Memnoch the Devil (Vampire Chronicles, Book 5)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In Anne Rice's extraordinary novel, the Vampire Lestat—outsides, canny monster, hero-wanderer—is at last offered the chance to be redeemed.He is brought into direct confrontation with both God and the Devil, and into the land of Death.We are in New York. The city is blanketed in snow. Through the whiteness Lestat is searching for Dora, the beautiful and charismatic daughter of a drug lord, the woman who arouses Lestat's tenderness as no mortal ever has.While torn between his vampire passions and his overwhelming love for Dora, Lestat is confronted by the most dangerous of adversaries he has yet known.He is snatched from the world itself by the mysterious Memnoch, who claims to be the Devil. He is invited to be a witness at the Creation. He is taken like the ancient prophets into the heavenly realm and is ushered into Purgatory.He must decide if he can believe in the Devil or in God. And finally, he must decide which, if either, he will serve.In the first four Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summoned up for us worlds that are fantastic and distant, making them as resonant, real, and immediate as our own. In this, her most daring and darkest novel, she takes us, with Lestat, into the mythical world that is most important to us--into the realms of our own theology.

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.

From Library Journal

In this fifth book in the series, Rice brings the Vampire Lestat face to face with both God and the Devil. What can she possibly do for an encore? Rice is usually published in the fall to coincide with Halloween, but the publisher has just bumped this title to July in order to tap the huge summer reading crowd.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Any book by Rice is a hot commodity, especially in the wake of the movie version of Interview with the Vampire, but even so, a million copy print run for her latest, the fifth in the cultishly beloved Vampire Chronicle series, seems extreme. Rice has brought her suave and deadly hero, the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, back to center stage at a tricky conjuncture in his long, monstrous life: the murderously powerful and seductive immortal is being stalked by some terrifying force he can't identify. This is interfering with his plans to kill Roger, a handsome drug dealer whose passion for religious art is only exceeded by his love for his daughter Dora, a lithesome televangalist. As Lestat spies on Roger, falls in love with Dora, and tries to figure out who or what is after him, he finds himself in the grip of a spiritual crisis. Yes, this dandyish bloodsucker wants desperately to discover the meaning of life, and, lo and behold, his stalker, Memnoch, the Devil himself, is just the creature to guide him. Memnoch claims that God is merciless and he is compassionate, and he needs Lestat to help him rescue humanity from this vale of tears. Rice routinely fills her novels with tedious pseudotheology, but she really goes overboard here. Not only does Memnoch take Lestat to Heaven where he talks with God, he even takes him back in time to the Crucifixion where the vampire drinks Christ's blood. This clumsily told tale manages to be both ludicrous and offensive. Surely only die-hard Vampire Chronicle fans will be able to stand it, but they, like Rice's monsters, seem to be rampant. Donna Seaman

From the Inside Flap

In Anne Rice's extraordinary novel, the Vampire Lestat--outsides, canny monster, hero-wanderer--is at last offered the chance to be redeemed.He is brought into direct confrontation with both God and the Devil, and into the land of Death.We are in New York. The city is blanketed in snow. Through the whiteness Lestat is searching for Dora, the beautiful and charismatic daughter of a drug lord, the woman who arouses Lestat's tenderness as no mortal ever has.While torn between his vampire passions and his overwhelming love for Dora, Lestat is confronted by the most dangerous of adversaries he has yet known.He is snatched from the world itself by the mysterious Memnoch, who claims to be the Devil. He is invited to be a witness at the Creation. He is taken like the ancient prophets into the heavenly realm and is ushered into Purgatory.He must decide if he can believe in the Devil or in God. And finally, he must decide which, if either, he will serve.In the first four Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summoned up for us worlds that are fantastic and distant, making them as resonant, real, and immediate as our own. In this, her most daring and darkest novel, she takes us, with Lestat, into the mythical world that is most important to us--into the realms of our own theology.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I SAW HIM when he came through the front doors. Tall, solidly built dark brown hair and eyes, skin still fairly dark because it had been dark when I'd made him a vampire. Walking a little too fast, but basically passing for a human being. My beloved David.I was on the stairway. The grand stairway, one might say. It was one of those very opulent old hotels, divinely overdone, full of crimson and gold, and rather pleasant. My victim had picked it. I hadn't. My victim was dining with his daughter. And I'd picked up from my victim's mind that this was where he always met his daughter in New York, for the simple reason that St. Patrick's Cathedral was across the street.David saw me at once--a slouching, blond, long-haired youth, bronze face and hands, the usual deep violet sunglasses over my eyes, hair presentably combed for once, body tricked out in a dark-blue, double-breasted Brooks Brothers suit.I saw him smile before he could stop himself. He knew my vanity, and he probably knew that in the early nineties of the twentieth century, Italian fashion had flooded the market with so much shapeless, hangy, bulky, formless attire that one of the most erotic and flattering garments a man could choose was the well-tailored navy-blue Brooks Brothers suit.Besides, a mop of flowing hair and expert tailoring are always a potent combination. Who knows that better than I?I didn't mean to harp on the clothes! To hell with the clothes. It's just I was so proud of myself for being spiffed up and full of gorgeous contradictions--a picture of long locks, the impeccable tailoring, and a regal manner of slumping against the railing and sort of blocking the stairs.He came up to me at once. He smelled like the deep winter outside, where people were slipping in the frozen streets, and snow had turned to filth in the gutters. His face had the subtle preternatural gleam which only I could detect, and love, and properly appreciate, and eventually kiss.We walked together onto the carpeted mezzanine.Momentarily, I hated it that he was two inches taller than me. But I was so glad to see him, so glad to be near him. And it was warm in here, and shadowy and vast, one of the places where people do not stare at others."You've come," I said. "I didn't think you would.""Of course," he scolded, the gracious British accent breaking softly from the young dark face, giving me the usual shock. This was an old man in a young man's body, recently made a vampire, and by me, one of the most powerful of our remaining kind."What did you expect?" he said, tete-a-tete. "Armand told me you were calling me. Maharet told me.""Ah, that answers my first question." I wanted to kiss him, and suddenly I did put out my arms, rather tentatively and politely so that he could get away if he wanted, and when he let me hug him, when he returned the warmth, I felt a happiness I hadn't experienced in months.Perhaps I hadn't experienced it since I had left him, with Louis. We had been in some nameless jungle place, the three of us, when we agreed to part, and that had been a year ago."Your first question?" he asked, peering at me very closely, sizing me up perhaps, doing everything a vampire can do to measure the mood and mind of his maker, because a vampire cannot read his maker's mind, any more than the maker can read the mind of the fledgling.And there we stood divided, laden with preternatural gifts, both fit and rather full of emotion, and unable to communicate except in the simplest and best way, perhaps--with words."My first question," I began to explain, to answer, "was simply going to be: Where have you been, and have you found the others, and did they try to hurt you? All that rot, you know--how I broke the rules when I made you, et cetera.""All that rot," he mocked me, the French accent I still possessed, now couple with something definitely American."What rot.""Come on," I said. "Let's go into the bar there and talk. Obviously no one has done anything to you. I didn't' think they could or they would, or that they'd dare. I wouldn't have let you slip off into the world if I'd thought you were in danger."He smiled, his brown eyes full of gold light for just an instant."Didn't you tell me this twenty-five times, more or less, before we parted company?"We found a small table, cleaving to the wall. The place was half crowded the perfect proportion exactly. What did we look like? A couple of young men on the make for mortal men or women? I don't care."No one has harmed me," he said, "and no one has shown the slightest interest in it."Someone was playing a piano, very tenderly for a hotel bar, I thought. And it was something by Erik Satie. What luck."The tie," he said, leaning forward, white teeth flashing, fangs completely hidden, of course. "This, this big mass of silk around your neck! This is not Brooks Brothers!" He gave a soft teasing laugh. "Look at you, and the wing-tip shoes! My, my. What's going on in your mind? And what is this all about?"The bartender threw a hefty shadow over the small table, and murmured predictable phrases that were lost to me in my excitement and in the noise."Something hot," David said. It didn't surprise me. "You know, rum punch or some such, whatever you can heat up."I nodded and made a little gesture to the indifferent fellow that I would take the same thing.Vampires always ordered hot drinks. They aren't going to drink them; but they can feel the warmth and smell them if they're hot, and that is so good.David looked at me again. Or rather this familiar body with David inside looked at me. Because for me, David would always be the elderly human I'd known and treasured, as well as this magnificent burnished shell of stolen flesh that was slowly being shaped by his expressions and manner and mood.Dear Reader, he switched human bodies before I made him a vampire, worry no more. It has nothing to do with this story."Something's following you again?" he asked. "This is what Armand told me. So did Jesse.""Where did you see them?""Armand?" he asked. "A complete accident. In Paris. He was just walking on the street. He was the first one I saw.""He didn't make any move to hurt you?""Why would he? Why were you calling to me? Who's stalking you? What is all this?

About the Author

ANNE RICE lives in New Orleans with her husband, the poet and painter Stan Rice, and their son, Christopher.From the Paperback edition.

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