Upcoming: PRINCE LESTAT by Anne Rice (Chatto & Windus)

Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles remain some of my favourite novels – as I’m sure I’ve mentioned many times already on CR, I consider The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned among my top five favourite novels (as one selection – they have to be read together). It was with much excitement, therefore, that I saw that Rice was returning to the series after 11 years away – 2003’s Blood Canticle was the last novel until now. As with any long-running series, it had its ups and downs, and while certain elements of the later novels didn’t work for me, I nevertheless eagerly purchased and read them on their publication days. Prince Lestat will be no different, I’m sure (unless I can get a review copy…). Here’s the synopsis:

The vampire world is in crisis – their kind have been proliferating out of control and, thanks to technologies undreamed of in previous centuries, they can communicate as never before. Roused from their earth-bound slumber, ancient ones are in thrall to the Voice: which commands that they burn fledgling vampires in cities from Paris to Mumbai, Hong Kong to Kyoto and San Francisco. Immolations, huge massacres, have commenced all over the world.

Who – or what – is the Voice? What does it desire, and why?

There is only one vampire, only one blood drinker, truly known to the entire world of the Undead. Will the dazzling hero-wanderer, the dangerous rebel-outlaw Lestat heed the call to unite the Children of Darkness as they face this new twilight?

Anne Rice’s epic, luxuriant, fiercely ambitious new novel brings together all the worlds and beings of the legendary Vampire Chronicles, from present-day New York and Ancient Egypt to fourth-century Carthage and Renaissance Venice; from Louis de Pointe du Lac; Armand the eternally young; Mekare and Maharet; to Pandora and Flavius; David Talbot, vampire and ultimate fixer from the Secret Talamasca; and Marius, the true child of the Millennia. It also introduces many other seductive supernatural creatures, and heralds significant new blood.

Prince Lestat is due to be published in the UK by Chatto & Windus, on October 30, 2014; and in the US by Knopf, on October 28th, 2014. Below are the US and earlier UK covers (according to the author’s Facebook page, the latter has been replaced by the image at the top of this post):