Rise and Fall

By: Jefferson Cruz
email: jeff.scribbles@gmail.com

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In Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice’s third book in her Vampire Chronicles, Akasha awakes from her 6,000 years of slumber to save humanity by annihilating the cause of all chaos and misery – males. But before she carries out this carnage, she has to capture the vampire Lestat whose rock music awoke her from millennia of sleep. Together, the consort and the queen flew around the globe and used women as killing machines. To execute her plan to rule the world, Akasha, the mother of all vampires, has to obliterate her offspring who dispute her megalomania. With this, the battle between Akasha and her ultimate nemeses – the red haired twin witches Maharet and Mekare – comes to a heart-racing end.

Although Queen of the Damned is a mélange of stories before and after Akasha has risen from deep sleep, the characters become part of the chain in the final chapters revealing their history and what could destroy them all.

An atheist when she wrote this novel, Rice richly interspersed the plot with the occult, history, philosophy, and eroticism with the absence of sex. She had created powerful vampires that can set off Stephenie Meyer’s Edward Cullen to burst into flames with just a lift of an eyebrow.

Released in 1988, the novel brings the readers to places like the 18th century Paris, the pre-pyramid Egypt, The Himalayas, and the present day Miami. Rice’s writing is sensual, mesmerizing, and lyrical. And glorious is the word that sums it all.

Published in Zee Lifestyle December-January 2011