Missionary Rice
Whatever happened to Anne Rice? Is she suffering from religious delusions? Still being a fan of her first 3 vampire novels but increasingly disappointed by her last books I had some hope left for her newest offering. The Ricean catholicism (as featured in Bodythief, Memnoch and Armand) it seems, won't go away and is here to stay. Religious images lurk everywhere and smothered the story for me completely. Humor, usually not abundant in Rice's novels but at least glimpsed when Lestat was around, is missing entirely. The description of early Renaissance Florence is nicely done but nowhere near as vivid as New Orleans or Venice. I'm afraid I'll still read her next vampire book but more out of habit than anything else. A bit more irony and less religious zeal would help to change that ...