Comments | bookfails: The Devil you Say?

lone_she_wolf in bookfails

The Devil you Say?

Dec 09, 2009 00:04

Now for Anne Rice's most controversial of novels, Memnoch The Devil.

Some people love this novel while others hate it. I used to hate it. Then I read Blood Canticle and realized there are far worse things out there...

( Read more... )

scrub my brain, fantasy isn't always fantastic, kill it with fire, i love this author but what in the world, so called horror, buddy can you spare me an editor?, author last names m-s, thank god it was just fiction

Comments 15

intertribal December 9 2009, 05:20:17 UTC

Memnoch the Devil is the only Anne Rice I've read. I thought it was pretty awful. The religious argument was totally unconvincing, for the reasons you mention... and I also thought the writing was utter crap - sloppy sentence structure, unending infodumps.

lone_she_wolf December 9 2009, 21:51:30 UTC

Her earlier books are better. I strongly recommend The Vampire Lestat, sequel to Interview with the vampire.

porticia December 9 2009, 05:29:03 UTC

I agree that it would have been a better stand alone book than with her pre-established characters.

Despite everyone who thought "OMG SHE'S BEING ~BLASPHEMOUS~" I found the idea she put forth about the Devil really being the more "compassionate" one quite interesting and a nice twist to most religious fiction.

Did God in this book remind anyone else of the Architect in The Matrix?

lone_she_wolf December 9 2009, 05:57:41 UTC

I have nothing against the religious content. I just didn't like it used in her Vampire Chronicles mythos.

archangelremiel December 9 2009, 05:29:04 UTC

I agree. The whole religious aspect of this book made me uncomfortable and I could not finish it. It wasn't even the fact that it was religious, it was the Way religion was portrayed, and the way the devil was played off as an okay guy. It was also the beginning of what I consider a downward slide that, strangely enough, included a disturbing mix of religion and pedophilia. (How did those two get lumped together?)

lone_she_wolf December 9 2009, 06:03:10 UTC

Exactly!

marishkanobel December 9 2009, 07:15:10 UTC

I was fine with Memnoch the Devil until the scene with Dora and Lestat's discovery of a new way to drink blood.

Anne Rice does some really strange things to prove how "straight" her characters are.

kater_kat December 9 2009, 16:03:50 UTC

My take on Anne Rice is that she seems to get off on taboo topics - anywhere from drinking menstrual fluid (which I don't see as being a particular source of sustenance for a vampire, considering only a small part of it is actual blood), to all kinds of questionable sex, to controversial religious topics - simply for the sake of shock value. I'm not sure if this is as true with her in her early novels, but the few I've tried to read it's been rather rampant(it took me MONTHS to get through the first Mayfair book, which doesn't normally happen with me), but frankly it's a turn off.