recruited by the biblical Devil, Memnoch, to help fight a cruel and negligent God. The bulk of the novel is a retelling of the Creation story from the point of view of the fallen angel, who blames his damnation on his refusal to accept human suffering as part of God's divine plan. Rice grapples valiantly with weighty questions regarding the justification of God's ways to man, but their vast scope overwhelms the novel's human dimensions. God and the Devil periodically put on the flesh of mortals, and too often end up sounding like arguing philosophy majors. Meanwhile, the ever-fascinating Lestat, whose poignant personal crisis of faith is mirrored in Memnoch's travails, becomes a passive observer, dragged along on trips to Heaven and Hell before being returned to Earth to relate what he has witnessed. Though Rice boldly probes the significance of death, belief in the afterlife and other spiritual matters, one wishes that she had found a way to address them through the experiences of human and near-human characters, as she has done so brilliantly in the past. One million first printing; BOMC and QPB main selections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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First Sentence
I SAW HIM when he came through the front doors. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
I SAW HIM when he came through the front doors. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Too emphasized on God,
By
This review is from: Memnoch the Devil (Mass Market Paperback)
I find Anne Rice's book way too descriptive at moments.Usually, I find it takes too long for the story to become interesting. However, when I start liking the story, it lasts until the last page. However, with this book, it was the opposite. It started very good and then it became bad... very bad... I stopped reading it. I was in the middle of the book and nothing was going on... no action... just Lestat talking about God to Memnoch... It was way too religion-oriented for my taste... big disappointment.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thought Provoking,
By AvidRdr (Red Deer, AB Can) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Memnoch the Devil (Mass Market Paperback)
I found this to be Anne Rice's best book. On one hand it is not a typical "horror" story, but then, what greater horror is there than to be considered by the devil an equal? So rare is it to read a book with new ideas on the concept of God, the Devil and man's relationships with them. I was absolutly engrossed by Memnoch's story and Lestat's coming to terms with this new perception good and evil. This is a great book, even for those who have not read any of the other book in the series.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Simply Awful,
By A Customer
This review is from: Memnoch the Devil (Mass Market Paperback)
I have read nearly all of Anne Rice's vampire/witch chronicles and fell in love with the stories. A friend and I trade the books and can't wait to discuss each new twist, however, Memnoch will not be one which we will ever read again. This book was dreadfully wordy and the story was awful. There was nothing about this book which will lead me to read it again. After I finally reached the mid-point of the story I began skimming the paragraphs just to get through. I have never done this with any other Anne Rice book. I cringe whenever anyone asks me what I thought of this book and quickly refer them to The Witching Hour, Blackwood Farm, Blood and Gold, Interview with the Vampire, etc. as those books are where Anne writes a wonderfully absorbing tales. Don't bother with Memnoch. Future stories do refer back to ideas and scences in this book but it is just not worth spending the time to struggle through this book for the minor mentions in other books.
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