Better to reign in hell than serve in heavan. (Memnoch The Devil - Ann Rice)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Memnoch The Devil - Ann Rice
Date:	27/09/01 (82 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: strange and thought provoking.

Disadvantages: quite weird in some ways., very Christian vision.

Lestat goes to hell. When I first heard about the premise for this book, I laughed - what else could the brat Prince do having unconvered the secrets of vampirism, but attempt to unlock the truth about heaven, hell, god, the devil and creation? Anne Rice's fifth Vampire Chronical is am ambitious piece indeed.

(I strongly recomend that you read the other four before trying this, as there are too many long standing characters and it just isn't going to make much sense otherwise. You have to understand how Lestat is to make any sense of what he does.)

What would you do if someone approached you claiming to be the devil and offered you a tour of heavan and hell, insight into creation and a totally unique job offer? Lestat decideds to take the tour. He first talks to his friends about it. (This may sound familiar) they are not keen on his going (they never are I note) and he takes no notice at all (he never does).

The Heavan, and hell that Rice offers and deeply influenced by Christian traditions - we have angels, a fallen angel who asked too much, a heavan full of people singing and so on. But as for God and the Devil - what do we make of them? Rice's Satan seems to owe more to Milton's "Paradise Lost" than to the Bible - he's likeable, you can understand why he's argued with god, you can see his point, and equally, god seems a tad distant and unreasonable. Rice's conception of creation is fascinating, but in a world of big bang theories and evolution, it seems terribly out of place - can we really accept this particular tale? I found that I couldn't. I can accept the vampires, the witches and the spirits, but for some reason, I cannot accept this single god creator. Odd, isn't it?

Lestat's journey takes him back through time to see jesus, durning wich episode he takes Veronica's veil - a cloth with which Christ wiped his face, and on which his image supposedly appears. This artifa
ct is taken back into the world by Lestat (following several events that I am not prepaired to spoil) and offered to the world at large. Sadly, Rice doesn't really explore the consequences of this in anything like enough detail. What does happen is a tragic and needless death (or does it?) over which I wept bitterly. If you want to know which Vampire is so inspired by the veil that he walks out into the sun, you will have to read the book.

In terms of mood, "Memnoch" has more in common with "Interview with a vampire" than with later books - that thick velvety confusion is present again, just as alarming and intoxicating as it was in the first novel. The concepts are too big, too impossible - place god and the devil in a book and the whole thing takes on an unreality - it is more than any of us can cope with, more than Lestat can cope with and the result is a dream of insanity that you really want to believe isn't true at all. This is the only vampire book that I am not sure about re reading - the first four I have read two or three times a piece, "Armand" I've not had for long enough to re-read, but I hesitate to go back to this one - it was a very good story, but it bothered me in a way I can't quite explain. I would recomend reading this one, but prepaire to be uncomfortable.

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