2016 Anne Rice Challenge - My Challenge Goals

This is my sign-up post for the 2016 Anne Rice Challenge. If you want to join the challenge, sign up here!

I'm signing up for this challenge at the level of Lestat de Lioncourt, which means I want to read 6 to 10 Anne Rice books. I currently own 10 of her books that I haven't read yet, so I plan to keep reading those in publishing order and see how many of them I can fit into 2016. These are the 10 books I have (though it's unlikely I'll get to all 10 of them):

• Servant of the Bones
• Violin
• Pandora (New Tales of the Vampires #1)
• Vittorio the Vampire (New Tales of the Vampires #2)
• Merrick (The Vampire Chronicles #7)
• Blood and Gold (The Vampire Chronicles #8)
• Blackwood Farm (The Vampire Chronicles #9)
• Blood Canticle (The Vampire Chronicles #10)
• Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
• Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana

2016 Anne Rice Challenge - Sign Up Post

Copy the code below to add the challenge badge to your blog!

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It's back!!! In 2012 and 2013 I ran the Anne Rice Reading Challenge, but then I went back to school and haven't had time to set it up since. I'm still in school, but I missed it so much I decided to bring it back anyway! The challenge is simple: read Anne Rice books! Set a goal for how many you want to read, and then go for it.

Rules:

• Ebooks and audiobooks count.
• Rereads and crossovers with other challenges are likewise just fine.
• You can change your level at any time.
• The challenge goes from January 1 to December 31, 2016.
• If you read, for example, the edition that has the first 3 Vampire Chronicles books together in one volume, that still counts as 3. We're going by how the books were originally published.
• All books written by Anne Rice count, including those written under a pseudonym.
• You can sign up at any time from now until November 30, 2016.

Levels:

• Louis de Pointe du Lac (1 to 5 books)
• Lestat de Lioncourt (6 to 10 books)
• Armand (11 to 15 books)
• Marius de Romanus (16 to 20 books)
• Maharet (21 to 25 books)
• Akasha (26 or more books)

(Because I've been asked in the past, I'll just clarify that these levels are indeed named according to the ages of various vampires, and are in no way meant to indicate my preference for them or anything like that.)

To sign up, please leave a comment on this post and include a link to your sign up post (not just the main page of your blog). If you're not a blogger, feel free to link to your Goodreads profile or wherever you'll post about the challenge. I'll edit this post with the list of participants. Once the challenge starts I'll make a post with a review link-up.

Participants

1. Lianne @ The Towering Pile
2. Carol @ Open Page

Taltos by Anne Rice

Title: Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)
Author: Anne Rice
Publication Date: 1994
Length: 556 pages

Warning: This is a review of the third book in the series, and therefore contains spoilers of the first two books.

This book had so much going on, it's difficult to write a plot summary. (Admittedly, I'm writing this review many months after reading the book, so that doesn't help.) Along with continuing story lines from The Witching Hour and Lasher, new ones are introduced. A new major character is Ashlar, who is a Taltos (like Lasher) and has been living amongst humans. This is an interesting turn of events, because it shows that the Taltos are not all crazy adult-sized babies like Lasher. Ashlar, while still odd, is also kind, and perfectly capable of blending in with humans in spite of his strange appearance.

In this book, we also get the history of the Taltos as told by Ashlar, which was really interesting, as well as the continuing antics of Mona, who I know is kinda messed up but I can't seem to help adoring her. There's also more about the Talamasca, which thrilled me. Honestly I'd love a whole series centred around the Talamasca!

Taltos had its ups and downs for me, mostly because it was pretty long (the number of pages is deceptive as Anne Rice books tend to have tiny type) and had so many plot lines going on at once, some more interesting than others. But enough of the story lines were interesting that I do recommend finishing off the trilogy if you've read and enjoyed the first two books.

As a sidenote, this series is great fun if, like me, you're a genealogist. I actually have the (incomplete) Mayfair family tree on my computer.

4 stars.

Lasher by Anne Rice

Title: Lasher
Author: Anne Rice
Publication Date: 1993
Length: 628

Warning: This is a review of the second book in the series, and may contain spoilers from the first book, The Witching Hour.

Rowan has run off with Lasher, and is now travelling the world with him. Apparently she has stayed with him because her scientific curiosity would not allow her to let him go (which, in my opinion, is straight up crazy). Somewhere along the way, she becomes his prisoner, and he continually tries to impregnate her, leading to multiple miscarriages. Meanwhile, Michael is looking for her, and the Mayfairs are dealing with the women in the family dying of miscarriages.

Later on in the book, Lasher tells his story, and we finally learn more about who he was before he became "the man" to the Mayfairs. It's strange, because Lasher often seems like a sympathetic character when he's telling his story, which is so at odds with his thoughtless cruelty in the present.

I know so many people who loved The Witching Hour and didn't like this book, which I just don't understand! I actually liked this one even better than the first. I especially like Mona Mayfair. I think most people don't like her because she's a young teenager who goes around having sex with older men. But as disturbing as that is, Mona's such a powerful character that I can't help but love her. She has the potential to be a very powerful witch, since she has more Mayfair blood than almost anyone else, thanks to the horrifying degree of incest in her family. (This book actually made me realise I need a family tree to understand the Mayfairs, which I have started creating on my computer, much like Mona did.) But Mona's also powerful in the more mundane ways. Despite her young age, she knows exactly what she wants and isn't afraid to go get it.

This is another one of those epic Anne Rice books. There's so much going on, I can't do justice to it all. You also get to learn a lot more about Julien Mayfair in this book. Lasher is a great continuation to The Witching Hour, and I can't wait to read the conclusion in Taltos.

5 stars.

2013 Anne Rice Challenge: Reviews

The 2013 Anne Rice Challenge started on January 1, 2013, and continues until December 31, 2013. If you haven't signed up for the challenge yet, you can still sign up any time before the end of November.

This is where you can link to your reviews. The inlinkz will be open until the end of January 2014, so you'll have plenty of time to get all your reviews in. (For any fast readers who have already reviewed a book for this challenge, I'm sorry this post wasn't up sooner!)

For your name in the Inlinkz, please put your name, and then in brackets put the name of the book you're reviewing. Eg. Lianne (Lasher). That way it'll be easy for everyone to read reviews of a particular book. :)

Enjoy the challenge, everyone! I look forward to reading everyone's reviews!

2012 Anne Rice Challenge Wrap-Up

Well, I didn't read nearly as many Anne Rice books as I planned to in 2012, but I still consider this challenge a success. My initial goal was based on drastically underestimating how big her books are, and how quickly I burn out if I read a lot of books of that size and density.

I ended up reading 7 Anne Rice books: the first 5 Vampire Chronicles, which were all rereads, as well as The Mummy and The Witching Hour, which were new for me.

If you read books for this challenge, don't forget to link up your reviews so the rest of us can check them out! The linky will be open until Jan. 31, 2013. And if you wrote a wrap-up post, feel free to link to it in the comments.

I hope you'll join me again (or for the first time) for the 2013 Anne Rice Challenge!

The Witching Hour by Anne Rice

Title: The Witching Hour
Author: Anne Rice
Publication Date: 1990
Length: 1038 pages

The Witching Hour is a tough book to summarise, because there's just so much going on! It's really, really long, and just packed with plot. We have Michael, an architect originally from new Orleans, who lives in California. He falls into the ocean and drowns, and when he's revived, he has the power to see things when he touches objects with his hands. Then there's Rowan Mayfair, designated at birth as the eventual beneficiary of the enormous legacy of her old, New Orleans family, but adopted at birth by cousins and raised in California with no knowledge of her history.

And then of course, almost every significant Mayfair has a part in the story. A huge chunk of the book is the file compiled by the Talamasca on the history of the Mayfair witches. As Michael reads this, we get to, too. (It took me considerably longer than the two days it took Michael to read it!) It was great to be able to get so much back story; I've never read a book with so much backstory! However, it was very hard to keep straight. I recommend drawing a family tree as you go. I wish I had! It would be very tangled looking, though, because of all the incest. So much incest!

Whichever Mayfair inherits the legacy also inherits a mysterious being known as Lasher. Lasher's motives are not clear through most of the book. Most seem to agree that he's bad, or at least only cares about his own ends, whatever they may be. But several of the Mayfair witches did seem to have close relationships with him. We don't see him firsthand until he comes to Rowan, at which point it becomes pretty clear that Lasher is bad, though apparently it's not clear to Rowan.

I loved the way the different characters' stories interweaved (specifically Michael, Rowan, and Aaron). I also got very attached to each character. I was totally invested in the romance between Michael and Rowan, and my emotions were very tied up with theirs. So, the ending, which was quite shocking, was painful to read (in the good way, because I was so involved, not because it wasn't good). Rowan's actions near the end of the book seem kind of out of character, so it was very surprising, but I've heard that the second book reveals things which make her actions make more sense, so hopefully soon, when I read Lasher, things will come together!

I feel like I haven't done this book justice with this review. It's just a really hard book to adequately describe because it's so big and there's so much going on. But it's Anne Rice at her best. The characters are so well-developed, and the setting, as always, is so real it's like you're really there. (Seriously, because of Anne Rice I feel like I've been to New Orleans, and walked the streets of the Garden District, despite never having been there.)

4 stars.

This book counts towards the Read Your OWN Library! Challenge (hosted by The Beauty of Eclecticism) for September. For October, my book for the challenge was The Capture (Animorphs #6) by K.A. Applegate. (Which is not that interesting now, month's after the fact; it took me a while to finish this book and write the review!) This book also counts for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge and the 2012 Anne Rice Challenge, and is one of my longest books.

2013 Anne Rice Challenge

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Update: Post your reviews here.

Since I vastly underestimated the amount of time it takes to read Anne Rice novels, I still have a lot left to read after the 2012 Anne Rice Challenge. So I've decided to host the challenge again!

Join me in one of several levels, according to how many Anne Rice books you plan to read in 2013.

Rules:

• Ebooks are fine. Audiobooks are fine as long as they are the unabridged versions.
• Rereads and crossovers with other challenges are fine.
• You can change your level at any time.
• The challenge goes from January 1st to December 31st, 2013.
• If you read, for example, the edition that has the first 3 Vampire Chronicles books together in one volume, that still counts as 3. We're going by how the books were originally published.
• All books written by Anne Rice count, not just the Vampire Chronicles, including those written under a pseudonym.
• You can sign up any time from now until November 30, 2013.

Levels:

• Louis de Pointe du Lac (1 to 5 books)
• Lestat de Lioncourt (6 to 10 books)
• Armand (11 to 15 books)
• Marius de Romanus (16 to 20 books)
• Maharet (21 to 25)
• Akasha (26 to 30)

I'm aiming for the Armand level this year. I have 13 Anne Rice books left to read, and I'm going to read as many of them as possible. I finished most of my rereads and a few new ones in 2012. The only reread I have left is The Vampire Armand. The books I plan to read are as follows:

• Lasher
• Taltos
• Servant of the Bones
• Violin
• The Vampire Armand
• Pandora
• Vittorio the Vampire
• Merrick
• Blood and Gold
• Blackwood Farm
• Blood Canticle
• Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
• Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana

Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice

Title: Memnoch the Devil
Author: Anne Rice
Publication Date: 1995 (audiobook: 2000)
Length:

Memnoch the Devil is much different from the earlier Vampire Chronicles, especially the first three. Its events take place entirely in the present. In this one, Lestat starts by telling us about this man he's hunting. He's taken to choosing a victim and then stalking him for months before killing him. This time he's picked a high up drug dealer who collects religious artwork. He's also become rather attached to the victim's daughter, a tv evangelist. The second half of the book covers a more-or-less unrelated story, as Memnoch, the devil, takes Lestat on a tour of heaven, Earth, and hell, while trying to convince Lestat to be his lieutenant.

This book basically gets rid of all the aspects of the Vampire Chronicles that I like, and emphasises all the ones I don't like. In other words, all the interesting characters (other than Lestat himself) have only minor roles, and there's an unbearable amount of philosophising. A good chunk of the book is just telling the history of how Memnoch went from being one of God's angels to being his adversary (though he still works for him, so it's kind of complicated). Essentially, this book is boring, because it has none of the spark of the earlier books. I want Louis's whining, and Marius's wisdom, and heck, even Armand's... whatever it is that Armand has! And I want Lestat to be the brat prince! I don't want to read about Lestat going on a grand tour and occasionally weeping.

As for the audiobook, after the previous ones read by the incomparable Frank Muller, this one was rather painful. It was read by a man with a dull voice, who couldn't do a proper English accent, and who made all the voices sound more-or-less the same. So if you are going to read this one, I recommend reading it with your eyes.

2 stars.

This book counts for the 2012 Anne Rice Challenge.

The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice

Title: The Tale of the Body Thief
Author: Anne Rice
Publication Date: 1992 (audiobook: 1994)
Length: 19:15 (audiobook)

The Tale of the Body Thief is the fourth book in the Vampire Chronicles, and the third one "written" by Lestat. He tells the story of his experience with a man named Raglan James, a body thief, who offers Lestat a chance to temporarily switch bodies, allowing him to regain his lost humanity, see the sun, etc. You're probably thinking that this was a stupid idea for Lestat to buy into, as there are no shortage of things that could go wrong. You're right, of course, but Lestat's not all that bright when his mind is clouded by temptation.

This was the first time in my foray into audiobooks (which have all been the Vampire Chronicles) that I've actually enjoyed the audiobook more than the original book. Maybe it's just because Frank Muller is wonderful (as I've described in my reviews of the previous books), and my appreciation for him seems to grow with each book I listen to. Or maybe it's because I never liked this book as much as the previous ones in the first place. Certainly I still found myself getting a headache from rolling my eyes so much as Lestat makes stupid mistake after stupid mistake, but I still can't help but love the brat prince, and Frank Muller has really given him a whole new dimension for me that makes me love him even more.

4 stars.

This book counts for the 2012 Anne Rice Challenge.

The Mummy by Anne Rice

Title: The Mummy or Ramses the Damned
Author: Anne Rice
Publication Date:
Length: 416 pages

Anne Rice's tale of The Mummy is very different from any other version I've seen. Nowhere in this book will you find a dead body, raised by a curse, walking slowly and clumsily towards people who scream, rather that simply walking quickly away. Instead, Ramses the Damned is a charming, sexy man, who took an elixir that made him immortal. After having himself wrapped like a mummy and sleeping in a burial chamber for several thousand years, he awakens when exposed to the sun by an English Egyptologist.

I'd almost describe The Mummy as a romance novel rather than the horror story I expected. It's a love story between Julie Stratford (the daughter of the Egyptologist) and Ramses, and between Ramses and his long-dead love, Cleopatra. Oh Ramses, such a ladies' man.

Of course, this story also examines the idea of immortality, which I always enjoy. In this case, immortality is especially terrifying, as it's not the you-could-die-in-a-fire-or-the-light-of-the-sun kind of immortality, or the you'll-live-forever-as-long-as-you-keep-drinking-this kind. It's the kind where you could sink to the bottom of the ocean and have no choice but to just keep on living. Theoretically, the sun could explode, and bits of your body could just float through space forever, still feeling. *shudders* Anywho.

4 stars. A good Anne Rice novel.

This book counts towards the Read Your OWN Library! Challenge (hosted by The Beauty of Eclecticism) for May (again, a little delayed in posting). For June, my book for the challenge will be The Visitor (Animorphs #2) by K.A. Applegate. This book also counts for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge and the 2012 Anne Rice Challenge.

2012 Anne Rice Challenge: Reviews

The time has come! The 2012 Anne Rice Challenge begins today, and continues until December 31, 2012. If you haven't signed up for the challenge yet, you can still sign up any time before the end of November.

This is where you can link to your reviews. The inlinkz will be open until the end of January 2013, so you'll have plenty of time to get all your reviews in.

Personally, I'll be starting with a re-read of Interview With the Vampire. I hope everyone's looking forward to some great contemporary gothic fiction! Or some Christian fiction, or some erotica, depending on which books you've picked out for the challenge. :) Good luck everyone!

Update: I've had an idea! For your name in the Inlinkz, put your name, and then in brackets put the name of the book you're reviewing. That way it'll be easy for everyone to read reviews of a particular book. :)

Sign up: The 2012 Anne Rice Challenge!

 

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Update: Post your reviews here!

I've been trying to read all the Anne Rice books for awhile now, but I always read a few and then move on to something else, simply because the books are kind of long and I have trouble committing to so much pre-determined reading. But 2012 will be the year.

Join me in one of several levels, according to how many Anne Rice books you plan to read in 2012.

Rules:

• Ebooks are fine. Audiobooks are fine as long as they are the unabridged versions.
• Rereads and crossovers with other challenges are fine.
• You can change your level at any time.
• The challenge goes from January 1st to December 31st, 2012.
• If you read, for example, the edition that has the first 3 Vampire Chronicles books together in one volume, that still counts as 3. We're going by how the books were originally published.
• All books written by Anne Rice count, not just the Vampire Chronicles, including those written under a pseudonym.
• You can sign up any time from now until November 30, 2012.

Levels:

• Louis de Pointe du Lac (1 to 5 books)
• Lestat de Lioncourt (6 to 10 books)
• Armand (11 to 15 books)
• Marius de Romanus (16 to 20 books)
• Maharet (21 to 25)
• Akasha (26 to 30)

I plan to participate at the level of Marius de Romanus, as I currently have 20 Anne Rice books I plan to read. I may jump up to Maharet if I get the few recent books of hers I'm missing. I've read 8 of her books in the past, including the first 6 Vampire Chronicles books and her first 2 standalones. I'll be rereading the Vampire Chronicles to refresh my memory for the later books in the series, but won't be rereading the standalones. I'm even going to give her religious books a try. I will not, however, be reading her erotica, or her autobiography. Therefore, the books I hope to read are as follows (as I write the reviews I'll link to them here):

• Interview With the Vampire
• The Vampire Lestat
• Queen of the Damned
• The Mummy
• The Witching Hour
• The Tale of the Body Thief
• Lasher
• Taltos
• Memnoch the Devil
• Servant of the Bones
• Violin
• The Vampire Armand
• Pandora
• Vittorio the Vampire
• Merrick
• Blood and Gold
• Blackwood Farm
• Blood Canticle
• Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
• Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana