Song of Songs of the Blood
Song of Songs (English: Blood Canticle ) is a 2004 published fantasy / vampire novel by the US writer Anne Rice . It is the tenth and final part of Rice's Chronicle of the Vampires, begun in 1976, with the vampire Lestat. The book was panned by criticism and resulted in an open letter in which Rice expressed her anger over the alleged incompetence of the readers.
background
Rice wrote the novel Conversation with a Vampire in 1976 . The main characters are the vampires Louis and Lestat. The book became a bestseller in paperback. Rice wrote eight more vampire books by 2002, which were summarized under the series name The Vampire Chronicles ( Eng .: Chronicle of the Vampires ). Already after the ninth book Blackwood Farm (2003) she announced that the tenth book would be the last. The reason she cited was her conversion to Catholicism and the unwillingness to write books about "unholy" creatures like vampires.
action
The story is told by Rice's main character, the vampire Lestat. The protagonist is a young witch named Mona, the protégé of Lestat's friend Rowan. Mona suffers from a mysterious illness and is dying. But Lestat bites her and turns her into a vampire. Mona develops extraordinary powers while Lestat investigates the disease. He also falls in love with Rowan. Lestat finds out about the mysterious taltos that seem to be responsible for the disease. After the dramatic finale, there is a happy ending.
review
The book was criticized by the New York Times for being "melodramatic" and for its unoriginal ending. Entertainment Weekly gave the book the grade “D” (equivalent to a “four” in the German grading system) and criticized the “involuntarily funny” characters that bordered on self-parody. The book was rated three out of five stars on amazon.com , with the number and intensity of the negative reviews shocking Rice.
Answer from Rice
Rice responded angrily to the negative reviews. She wrote a 1200 word long review in which she gave herself 5 stars and accused the critics of using amazon.com as a “public urinal for lies”. She rejected the accusation of not wanting to have her works proofread by considering her writing to be of high quality anyway and comparing her literary skills with the singing skills of opera legend Luciano Pavarotti : “If you write with such devotion, you don't want any annoying heckling . "
Rice's review was deleted from amazon.com a little later. On her homepage, Rice notes that she still feels hurt by the supposedly "uninformed criticism" and thanks her followers for the "faithful help" during this time.
Footnotes
- ↑ www.stern.de Stern-Magazin, issue 37/2007
- ↑ BLOOD CANTICLE by Anne Rice. , New York Times
- ↑ Blood Canticle , ew.com
- ↑ Original quote: [You are] interrogating this text from the wrong perspective. Your stupid, arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander ... You have used the site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies. People who find fault and problems with my books tend to say, "She needs an editor" When a person writes with such care and goes over and over a manuscript and wants every word to be perfect, it's very frustrating. When you take home a CD of Pavarotti, you don't want to hear another voice blended in. The People Have Spoken, And Rice Takes Offense , New York Times
- ↑ Open letter from Anne Rice ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2012 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , annerice.com
